College & Theater Events

<p>Born into poverty and a culture that excluded girls from education, Dr. Tererai Trent shares her stunning journey from rural Zimbabwe to a global advocate for literacy that has helped transform education in her country and illuminated the pathway for women around the world to realize their dreams.</p>

Dascha Polanco is well-known for her groundbreaking roles in Hollywood as a leading young Latina actress. Polanco is recognized for her role as “Dayanara Diaz” on the hit Netflix original series, Orange is the New Black.

<p>Josh Radnor is a multifaceted artist, captivating audiences with his scene-stealing roles on screen and on stage, while also showcasing his talents as a writer, director and musician.</p><p>Radnor toplined NBC’s new series, <i>Rise</i>, inspired by Michael Sokolove’s novel <i>Drama High</i> and the famed theatre program at Harry S. Truman High School, the music-infused drama is about finding inspiration in unexpected places.

<p>Model, Actress, Author, Advocate and Activist Dominique Jackson is best known for her leading role of Elektra Abundance on the FX television series <i>Pose</i>.</p><p>From fleeing persecution as a transgender woman in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago to starring in television hits, Dominique Jackson has seen it all.

Franchesca “Chescaleigh” Ramsey is the host of MTV’s popular web series Decoded With Franchesca Ramsey.

Franchesca also co-hosts her podcast, Last Name Basis, with her husband Patrick Kondas. A writer and performer from Comedy Central's the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, Franchesca is in the process of developing a Comedy Central TV series titled Franchesca & Show, which hopes to shed light on a wide array of issues the impact that they have on the lives of different groups and individuals.

<p>Bakari Sellers recently released a <i>New York Times </i>Best Seller <i>My Vanishing Country: A Memoir</i>. The book has been described as part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis illustrating the lives of America’s forgotten black working-class men and women.</p><p>Bakari recently expanded his audience with the <i>Bakari Sellers Podcast</i>, a twice-a-week show that is part of The Ringer Podcast Network.

<p>Mike Massimino is a former NASA Astronaut, a <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author, a Columbia University engineering professor, and an advisor at The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. </p><p>A veteran of two space shuttle missions and four spacewalks, Mike was the first person to tweet from space, holds the team record for the most spacewalking time on a single space shuttle mission, and successfully completed the most complicated spacewalk ever attempted to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

<p>Born and raised in the Bronx, Rosa Alicia Clemente is an award-winning organizer, producer and journalist. A leading voice of her generation, Rosa is frequently sought out for her insight on Afro/Black-Latina/Latino/Latinx identity and liberation movements as well as police violence, colonialism in Puerto Rico, hip-hop feminism and more.</p><p> In 2008, Clemente made HERstory when she became the first Afro/Black-Latina to run for Vice-President of the United States on the Green Party ticket.

<p>Mark Sullivan tells the incredible, true-love-conquers-all tale of Pino Lella, the main character of his bestselling novel <i>Beneath a Scarlet Sky</i>, soon to be a major television mini-series.</p><p>Mark is the acclaimed author of eighteen novels, including the #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling "Private” series, which he writes with James Patterson.

<p>As the oldest son of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III serves as an ambassador of his parent’s legacy of nonviolent social change.</p>