PowHerful

Soledad O'Brien started her Starfish Media Group as a way to control the kinds of projects she could work on as a journalist.

She was inspired by an Evangelical story:

Countless starfish have washed ashore on a beach and are dying off. A little boy is picking them up and tossing them back into the ocean in the hope they’ll survive. A man walks by and asks him why he’s doing something so futile.
“There are hundreds,” he points out. “What difference will it make?”
The boy picks up another starfish, throws it into the sea and says: “It will make a difference to that one.”

And so she created the Soledad O'Brien and Brad Raymond Starfish Foundation with her husband in 2011 in order to provide funds and resources for student scholars with the idea that helping one young woman can cause a ripple effect throughout her family, friends, and community - transform lives, one girl at a time.

Then, her PowHERful Foundation Summit Series began in 2012 in New York City as an annual, free daylong conference for high school- and college-aged young women focusing on educational, professional, and personal development.

In 2017, the Starfish Foundation became the PowHERful Foundation to better reflect the empowerment message they want to provide young women all across the country opportunities.

Soledad O’Brien Hosts Empowerment Conference for Young Women

When Soledad O’Brien was in college, she had a mentor who helped guide her toward success , and also influenced her subsequent decision to provide similar support for other young women.

“I had one phenomenal mentor while I was in college who taught me the tools of my trade, inspired me to want to be a journalist and most importantly gave me the confidence to navigate a tough profession,” O’Brien said. “It transformed me and leads me to believe that this kind of support for young women is vital in helping them achieve their goals.”

O’Brien and her husband, Brad Raymond, founded in 2011 what is now called the PowHERful Foundation with a primary mission to get young minority women from low-income families to and through college by providing financial assistance, mentorship and other support.

The foundation holds PowHERful Enrichment Conferences across the country, the most recent being in Jacksonville, Florida “to create an opportunity for girls across the country who have limited means to get all the resources they need to get through college and into the workforce... all the things that parents and professionals might offer a young woman of greater means.”

The Jacksonville event is is one of seven announced for 2017. The next one is May 13 in Atlanta.

To donate, apply for a scholarship or get more information about the PowHERful Foundation, contact the foundation at 134 W. 26th St., Suite 1150, New York, NY 10001 or go to powherful.org.

Starfish Scholar Program: Transforming Lives — One Girl at a Time

In 2017, Soledad O'Brien and her foundation, the Starfish Scholar Program, continues its philanthropic venture.

Focusing on disadvantaged young women and with a goal of helping a group of them complete their college education and begin careers, the foundation’s motto is “Transforming Lives — One Girl at a Time.”

O'Brien's day might well start at 5:30 a.m. and into a hair and make-up chair before appearing on television.

The day can include foundation business, conducting interviews, being interviewed and working on documentaries for her Starfish Media group.

Plus, Soledad is a wife and mother of four. Her evening might be devoted to family, public events, or dinner with her young scholars at her New York apartment.

“Our Scholars are young,” says O’Brien. “They haven’t been through the experience where the thing that was bad actually turned out to be a blessing, and the thing that was great turned out to be not so great. That’s what time gives us.”

Panel on 'Hidden Figures' Hosted by Soledad O'Brien

(From left to right: Elizabeth Gabler, President Fox 2000 Pictures, 20th Century Fox; Rashid Ferrod Davis, Founding Principal, P-TECH; Kristen Summers, Technical Delivery Lead, Watson Public Sector, IBM; Soledad O’Brien, journalist and panel moderator. Image: Black Enterprise)

Coinciding with the official nationwide launch of Hidden Figures, the biopic about three black women mathematicians who worked in the earliest days of the American space program, Soledad O'Brien hosted a panel on the movie and a discussion of women in science and tech.

Those mathematicians (Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson) did work that helped John Glenn orbit the Earth in the 1960s.

