Community Leadership Award

The 2011 Community Leadership Award is given to recognize individuals in the Southern California community who have demonstrated outstanding community service which directly and positively affects African Americans and other minorities.

Jeff Stetson is an internationally acclaimed award-winning playwright and screenwriter for film and television. His numerous stage plays have been produced in all fifty-states and several countries including South Africa, the Netherlands, Canada, the Virgin Islands, England and Austria.

Among his many accomplishments, Stetson  co-wrote a documentary entitled, "For the Love of Liberty,” and received American Public Television's Programming Excellence Award for 2010 and the 2011 NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary. The documentary explored the role of Afro-Americans in the U.S. Military from pre-revolutionary war to Iraq. Stetson has adapted a number of plays for television featured on PBS, Children’s Television Network, Disney Channel, ION Network, and Black E ntertainment Television.

Previously, Stetson was the formal Dean of Faculty and Staff Affairs and Director for Public Affairs and University Relations for the California State University system. He served as a writing mentor at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and Professor at the Theater Arts and Dance Department at California State University, Los Angeles where he has taught creative writing for stage, film, and television. He also taught the first Professional Workshop for African-American Screenwriters established by Bill and Camille Cosby in 1994 at the USC School of Cinema Television.