Character Leadership Keynotes and Training for Organizations, Professionals, Students, and Individual Influencers

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. Booker T. Washington 

We are a national professional development company, providing keynotes, lectures, workshops, and coaching in character leadership grounded in excellence, to educational institutions, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and individuals that serve, teach, employ, or influence rising and aspiring leaders—including college students; student athletes; entrepreneurs; front line supervisors; managers-in-training; and individual influencers.

What we Do

We specialize in helping you find greater professional growth and personal fufillment

50 %

Professional Growth

50 %

Personal Fulfillment

The Blueprint to Excellence uncovers how attitude can impact potential, and thereby, success. Each component of the training is designed to cultivate skills and qualities of successful attitudes toward professional growth and personal development. 
SWOR16

THE VISION FLOURISHED IN 1905

Our Story

Booker T. Washington Excellence Network was started by Dr. Sarah Washington O’Neal Rush to encourage character leadership rooted in excellence. The philosophy of our programs follows her great-grandfather’s (Booker T Washington) school of thought when starting Tuskegee Institute, today known as Tuskegee University. He focused on uplifting and empowering former slaves, and their descendants. By 1905, his teachings of the head, the hand, and the heart allowed him to turn out more self-made millionaires than Yale, Harvard, and Princeton universities combined, as cited by Williams and Crooks (2004). His ideals stand strong to this day, enlightening a path of unwavering leadership and self-assuredness across race, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. As he once said, “Let us keep before us the fact that, almost without exception, every race or nation that has ever got upon its feet has done so through struggle and trial and persecution; and that out of this very resistance to wrong, out of the struggle against odds, they have gained strength, self-confidence, and experience which they could not have gained in any other way.
Upon visiting Tuskegee University for the first time in her life as an adult, Dr. Rush found her purpose in helping others find success and reach their full potential. Carrying forward the legacy of her great-grandfather, she espouses his evidence-based teachings on character building, education, excellence, leadership, and responsibility. She incorporates these teachings with her modern-day training and her personal and professional experience. Dr. Rush earned a doctorate degree in education in the field of leadership, and a master’s degree in the field of psychology. In addition to being an author and speaker, she has professional experience as an adjunct psychology professor, a clinical counselor, an employee assistance program (EAP) consultant, and the founder and director of a nonprofit organization serving “at-risk” youth and their families. Dr. Rush has published many articles, and has appeared in print media, on radio, on television, on podcasts, and in documentaries discussing mental health, self-improvement, and the historic life and work of her famous great-grandfather. 

We instill excellence inspired by character leadership—
grounded in being, growing, leading, & soaring!

About BTW Excellence Network