The panel at CES, the world’s largest technology show, included the film's director, Theodore Melfi, and one of its stars, Octavia Spencer as well as leaders in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and focused on the incredible achievements of the three mathematicians as depicted in the film and the ongoing push for women to succeed in STEM.



Soledad O’Brien said that the movie was an emotional experience for her because it not only recognizes the power of these women using math and science, but also what they accomplished socially. She was struck by how the women affected great change. “These are some tough, amazing women who really got the job done that needed to be done,” she said.

During the movie, Octavia Spencer’s character learns to program the IBM 7090 DPS—a vacuum-tube mainframe computer. IBM is one of the oldest tech companies in the world, forming in the 19th century. Its technology was used in World War II and for space exploration.

“Big Blue” also has an extensive history of diversity. “We’re so privileged to have had the IBM forefathers who hired the first black employee,” said Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, IBM’s chief diversity officer. That employee was Richard MacGregor hired in 1899 by IBM’s precursor company, the Computing Scale Company. In 1953, IBM hired its first black engineer and continues on a trajectory of diverse hiring today.

You can watch the IBM and Hidden Figures panel in its entirety at facebook.com/IBM/videos/1226504650773148/





Source: http://www.blackenterprise.com/technology/ibm-hidden-figures-celebrate-jeannette-epps-foremothers/

American Graduate Day

Soledad O'Brien on #AMGrad with Allison Williams

American Graduate Day 2016 was a four-hour, live broadcast and outreach event on September 17, 2016 that was dedicated to engaging people around the dropout crisis. with special celebrity guests, relevant spokespeople and compelling stories from the students themselves.

Soledad O'Brien interviewed a number of students and participants during the day.

American Graduate Day is the culminating event of Spotlight Education– a special week of primetime education-themed programming on PBS that began on September 12.

Throughout the day, viewers were encouraged to engage with #AmGrad on Facebook and Twitter, and to go online and become an American Graduate Champion by being a mentor.

Soledad O'Brien's Education Story

Soledad O'Brien talks about how her own experiences  - through her parents, as a student and as journalist and philanthropist - have created her "education story."

Soledad on Tech

Back in 1996, Soledad O'Brien hosted a very early show - THE SITE - on technology and the relatively new Internet. So it might be appropriate that she was ISTE 2015’s opening keynote speaker.

The International Society for Technology in Education might not be the appropriate lace to tell 10,000 educators and education leaders that technology is not the answer to education's problems.

"I might be in the wrong room to say this, but I think technology for technology's sake is a complete waste,” O’Brien said. And the audience gave her a raucous and support response.

Soledad went on to say that she views technology as a tool, a means to an end rather than an end itself.

In the tool category, she invited 10 ISTE attendees to the stage to try out Google Cardboard, a bare-bones virtual-reality experience, using paper-based VR goggles and smartphones. Using the headsets, O'Brien took the attendees on a virtual test drive of a career in veterinary surgery. Technology like this, she said, can expand students' horizons by immersing them in different vocational opportunities.

SOURCE: www.edtechmagazine.com

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

Soledad O'Brien Tonight on Dream School

Soledad appears on an all new Dream School episode tonight at 10pm EST on Sundance Channel along with Dr. Mae Jemison and another round of celebrity teachers. See how their efforts have impacted the students as the series reaches its penultimate episode.

http://www.sundancechannel.com/series/dream-school/

Soledad Teaches on Sundance Channel's 'Dream School'

Soledad O'Brien will appear on tonight's installment of Dream School on the Sundance Channel at10pm.  It's about a class of high school dropouts inspired by a celebrity faculty and it is part of the new offerings from her Starfish Media Group production company.

On the show, the faculty is famous and the kids are dropouts. Will they succeed and change the course of these kids' lives? Or will they get schooled by a group of students who are unimpressed and unwilling to follow even basic school rules? Executive produced by Jamie Oliver and Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson and with celebrity teachers including Soledad O’Brien, Suze Orman, Oliver Stone, Swizz Beatz, Jeff Corwin, David Arquette, Jesse Jackson and more. Tonightis the second episode and features Jeff Corwin, Soledad O’Brien, David Arquette and Doriana Sanchez

I love the idea of being able to make [school] seem relevant to a bunch of 16-year-olds who have lost faith in the education system. I'm focused on it in a lot of the work that I do, the documentaries that I do and the foundation that I run. I fully get that young people need to have a good education in order to create the life they want. My job was to explain to them the things I like about what I do — there are interesting gigs on the other side of education.

This is not so far from the work she does with her Soledad O'Brien and Brad Raymond Starfish Foundation that works with girls who really want to go to college but have no way to do so. So far, they have sent 25 girls to college and one off to law school.

This semester, Soledad has returned to her alma mater as a visiting fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

TONIGHT: Soledad O'Brien's "Great Expectations: A Black in America Special"

Soledad O'Brien's "Great Expectations: A Black in America Special" examines the education of black boys.

It premieres tonight (Aug. 30) at10pm ET/PT on CNN.


Watch a CNN preview trailer

Black in America: Great Expectations Airs August 30

Soledad O'Brien's Great Expectations: A Black in America Special examines the education of black boys. It premieres at10pm ET/PT on August30, 2013 on CNN.

Watch a preview trailer at http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/08/14/bia-6-trailer.cnn.html

Soledad O'Brien to be a visiting fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Education

The Harvard Graduate School of Education announced that Soledad O’Brien ’88-’00 will be a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the school for the 2013-2014 academic year.

“It is an honor to join the esteemed scholars of the Harvard Graduate School of Education community next year,” O’Brien said in a press release.

Soledad attended Harvard but took time off during her senior year in 1988 to work in broadcasting. She returned to complete her bachelor's degree in 2000.

Administrators at the Ed School said that O’Brien will bring valuable experience and perspective from her efforts to expand educational opportunities. Along with her husband, the Soledad O’Brien and Brad Raymond Foundation encourages young women to work toward a college education through mentoring, financial support, and advising.

O’Brien also serves as the chair of the board of directors of The After-School Corporation, a non-profit which seeks to expand educational opportunities for urban students.

While the specific ways Soledad will be involved at the Ed School are still unclear, O’Brien is excited to interact with undergraduate as well as graduate students at the School of Education.

Soledad O’Brien & Brad Raymond Foundation

The stated goal of the Soledad O’Brien & Brad Raymond Foundation is to provide young women with a bridge between obstacles and opportunity, giving them the experiences, education and resources to overcome unexpected barriers to success. 

During Soledad's career as a reporter and special correspondent for CNN, she mentored hundreds of girls in journalism, believing in the importance of passing on her own knowledge and teaching others that they too can succeed. 

"This foundation is a natural evolution of that", says her husband, Brad Raymond. Soledad's best friend, Kim Bondy, who is on the board of the Soledad O'Brien and Brad Raymond Foundation, called Soledad several years ago and told her there was a girl named Alexia, in New Orleans, who needed a scholarship. "Kids in New Orleans had a lot of needs, and they just needed opportunities, and needed chances, and so we said yes," said Soledad. Soledad and Brad immediately decided they would help Alexia. This initial scholarship has grown into over 10 scholarships for young girls across the United States to complete their educational pursuits.

Watch a video on how the Foundation began.

http://obrienraymondfoundation.com/

Soledad O'Brien's Harvard Years

Soledad O'Brien grew up in a family that valued education. Her father was a professor of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University and her mother taught Spanish and French in the Smithtown high schools. Her father had a very immigrant mentality: No matter what happens, no one can take away your education.

Like her older siblings, she got into Harvard. But she left Harvard where she took pre-med courses while majoring in English during her senior year to take a production assistant job at WBZ-TV in Boston.

She rose quickly and soon headed to NBC News in New York, then station KRON in San Francisco, and then back to New York to co-anchor NBC’s Weekend Today. She moved to CNN in 2003.

