Conference

Race, Gender, and the Future of Leadership in America

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Abstract

Michele Norris, an award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience, hosts NPR’s newsmagazine All Things Considered, public radio’s longest-running national program, with Robert Siegel and Melissa Block. Before coming to NPR, Norris was a correspondent for ABC News. As a contributing correspondent for the “Closer Look” segments on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Norris reported extensively on education, inner city issues, the nation’s drug problem, and poverty. Norris has also reported for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. Her Washington Post series about a six-year-old who lived in a crack house was reprinted in the book Ourselves Among Others, along with essays by Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Annie Dillard, and Gabriel García Márquez. A four-time Pulitzer Prize entrant, Norris has received numerous awards for her work, including the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2006 Salute to Excellence Award, for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina; the University of Minnesota’s Outstanding Achievement Award; and the 1990 Livingston Award. In 2007, she was honored with Ebony Magazine’s eighth Annual Outstanding Women in Marketing and Communications Award. Norris also earned both an Emmy Award and Peabody Award for her contribution to ABC News’ coverage of 9/11. Norris attended the University of Wisconsin, where she majored in electrical engineering, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she studied journalism.