2021 AMA Board of Directors Awards Announced

The AMA Board of Directors selected two individuals for special recognition for their demonstrated leadership and dedication to the mission of promoting the motorcycle lifestyle and protecting the future of motorcycling.

AMA Charter Life Member Paul Slavik is the 2021 recipient of the AMA Dud Perkins Lifetime Achievement Award, which acknowledges the highest level of service to the AMA in any area of activity.

Brittany Young, founder of the B360 (b360baltimore.org) nonprofit that teaches science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills to youths using dirt bikes, is the recipient of the 2021 AMA Bessie Stringfield Award.

The AMA Bessie Stringfield Award acknowledges an individual who has been instrumental in introducing or promoting motorcycling to emerging markets.

Neither award is necessarily awarded for every calendar year.

Paul Slavik

Slavik, a retired employee of American Honda, has spent decades promoting and protecting motorcycling. He participated in AMA-sanctioned competition events in Southern California and the Midwest from the early 1960s to the late 1980s.

He was Honda’s national OHV coordinator and national OHV press coordinator. First appointed to the California Off-Highway Vehicle Commission in 2008, Slavik helped create the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council, was involved in the Off Road PALs Program and was a member of the California OHV Stakeholders.

He also served on the California Roundtable on Recreation, Parks and Tourism.

Slavik served on the Motorcycle Industry Council’s Land Use Committee and was an ATV and dirt bike instructor. Commissioner Slavik also helped create Honda’s Environmental Learning Center and was instrumental in the development of the San Bernardino National Forest OHV Volunteer Program.

Slavik also helped bring the National Youth Project Using Minibikes to the California state parks. The program provides mentors who help youth’s social, emotional and psychological development.

After he retired from American Honda in 2005, Slavik helped coordinate the route designation workshops for the NOHVCC and did some on-the-ground route inventory work for Advanced Resource Solutions in the desert.

“This award came as a big surprise,” Slavik said. “Why me? I’m just a guy who worked at Honda for 30 years.

“I just didn’t think, in my wildest dreams, that I would receive this award. Those are important people who get these awards, and I am just a guy who was doing his job.”

Brittany Young

Young is not a motorcyclist. But when she saw the culture of young people in the Baltimore area who demonstrated their passion for riding by taking to the streets and public parks on dirt bikes and ATVs, she identified an opportunity.

Young has harnessed the energy, passion, creativity and intelligence of those riders and channeled it into classroom instruction. B-360 teaches STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—by using dirt bikes to demonstrate theories and their practical applications.

The organization also tries to create safe, legal spaces where urban youths can ride, while creating relationships between the riders and city government. B-360 also hires some of the program graduates to train and mentor the next generation.

The B-360 program was featured in the December 2019 issue of American Motorcyclist magazine (magazine.americanmotorcyclist.com/8757/teaching-stem-with-dirt-bikes).

Since its inception in 2017, B-360 has served about 5,000 students and has hired 20 former street-bike riders who went through the program.

B-360 has received funding from Baltimore business people who support social change, including the Baltimore Corps’ Elevation Awards, the Johns Hopkins Social Innovation Lab and Red Bull Amaphiko Academy. Young also was selected for a national Echoing Green Fellowship.

“I was very shocked to receive the Bessie Stringfield Award,” Young said. “This is a very different kind of award for me.

“I am a big fan of Bessie Stringfield. I teach about her in my B-360 classes. I am extremely honored to receive an award named for a Black woman.

“I don’t see myself as a Bessie Stringfield at all. She is a legend. But I represent her legacy. And I want to see more Black people in motorcycling.”