Liz Hornyak: On this week’s episode, EMU students create a new job search engine, and White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor is the keynote speaker for EMU’s annual Martin Luther King Day Celebration. I am your host Liz Hornyak, and this is the Eastern Echo Podcast.

EMU students Collin Clem and Anthony Levesque have created a new job search engine called Employee RoundUp to help small businesses within the Ypsilanti community fill entry-level positions. Clem and Levesque were inspired to create Employee RoundUp, because they noticed that on other job search engines there were false job postings, scams, and marketing schemes. 

Clem will be receiving a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in international business with a concentration in marketing, and Levesque graduated from EMU last year with a degree in mathematics. 

Clem and Levesque first advertised their site through EMU’s mobile app EMU Engage, but with rising interest, the team hopes that the university will utilize their new service. To visit Employee RoundUp, you can go to EmployeeRoundUp.com

For EMU’s annual Martin Luther King Day Celebration, EMU partnered with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History to bring this year’s keynote speaker Yamiche Alcindor. Alcindor is a White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour and a noted journalist. During her address on Jan. 18, Alcindor spoke about her favorite Dr. King quotes, how COVID-19 has highlighted the disparities that people of color experience in this country, police brutality, and the riots that took place on Capital Hill on Jan. 6. 

Yamiche Alcindor: These times are times of challenge and controversy. There’s no other way to describe the time period in which we are living. We are just starting to learn so many of the details about how our democracy is at risk. 

We’re now gearing up for a second impeachment, an historic impeachment of President Trump, the first president in history to be impeached twice. We’re still reckoning with the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others.

And we’re in the midst of a pandemic that is killing Americans; sometimes 4,000 Americans a day, and impacting black and brown people more at times than white people because it is exposing even in the midst of a pandemic the inequalities that Martin Luther King pushed so hard to eliminate.

Liz Hornyak: During the Q&A session of the webinar, Alcindor was asked what Dr. King would think of the world today. She responded, “I think if Martin Luther King were alive today he’d be proud of the fact that we’ve come somewhat far as a country and that were able to coexist… I think he would be happy and pleased with the idea that we’re a society that is moving toward making the right to vote even more easy and more accessible for people. I think the thing that would maybe break his heart a bit is how divided we are still as a country.”

As always thank you for listening. A huge thank you to reporters Dan D’Introno and Emma Henri for their work on today’s stories. Until next Wednesday, I am your host Liz Hornyak and this is the Eastern Echo Podcast.

Script: Jasmine Boyd

Host: Liz Hornyak

Produced: Ashlee Buhler, Ethan Meyers

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