Summit 2007
Keynote Speakers
Tavis Smiley
From his celebrated conversations with world figures, to his work to inspire the next generation of leaders, as a broadcaster, author, advocate and philanthropist, Tavis Smiley continues to be an outstanding voice for change. Smiley hosts the late night television talk show, "Tavis Smiley" on PBS, and his radio show "The Tavis Smiley Show" on public radio is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. Mr. Smiley is the first American ever to simultaneously host signature talk shows on both public television and public radio. Mr. Smiley, who started his career as an aide to the late Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, also offers political commentary twice weekly on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show." In addition, he has authored nine books. Mr. Smiley made publishing history when the book he edited, the Covenant with Black America reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. His latest is What I Know For Sure: My Story of Growing up in America (Doubleday). In 2004, Texas Southern University honored Mr. Smiley with the opening of The Tavis Smiley School of Communications and The Tavis Smiley Center for Professional Media Studies, making him the youngest African American to ever have a professional school and center named after him on a college or university campus. The mission of his nonprofit organization – Tavis Smiley Foundation – is to enlighten, encourage and empower Black youth. Mr. Smiley has received numerous awards and honorary doctorate degrees including one from his alma mater, Indiana University.
Douglas Reeves
Dr. Douglas Reeves is the Founder of the Center for Performance Assessment, an international organization dedicated to improving student achievement and educational equity. The author of more than twenty books, Dr. Reeves has been twice selected for the Harvard Distinguished Authors Series. He won the Parents’ Choice Award for his writing for children and parents and was recently named the 2006 Brock International Laureate, one of the most significant education awards in the world. His work appears in numerous national journals, magazines, and newspapers, including a monthly column in the world’s largest educational leadership journal, Educational Leadership, entitled "Leading to Change."
Nicolina Hernández
Nicolina Hernández is a first-generation Mexican-American from Del Rey, California, a small, rural, agricultural town outside of Fresno whose population waxes and wanes with the harvesting season. She has faced many extraordinary obstacles in her life yet managed to graduate High School and now attends one of the most selective colleges in the U.S. She continues to be involved with a program she founded in high school called the San Joaquin Valley University Project, which assists underrepresented students in the college application process. For the past year, Ms. Hernández has also served as a facilitator at the Chicano Youth Leadership Conferences, Inc., which helps motivate Mexican-American students to pursue higher education. Additionally, she has traveled and conducted research throughout Guatemala, and Chiapas, México, studying indigenous rights, culture and the political climate of these regions. Ms. Hernández is currently participating in The Border Studies Program through Earlham College where she is taking courses at both the University of El Paso, Texas and Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, México and performing field work as a paralegal intern at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc. in El Paso. She is also working on a series of bilingual books for immigrants in the U.S. regarding naturalization and citizenship education. Ms. Hernández is planning to attend graduate school to study immigration policy, public affairs and social work.
Mary Rascon-Corral
Mary Rascon-Corral is a Spanish foreign language specialist, teaching from level one to advanced placement at Sanger High School in Sanger, California. She is a former teacher of Nicolina Hernández. For the past several years she has been faculty advisor to Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) and MEChA’s University Project whose primary purpose to facilitate and increase Sanger High School student’s acceptance to four-year colleges and universities. Her remarkable success is due to her ability to incorporate techniques taught by Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) in conjunction with techniques from the world of finance. As a single mother of three children, she began college at the age of twenty-nine and graduated with honors from Fresno City College and CSU Fresno. She was also the first person in her family to graduate from college. Ms. Rascon-Corral is certainly an inspirational example of what can be achieved with tenacity and determination.
View Video: Nicolina Hernández & Mary Rascon-Corral
Edward James Olmos
Edward James Olmos is an actor, producer, director and community activist. Mr. Olmos has appeared in the theatre, in film and on television. In 1988, he received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jaime Escalante, the eccentric but dedicated math teacher, in Stand and Deliver, which he also produced. In April 1999, Olmos launched a nationwide multimedia project called Americanos: Latino Life in the United States, a celebration of Latino culture through photography, film, music, and the printed word. The project was co-sponsored by Time Warner Inc., and designed to inspire Latino pride, and to build bridges among Latinos and others. Americanos> included a five-year traveling photography exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution, a music CD featuring Latino artists, a documentary that aired on HBO, and a book co-edited by Mr. Olmos of essays, photos, and commentary by today's most notable figures in the Hispanic community. Mr. Olmos also participates in humanitarian efforts. He is a U.S. Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and a national spokesperson for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. He has worked with the Rockefeller Foundation and is the executive director of the Lives In Hazard Educational Project, a national gang prevention program funded by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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Glenn Eric Singleton
Glenn Eric Singleton is the founder and director of Pacific Educational Group, Inc. (PEG), a company that addresses systemic issues of educational inequity. PEG provides guidance to districts to help them meet the needs of underserved students of color. Through leadership training, coaching and consulting, Mr. Singleton and his associates heighten educators’ awareness of institutional racism and develop effective strategies for closing achievement gaps in their schools. Mr. Singleton began his career as an Ivy League admissions director but soon focused on helping families in the transitions from K-12 to higher education. Having matriculated through public schools in Maryland, Singleton earned his Master’s Degree at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Currently residing in San Francisco, Mr. Singleton teaches educational leadership at San Jose State University and has previously taught equity in education courses at University of California, Berkeley. Among other publications, Mr. Singleton is the author of Courageous Conversations about Race: a Strategy for Achieving Equity in Schools and received the 2003 National School Public Relations Association Eugene T. Carothers Human Relations Award for outstanding service in the fields of human rights and human relations.
View Video: Glenn Eric Singleton
Chester Finn
Chester Finn, Jr. is a scholar, educator and public servant who has been at the forefront of the national education debate for 35 years. Born and raised in Ohio, he received his doctorate from Harvard in education policy. He has served, inter alia, as a Professor of Education and Public Policy at Vanderbilt, Counsel to the U.S. ambassador to India, Legislative Director for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Research and Improvement. A senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, Dr. Finn is also President of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. He serves on the board of several other organizations concerned with primary-secondary schooling. The author of 14 books and more than 400 articles, his work has appeared in such publications as The Weekly Standard, Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Education Week, Harvard Business Review and Boston Globe. Dr. Finn is the recipient of awards from the Educational Press Association of America, Choice Magazine, the Education Writers Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colgate University.
Richard Rothstein
Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute, and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 1999 to 2002 he was the national education columnist of The New York Times. He is the author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (Teachers College Press 2004). He is also the author of The Way We Were?: Myths and Realities of America’s Student Achievement (1998). Other recent books include The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (co-authored in 2005); and All Else Equal: Are Public and Private Schools Different? (co-authored in 2003). Rothstein is a board member of the American Education Finance Association, and lectures widely about education policy issues.