Guest Lectures

Fall 2022

2022 Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series Presents Sawyer Rose

Carrying Stones: Women’s Work Visualized
Sawyer Rose, FRSA, MRSS

Thursday, September 22, 2022 — 7:00pm
Carolina Union Auditorium
209 South Road, Chapel Hill, NC
Free and Open to the Public

Sawyer Rose, FRSA, MRSS, is a sculptor and installation and social practice artist. Throughout her career, Rose has used her artwork to shine a spotlight on contemporary social and ecological issues. Her work on The Carrying Stones Project has been featured by The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and Bust Magazine.

The Carrying Stones Project combines art and data visualization to jump-start public conversation about women’s work inequity.

Rose’s large-scale data sculptures, accompanied by photographic portraits of the women whose stories they tell, shine a light on the systemic and pervasive inequalities that working women face, including the physical, emotional, and practical effects of these disproportionate labor loads.

The artworks from The Carrying Stones Project profile woman-identifying people of different ages, races, sexual orientations, occupations, and socio-economic statuses — building a broad yet touchingly intimate picture of the labor that underpins the complex fabric of our society.

Three sculptures from The Carrying Stones Project will be on display at UNC Chapel Hill’s Davis Library from September 21 – November 14, 2022.

Sponsored by Honors Carolina • The Frank Porter Graham lecture series honors the late U.S. Senator and president of the University of North Carolina, who was a champion of freedom, democracy, and the disadvantaged. The lecture is made possible by the gift of Taylor McMillan ‘60, who established the Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series.

Spring 2022

2022 Honors Carolina Student Association Women’s Leadership Forum: Step up – Finding the Courage to Lead

Friday, March 4
Zoom panel

The Honors Carolina Student Association Women’s Leadership Forum is an annual event inviting students, alumni, faculty, and staff to discuss how to step into leadership roles with confidence and bravery. A diverse panel — with backgrounds in entrepreneurship, academia, healthcare, and policy — will offer perspective on how they have found the courage to excel within their professions and overcome the fear of failure.

Join us for a moderated panel discussion titled “Step Up: Finding the Courage to Lead” with Dr. Gabriela Valdivia, Assistant Dean for Honors Carolina and Professor of Geography.

Panelists include:
Hannah Elly ’14, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer for Nugget
Imani Augustus ’15, Director, Entrepreneurial Equity at Third Way
Danielle Squires, Head of Diverse Segments – Corporate & Investment Baking at Wells Fargo
Holly Dockery ’18, medical student at UNC Hospitals

Sponsored by Honors Carolina.

Fall 2020

2020 Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series Presents Dr. Raj Panjabi

No Condition is Permanent
Dr. Raj Panjabi, CEO of Last Mile Health

Wednesday, October 21 — 4:00pm
Webinar

Dr. Raj Panjabi is CEO, Last Mile Health; Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Last Mile Health saves lives in the world’s most remote communities by partnering with governments to design, scale, and advocate for national networks of community health professionals. Dr. Panjabi was named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World and one of the 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare for his work on building community health systems and responding to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. He is a Schwab Social Entrepreneur with the World Economic Forum and also a recipient of the TED Prize and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Dr. Panjabi earned his undergraduate degree from UNC Chapel Hill, is a graduate of the UNC School of Medicine, and received a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Sponsored by Honors Carolina • The Frank Porter Graham lecture series honors the late U.S. Senator and president of the University of North Carolina, who was a champion of freedom, democracy, and the disadvantaged. The lecture is made possible by the gift of Taylor McMillan ’60, who established the Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series. The 2020 Frank Porter Graham lecture is also supported by the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Global.

2020 Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture Series Presents Kevin M. Kruse

The Making and Unmaking of Politics in Contemporary America
Kevin M. Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University

Wednesday, September 30 — 5:30pm
Webinar

Professor Kruse ’94 specializes in the political, social, and urban/suburban history of twentieth-century America, with a particular interest in conflicts over race, rights and religion and the making of modern conservatism. He is the author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005), One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (2015), and, with Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974 (2019). He has been honored recently as a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians, a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, and an elected member of the Society of American Historians.

Sponsored by Honors Carolina • The Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture was established by alumni James and Jonathan Gold to honor the memory of their father, Hillard Gold, a member of the UNC Class of 1939.

Spring 2019

2019 Frank Porter Graham Lecture with Mary Mazzio

I Am Jane Doe
Mary Mazzio, Award-Winning Documentary Film Director

Wednesday, January 30 — 7:00pm
Fedex Global Education Center, Nelson Mandela Auditorium
UNC-Chapel Hill

Mary Mazzio, an award-winning documentary film director, Olympic athlete, and former law firm partner, is Founder and CEO of 50 Eggs, Inc., an independent film production company dedicated to making socially impactful films. Mary wrote, directed and produced the highly-acclaimed films, Underwater Dreams, TEN9EIGHT, The Apple Pushers, A Hero for Daisy, Contrarian, Apple Pie, and Lemonade Stories. Her newest documentary film, I AM JANE DOE, narrated by Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain, chronicles the battle that several mothers across the country are waging on behalf of their middle school daughters who were trafficked for commercial sex on Backpage.com. The film has catalyzed (on a bipartisan basis) legislation signed by the President in 2018, a federal criminal probe of Backpage executives, and several new lawsuits.

The 2019 talk is sponsored by Honors Carolina, The Kappa Omicron Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Carolina Parents Council, and Orange County Rape Crisis Center • The Frank Porter Graham lecture series honors the late U.S. Senator and president of the University of North Carolina, who was a champion of freedom, democracy, and the disadvantaged. The lecture is made possible by the gift of Taylor McMillan ’60, who established the Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series.