Were her educator parents disappointed in her decision to leave college?

"I think that they really got it. My parents were not ambitious for us to go to Harvard, as many parents are. My parents were ambitious for us to do as well as we possibly could in school, and to get an education and to do everything well. And I went right from school to working, so it wasn’t like I was sitting on the couch trying to decide what I was going to do with my life. I think that would have sent my parents into a tailspin. I really immediately liked my job and I think it helped them that I had not a moment of regret."

And when the time was right, she returned to Harvard. In 2000, when she was pregnant, she returned and finished college very quickly.

"I didn’t have much to finish. And it was funny, once you’re in the workforce, you’re a much better student. You’re very organized. You’re not hanging out with people or going to keg parties. You’re on Amtrak, schlepping back and forth. And in those four hours, you’re reading books and writing papers. I was pregnant, so I was ragingly sick. That part was miserable. But I knew that if I didn’t do it, I would never do it.

My husband used to joke that he was dating a coed. But no: I didn’t wear makeup and I wore sweats like everybody else. I remember, that year I was named one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people. A professor said to me, 'Hey, I saw you in People magazine.' I said, "Hey, you read People magazine?"

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien visits Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy

Soledad with seventh grade students

CNN anchor, special correspondent and author, Soledad O'Brien, visited with students at the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy recently after giving the keynote address at the 2011 Odyssey Luncheon and Awards honoring local women and girls for accomplishments in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

O'Brien told the students she never took classes in journalism and started out focusing on pre-medical science, thinking she was going to be a doctor, while attending Harvard University.

Eventually deciding to focus her career on journalism, O'Brien found her first job combining the two backgrounds working with a medical reporter in television.

O'Brien spent time Tuesday afternoon dropping in to several classes throughout the school, stopping for longer question and answer visits with 6th, 9th and 10th grade classrooms.

The school's goal is to provide girls and young women in grades 6 to 10 with a rigorous college preparatory education focused on math, science, and technology in a supportive environment.The leadership academy is Tennessee's first and only all-girls, public charter school.

"Every day there are opportunities to do great things or to do miserable things. Do you want to be the person that does kind things today? You have to use your voice. That is leadership. Interviewing is a great skill no matter what you decide to do. You should ask people about their experiences so you can learn. Find people who inspire you, steal a little nugget of what they do, then move on."

O'Brien was in Chattanooga to present the 2011 Supernova Award at the Odyssey Luncheon to Dr. Cecelia Wigal, assistant dean in the college of engineering and computer science and professor of engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The inspiration for the Supernova award came from the Young Women's Leadership Academy Foundation work as the founding sponsor of the leadership academy, according to a press release. The Supernova recognizes the exceptional achievements of women working in the STEM career fields in Hamilton County.


CNN’s Soledad O’Brien visits Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy | Nooga.com

Soledad's Column in Latina Magazine

CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien has joined Latina magazine as a contributing editor with a quarterly magazine column highlighting the social and cultural issues affecting Latinos.

Her new column, Beyond the Numbers, debuts in the June-July 2011 issue.

Her first column explores education in the United States and profiles Maria Castro, a brilliant young Latina student who is smart, talented and ambitious - but still finds the educational system is failing her.

“To get into a good university,” she tells me earnestly, “I have to have taken—at a minimum—calculus.” Maria’s sights are set very high. Her first choice college is Stanford. “She’s an exemplary student. I am very proud,” her mother tells me in Spanish as I sit on the Castro front porch.

Although Latino students make up one-fifth of the school-age population in America and will be 30 percent of the national adult population by 2050, 2011only half of Maria’s Latino peers graduate on time. At her school, half of the students don’t pass Arizona’s proficiency exams, which means they don’t meet the bar for basic knowledge in math, reading and science."

Soledad, herself a Harvard graduate, most recently completed the CNN documentary Don’t Fail Me: Education in America which first aired May 15.

