Devoyd “Dee” Jennings, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce, has died.
According to the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce, Jennings died on Saturday, July 24.
He was born in 1947.
Jennings graduated from I.M. Terrell High School in 1966. He was part of the 1965 state basketball championship team coached by Robert Hughes.
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He enrolled at Tarrant County College and later attended Texas Wesleyan University, graduating with a degree in marketing in 1971, the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce said.
Jennings began his 27-year journey with TXU as a Community Affairs Specialist in 1973, and was the first Black lobbyist for Texas Electric.
He served on the Texas Association of Business from 1995 to 2014, the Texas Wesleyan University from 1989 to 2008, the North Texas Commission the 1993 to 2003, and the Texas Association of African American Chambers.
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Jennings also served as chairman of the NTTA’s Business Diversity Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2013.
In both 1992 and 2005, the city of Fort Worth honored Jennings with a proclamation for Devoyd Jennings Day.
He was featured by the Fort Worth Business Press as Who’s Who in Economic Development in 1999, and received the Deal Maker Award from the Business Press in 1998.
In 2016, he was involved in the leadership of the effort to reopen I.M. Terrell High School as a STEM and Performing Arts Academy.
Jennings helped create two stand-alone organizations that directly benefit minority development: a financial lending agency called the William Mann Community Development Corp., and a community development agency called Southeast Fort Worth Inc.
He’s also worked with government bodies and others such as the city of Fort Worth, Arlington, JPS Health Network, Tarrant County, and the Fort Worth ISD to help establish minority and women-owned business enterprise goals.
Jennings was honored with a Minority Leaders in Business Award by the Fort Worth Business Press in 2017.
According to the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce, additional details regarding his death will follow in the coming days.
