Venus Williams granted ‘Phenomenal Woman of the Year’ award by YWCA Greater Los Angeles
Venus Williams has come a long way from when her career as a professional tennis player first began. She has managed to make it big in the world of tennis and is presently also a very successful entrepreneur. She is a former world number one in tennis rankings and is currently ranked number three worldwide. She has won a total of seven Grand Slam singles titles and three Olympic gold medals. Her prize earnings are second highest among all female athletes. Venus Williams, along with her sister Serena Williams has been dominating the world of female professional tennis for quite some time now.
This Grand Slam champion has been showered with many awards during her career. Venus’ name was added to the thirty most powerful women in America by the Ladies Home Journal in 2001. In 2005, she was ranked as the 25th best player to have graced the game of tennis in the past forty years by Tennis Magazine. After this ranking, Venus added another three Grand Slam singles titles to her winnings. She was also given the 77th position in the Top 100 Most Powerful Celebrities by Forbes magazine in June 2009. Adding to her success she has come out with a book titled ‘Come to Win’. ‘Come to Win’ has been placed in the top five of the New York Times best selling list.
Along with a great career in tennis, Venus has also been very active in hosting charity events and together with her sister Serena she runs her own charity organization called Venus and Serena Williams Charity Tour. Her own life story is having a childhood in the rundown suburbs of Compton and then working hard to make it to the top as an exceptional professional tennis player. Perhaps their difficult past is the reason why the Williams sisters are endlessly working on helping those in need and are known to donate generous amounts of money to charity every year.
Recently, Venus Williams has been honoured with the award for the Phenomenal Woman of the Year by the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles. The YWCA Greater Los Angeles was established in 1894, and since then it has been working to provide care and support to women and their children who are in need and have trouble adjusting to the changing society on their own.
The Phenomenal Women Award is hosted in order to acknowledge the efforts and accomplishments of the top Southern Californian women executives and leaders in front of an audience including the top business officials of Los Angeles. The event is basically a fundraiser which will benefit the YWCA GLA Corps program. The program is intended to help underprivileged youth and help accommodate them in a better environment.
The CEO of the YWCA Greater Los Angeles, Faye Washington, has said that it is a very exciting moment for them to have honoured Venus Williams with this award as she is one woman who truly deserves to be saluted. The theme of this year’s event is ‘Saluting the Women who Change the Game’ and Venus does complete justice to this statement with her numerous achievements while being on court as well as off court. Venus has supported many innovative programs which have been developed by the YWCA and has also volunteered to be a guest speaker for the children who are being supported by this program. Her tireless efforts for the organization’s main cause, which is ‘eliminating racism, empowering women’, have also made her extremely popular and deserving for this award. Being an African American herself, she realises the need to deal with the problem of racism as it is still an ongoing and serious problem in the United States.
Venus Williams has proved to the world that she is one strong and capable woman. Her strength has made her renowned throughout the world as a tennis star and as a light of hope for those in need. Girl power all the way, way to go Venus!
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