Andrew Williams, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Kansas’ school of engineering, gives the keynote speech at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast, Monday, Jan. 15, 2018 at Maceli's, 1031 New Hampshire St.

You never know who you will run into at lunch — and who you will be able to help, Andrew Williams told a crowd of about 200 people at Lawrence’s Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast on Monday.

Williams, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Kansas’ school of engineering and the keynote speaker for this year’s MLK event, told the crowd about the time he found himself in the cafeteria of the tech giant Apple Inc. Into the lunchroom comes Apple founder Steve Jobs, along with one of the top designers at the firm.

Thinking it would be improper to go up to Jobs without an invitation, Williams went to speak to the designer, telling him he was a professor at Spelman College, a small, historically black liberal arts school for women. Before Williams could say more, though, Jobs jumps into the conversation, asking if Spelman had an engineering program. It did, and Williams was part of it.

Apple was doing a “blankety blank” job of hiring black engineers, Williams recalls Jobs saying, although Jobs filled in the blanks with a few other choice words. Apple had just one black engineer. Jobs was interested in figuring out how the company could hire more, and he gave Williams his email address.

Fast-forward a bit, and Williams gets a call from a frustrated former engineering student — a young black woman. Despite being a winner in a prestigious international robotics competition, she couldn’t even get past the first round of interviews with Apple, she lamented.

Andrew Williams, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Kansas’ school of engineering, gives the keynote speech at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast, Monday, Jan. 15, 2018 at Maceli's, 1031 New Hampshire St.

“I told her to send me her resume,” Williams said. “I knew just who to send it to.”

The rest, as they say, is history. The woman is still employed by Apple today. On MLK Day, it also is a good reminder of how opportunities to help can present themselves almost anywhere, Williams said.

“You can change the world by innovating for the underrepresented,” Williams told the crowd.

Williams went on to become Apple’s first engineering diversity manager while taking a sabbatical from his teaching duties. Williams now does that same type of work for the KU School of Engineering.

Williams came to KU as a student in 1983 after having grown up in Junction City — in a two-bedroom trailer that housed six children plus his parents. While in Lawrence, he met several people who provided mentorship, including Pastor Leo Barbee of Lawrence’s Victory Bible Church. Barbee, Rev. William Dulin and Rev. Paul Winn are generally credited with organizing the first MLK Day celebrations in Lawrence. Barbee and Dulin continue to help organize the community breakfast and other events, and the celebration now includes a scholarship award in memory of Winn, who died in 2016.

A near-capacity crowd filled Maceli’s in downtown Lawrence for the event, which was hosted by the Jayhawk Breakfast Rotary Club and the Lawrence Ecumenical Fellowship.

Williams urged the group to remember one of King’s more famous lessons.

“The most urgent question of the day is what have you done for others?” Williams said.

In addition to the breakfast celebration, KU hosted a march on campus on Monday afternoon. Several other celebrations are planned for later in the week, including the New York Elementary School MLK Chili Feed from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the school, 936 New York St.