Spring 2018

2018 Morehead-Cain Alumni Visiting Distinguished Honors Professor

Are We Alone in the Universe?: A Lecture Series with John Lattanzio

March 21: Life On Earth — Could It Happen Elsewhere?
March 28: How to Make Aliens
April 4: Talking with Aliens

All lectures from 7:00 – 8:00pm
Murphey Hall, Room 116
UNC-Chapel Hill

Free and Open to the Public

John Lattanzio is an astrophysicist who works on understanding stars and how they make the elements that comprise our world. He serves as President of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission on Stellar Evolution and is a professor in the Monash Centre for Astrophysics at Monash University in Australia. Previously, Lattanzio held positions in Canada and France, at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, and at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

The lecture series is hosted by Honors Carolina in the College of Arts and Sciences in partnership with the Morehead-Cain Scholars Program and the UNC Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Click to view quantitative lecture notes:
Life On Earth — Could It Happen Elsewhere?
How to Make Aliens
Talking with Aliens

2018 Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture Series Presents Toshi Reagon

I Don’t Know Where I’m Going but I’ll Get There Right on Time

Monday, March 26 — 6:00pm
CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio
123 W. Franklin St., Building C, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Free and Open to the Public

Toshi Reagon is a versatile singer, composer, musician, curator and producer with a profound ear for sonic Americana — from folk to funk, from blues to rock. Among many accolades, Reagon is a National Women’s History Month Honoree, 2010 recipient of OutMusic’s Heritage Award, 2015 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, and the first Carolina Performing Arts Mellon Foundation DisTIL fellow. Join us for an evening of talk and performance inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. The talk is hosted by Honors Carolina in the College of Arts and Sciences in partnership with Carolina Performing Arts.

The Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture was established by alumni James and Jonathan Gold to honor the memory of their father, Hillard Gold, a member of the UNC Class of 1939.

2018 Frank Porter Graham Lecture with Elizabeth G. Taylor

Healthcare’s Seven Dirty Words
Elizabeth G. Taylor, Executive Director of the National Health Law Program (NHeLP)

Tuesday, February 13 — 7:00pm
Fedex Global Education Center, Nelson Mandela Auditorium
UNC-Chapel Hill

Elizabeth G. Taylor is executive director of the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), a nationally recognized legal nonprofit dedicated to protecting and advancing the health rights of low income and underserved individuals. Elizabeth has spent her career advancing justice both in the courtroom and the board room. She joined NHeLP from the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served for three years as Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General during the first and second terms of the Obama Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, Yale Divinity School, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Click to view the lecture transcript.

Spring 2017

2017 Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture Series Presents Vanessa Wittman

Preparing to be Uncomfortable: A Conversation with Vanessa Wittman

Wednesday, April 19 — 6:00pm
McColl Building, Koury Auditorium
UNC-Chapel Hill

Vanessa Wittman, a top financial executive with strong public and private company experience, most recently served as Chief Financial Officer of Dropbox Inc. She went to Dropbox in early 2015 from Motorola Mobility, a Google company, where she served as Senior Vice President and CFO. Prior to Google, she was CFO and Executive Vice President at Marsh & McLennan Companies, and helped resolve the Adelphia Communications bankruptcy as its EVP and CFO. Previous roles include corporate development at Microsoft, venture capital at Sterling Payot and investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Ms. Wittman currently serves on the Boards of Sirius XM and Ulta Beauty, acts as a special advisor to Facebook’s Building 8, and is as an independent member of FIFA’s Finance Committee. Ms. Wittman played Varsity Women’s Tennis at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with B.S. in Business Administration in 1989. In 1993, she received an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where she was a Shermet Scholar. Ms. Wittman will share her thoughts on preparing to be uncomfortable during a discussion with James Leloudis, Professor of History, Associate Dean for Honors Carolina, and Director for the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture was established by alumni James and Jonathan Gold to honor the memory of their father, Hillard Gold, a member of the UNC Class of 1939.

2017 Frank Porter Graham Lecture with Christopher Laurent

Christopher Laurent, VisionFund International

Wednesday, February 1 — 7:00 pm
FedEx Global Education Center, Nelson Mandela Auditorium
UNC-Chapel Hill

Christopher Laurent is the Chief Financial Officer of VisionFund International, the microfinance division of World Vision International, a global humanitarian aid organization. Based in London, he is responsible for a 32-country microfinance network that reaches 1.5 million clients — three-quarters of whom are women — and impacts the lives of 4.4 million children. He earned his Master of Accounting and B.S. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Frank Porter Graham Lecture honors the late U.S. Senator and president of the University of North Carolina, who was a champion of freedom, democracy, and the disadvantaged. The lecture is made possible by the gift of Taylor McMillan ’60, who established the Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series.

Honors Carolina sponsors several notable guest lectures each year, including the Frank Porter Graham Lecture, the Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture, and the Morehead-Cain Visiting Distinguished Professor Lecture.

Past speakers have included:

Frank Bruni, New York Times OpEd columnist and best-selling author
Ping Fu, co-founder of the 3D software company Geomagic and a member of President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Robbie Bach, a former Microsoft executive who led development of the Xbox
David Simon, creator of The Wire on HBO
Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity
Robert Gibbs, former White House Press Secretary

Honors Carolina students have opportunities to meet with speakers for small-group discussions prior to the public lectures.

Check back for information regarding upcoming lectures.