Soledad O'Brien Will Keynote at National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education

The National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE), the most comprehensive national forum on race relations, equity and access on college campuses, is slated to take place May 27-31 in Indianapolis.

Soledad O'Brien, award-winning journalist, documentarian, news anchor and producer, will be one of the four featured keynote speakers at the 2014 conference.

Also featured are Dr. Cheryl Crazy Bull (Sicangu Lakota), president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund; Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, host of the nationally syndicated television show "Our World with Black Enterprise" and associate professor of education at Teachers College at Columbia University; and Dr. Vandana Shiva, physicist, inter-disciplinary researcher in science, technology and environmental policy and founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1705647#ixzz2s93X1bbM

Women Influencers as Change Agents

BlogHer, Inc., the premium cross-platform media network and publisher for women, announced today that Soledad O'Brien, Christy Turlington Burns and Malaak Compton-Rock will discuss "Women Influencers as Change Agents" at the 2012 BlogHer Annual Conference on Saturday, August 4, 2012 in New York City. The panel will highlight the activism and charitable work of O'Brien, Turlington Burns and Compton-Rock to BlogHer's audience of influential online women.

Soledad O'Brien is an award-winning anchor and special correspondent for CNN. Soledad and husband, Brad Raymond, are founders of The Soledad O'Brien & Brad Raymond Foundation, providing young women a bridge between obstacles and opportunity, giving them the experiences, education and resources to overcome unexpected barriers to success.

Christy Turlington Burns is a global maternal health advocate and founder of Every Mother Counts, an advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction globally.

Malaak Compton-Rock has leveraged her career in public relations to develop philanthropic cause-related campaigns and programs focused on education and poverty disparities in the U.S. and in Africa.

"Soledad O'Brien, Christy Turlington Burns and Malaak Compton-Rock are inspiring examples of women who have used their influence to make tangible change in the world," said Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, BlogHer co-founders. "The women of the BlogHer community, individually and collectively, have a tremendous amount of power. We hope to galvanize every BlogHer in the room to share how they are using social media to change the world and to explore and expand how they use their power."

Soledad O'Brien Speaks at UNITY 2008 Conference

The 2008 UNITY: Journalists of Color conference held in Chicago at the end of July gathered six thousand student and professional journalists. Most attendees were members of NABJ (National Association of Black Journalists), NAHJ (National Association of Hispanic Journalists), AAJA (Asian American Journalists Association) or NAJA (Native American Journalists Association).

At the event, former television anchor Carole Simpson was honored by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) for her pioneering career and support of women journalists worldwide. Simpson spent her broadcast career breaking down both racial and gender barriers in the industry. When she took over hosting duties on the Sunday edition of ABC’s “World News Tonight” in 1988, she became the first black woman to anchor a national news program.

Simpson currently teaches journalism at Emerson College. She also runs the Carole Simpson Leadership Institute at the African Women’s Media Center in Senegal which was created in 1998 to help African women journalists gain the skills to be competitive in the media world. Simpson has also set up several high school and college scholarships for women and minorities pursuing careers in broadcast journalism.

CNN journalist Soledad O’Brien was also present at the ceremony and spoke about her personal efforts to bring more diverse programming to CNN. She noted that she was disturbed that a diversity workshop for CNN employees last year had a panel made up entirely of white men.

Her dissatisfaction led to discussions with CNN executives that in turn led to the recent four-hour documentary series Black in America on CNN. That series is now the highest-rated documentary series in CNN’s history.

Soledad Speaks at Women's Business Conference

Soledad was the luncheon speaker for the 19th annual Women's Business Conference held in Bakersfield, CA. She is featured in this short video about the event.

Soledad at Bakersfield Women's Business Conference

CNN correspondent Soledad O'Brien, keynote speaker at the 19th annual Bakersfield Women's Business Conference, was a little reluctant when a women's magazine recently asked her to pen a Mother's Day piece on the best advice her mother ever gave her.

Her mother was not "warm and fuzzy," but more of the "tough nut" variety, O'Brien told listeners at her luncheon address.

After a young, frustrated O'Brien told her mother a news director had refused to hire her because she wasn't dark enough for the lone reporter job he'd set aside for a black journalist, and another potential boss asked if she'd be willing to change her ethnic name, O'Brien's mother said: "Most people are idiots. Now go get another job."

Words to live by, O'Brien said, but "most people are idiots" isn't the stuff of Hallmark cards.

O'Brien did get another job, of course. After covering local news in San Francisco and Boston, she went on to MSNBC, NBC and later CNN, where she co-anchored the network's American Morning show for four years. She now works for CNN'S Special Investigations Unit, which produces documentary-style in-depth reports.

O'Brien's mother is a black, Cuban immigrant, and her father is a white, Australian immigrant of Irish descent. When her parents were dating, they had trouble finding restaurants willing to serve an interracial couple. Maryland, where they met, would not permit them to legally marry in 1958, so they had to drive to Washington, D.C., for their nuptuals. Afterward, people cautioned them against having children, sure that their offspring would never fit in.

"I'm the fifth of six children," O'Brien said. "Obviously, they didn't listen."

Moreover, the couple sent all six of their children to Harvard University.

"If people put out obstacles, step around them," O'Brien said. "Decide what you're going to do and go do it. It's that simple."

At a separate workshop for R.O.S.E. Mentors and their charges, O'Brien told girls to seek out advice from successful people -- whether they personally know them or not -- and to listen to what they have to say. If you get defensive, you can't learn from constructive criticism, she said.

And if you assume someone won't assist you merely because they're powerful and have achieved a lot, you could miss out. O'Brien recalled writing to a news anchor she'd never met when she was an up-and-coming reporter, and how pleased she was that the woman wrote her a long, single-spaced letter critiquing her work.

"I still have that letter," she said.

O'Brien added that she tries to pay back that debt by helping other young people coming along, and that many others she knows do the same. O'Brien said she's encouraged every day by the public's willingness to help strangers.

"If I go on TV and say so and so needs help, the next day I'll have 50,000 e-mails from people saying, 'What can I do? How can I help?'" she said. "I think that's amazing."

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