O'Brien at Newark Peace Education Summit

Soledad O'Brien spoke and hosted a panel at last week's Newark Peace Education Summit in New Jersey. The Summit was a three-day conference focusing on peacemaking practices from around the world. The conference was structured as a comprehensive, exploration of the many aspects of peacemaking, beginning with the practices of finding peace within the self, then subsequently radiating outward to peace within the home, peace through education, peace in the community, the world and the planet.

Large-scale panel discussions broke into practical workshops for further exploration of the various topics discussed.

In an interview on beliefnet.com, Soledad said:

I was thrilled to be asked. Anything with the Dalai Lama attending and someone like Mayor Corey Booker – sort of a nice group of people to be asked to participate with. The connection is our new documentary, Don't Fail Me, which takes a look at the crisis of education in America. 

Her own educational background has had a huge impact on her life's work. Her mother and father were both teachers who valued education. Soledad and her siblings attended Harvard.

I went to high school and then on to college, but a lot of my job is about being educated. It’s about reading, learning and discovering new things. The only way to get new experiences and to grow is to be educated by exposure. It’s so crucial. The more you can be exposed and the more you can be educated, the more you see opportunity in your life and the more you see chances to do something else and different versions of what an end outcome can be. All those things lead to more peaceful solutions. People who are desperate and hopeless look at violence as the way out, and I think anybody who sees opportunity doesn’t.

Most of Soledad's work for CNN the past few years has been in "educational" documentaries. She says that though the Black in America on CNN touched a lot of people, she realized that " We had just scratched the surface. There were dozens and dozens of great stories to tell. We discovered we should be doing this all the time."

CNN's  "In America" series has continued and will be looking at women who were rescue workers in 9/11, miners in West Virginia, Latinos and profiles of other groups.

Speakers at the Newark Summit included Nobel Peace Laureates, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate, Jody Williams, the American anti-landmine activist, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Martin Luther King III, Robert Thurman, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Goldie Hawn, Soledad O’Brien, Ed Norton, Donna Karan, Van Jones, Jeffrey Sachs, Majora Carter, the Kogui Shaman of Columbia, South America, Somaly Mam, Cameron Sinclair, Russell Simmons and may more distinguished peace advocates from a wide cross section of cultures, disciplines and perspectives.

The event was held at the NJPAC (New Jersey Performing Arts Center) in Newark, New Jersey, May 13-15, 2011.

CNN Student News and Videos

CNN Student News is a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program for middle and high school students produced by the journalists and educators at CNN. This award-winning show and its companion Web site at cnn.com/studentnews are available free of charge throughout the school year.

Teachers and parents can record the program on HLN from 4:00-4:10 a.m. ET Monday through Friday. You can also see it as a streamed video on our Web site (CNNStudentNews.com), or download it as a free podcast. The program is free and accessible to anyone who wants to watch; there are no subscription charges or contracts to complete.

Online there are also teacher materials presented free of charge, including Daily Transcripts for each show, Daily Discussion questions, the Media Literacy Question of the Day, in-depth Learning Activities, downloadable Maps and additional support materials to help students understand the news.

In addition, the educators at CNN offer Discussion Guides for CNN documentaries and initiatives, including Soledad O'Brien's Black in America and Latino in America.

How can I use this show and its materials in my classroom?

A "Media Literacy Question of the Day" is designed to help students examine media messages and their delivery and is a good discussion starter either before or after watching the show.
The Daily Education Alert offers information on the major stories for that day. You can sign up for this email on our home page. You can also check the Daily Transcript to see what stories are in the show. CNN recommends that teachers preview the 10-minute program, along with any video they choose to show in the classroom, before showing it to students.

CNN's "Don't Fail Me" On Education

CNN will have a number of education pieces (click here for one) that will air as a lead-up to Soledad O'Brien's Education In America documentary called "Don't Fail Me" which will air on May 15.