High School Speakers

Since 2006, we have hosted the following speakers:

• Eric Utne, founder of The Utne Reader
• Benjamin Ajak, co-author of They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky:  The True Story of Three Lost Boys From Sudan
• Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York; Destiny Disrupted
• Reza Aslan, author of No god But God: the Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam; How to Stop A Cosmic War
• Melba Pattillo Beals, author of Warriors Don't Cry:  A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
• Mark Brecke, filmmaker, photographer, Darfur Darfur
• A Celebration of Courage: Women in Tanzania Program included Diane Raleigh, PhD., a clinical psychologist, Susan Rickert and Mary Ahlbach , who have built schools in Tanzania, and Gloria Upchurch, a documentary photographer and executive director of A Global Connection.
• Claire Cummings, author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds
• Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and author of The Pluto Files: the Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet
• Charles Emmerson,expert of geopolitics, author of The Future History of the Arctic
• Kathy Evans, poet, author of Imagination Comes to Breakfast
• Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger, editors of Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries From World War I to Iraq
• Tim Flannery, Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, and author of The Weather Makers
• Craig Holdrege, founder and director of The Nature Institute, author of Beyond Biotechnology
• Ed Kashi, photographer, Curse of the Black Gold: 50 years of Oil in the Niger Delta and Aging in America
• Paul Lewis, a psychotherapist who has worked with adolescents in our local community for 20 years
• Anchee Min, memoirist and novelist, author of Red Azalea, Katherine, Becoming Madame Mao, Wild Ginger, Empress Orchid and The Last Empress, and Pearl of China.
• Greg Mortenson, co-author of Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time
• Daniel Pink, author of Drive:  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us in conversation with Michael Krasny, host of KQED's Forum
• Robert Pinsky, poet and translator of The Inferno of Dante
• Michael Shellenberger, coauthor of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility
• Joseph Stiglitz, Noble Prize-winning economist and author of Making Globalization Work
• Rick Wartzman, author of Obscene in the Extreme: the Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath