Four outstanding leaders in business who have made significant contributions to their companies and communities will receive Wayne State University Corporate Leadership Awards Wednesday, June 16, at the Hilberry Theatre. Corporate Leadership Awards honor the accomplishments of Wayne State University graduates and others who hold executive-level positions and are recognized as business and community leaders. Wayne State University has been celebrating the accomplishments of outstanding business leaders for 21 years.

Writer, producer and director Monice Mitchell Simms, of Flower Girl Productions, Inc., will receive the Emerging Corporate Leader Award., presented to an alumna/us who has enjoyed a lifetime of achievement in his or her chosen field. Simms, a Los Angeles resident, founded her company in 1987 when she was a student at Martin Luther King High School in Detroit. Her debut independent short film for the Showtime Network - Rain - premiered in July 2002. A love story set during the final hours of the world, Rain follows a marine from the front lines of World War III as he tries desperately to get to his wife before the bombing starts. The film was a finalist in the 2003 Hollywood Black Film Festival. Her earlier film, Carmin's Choice, won Simms the esteemed honor of Showtime's Black Filmmaker of the Year in 1998.

In 2002, Simms received a feature fellowship in the Guy Alexander Hanks and Marvin Miller Screenwriting Program at the University of Southern California. The following year, she was chosen as a semi-finalist in the Chesterfield Writer's Film Project. Currently, Simms is shopping her television pilot, The Nonsense Chronicles. She is also in post-production on Pass the Mic Ð a documentary featuring NPR and PBS talk show host, Tavis Smiley and Drs. Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson. Simms, who presently works as the executive assistant for Smiley, graduated from the Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University with a bachelor's degree in 1993.

Other awardees include Terry A. Reiley, President of the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, the Michigan Orthopaedic Specialty Hospital and Senior Vice President of the Detroit Medical Center, who will receive the 21st Century Award; Ed Christian, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Saga Communications, Inc., who will receive the Distinguished Corporate Leader Award; and the Delphi Corporation, who will receive the Corporate Citizenship Award.

A community reception begins at 5 p.m. and the program begins at 6 p.m. Tickets for the reception and ceremony are $20. To purchase tickets, call Kris Herzog in Corporate and Foundation Relations at (313) 577-9278. For more information and to see previous awardees, see the Corporate Leadership Award Web site: http://www.dev-alumni.wayne.edu/giving/cfr-awards.php