2010-11 Speakers
Programs are held at 8:15 pm in Chrysler Hall, Norfolk.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE
Thursday, October 14, 2010 – 8:15 p.m.

Condoleezza Rice is a professor of political science at Stanford University and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

From January 2005 to 2009, she served as the 66th secretary of state of the United States. Before serving as America’s chief diplomat, she served as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from January 2001 to 2005.

Rice joined the Stanford University faculty as a professor of political science in 1981 and served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1991 to 1993 and returned to the Hoover Institution after serving as provost until 2001. As a professor, Rice won two of the highest teaching honors: the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

She has authored and coauthored several books, including Germany Unified and
Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era (1986), with Alexander Dallin and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).

Rice served as a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron, Charles Schwab and Transamerica corporations. She was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, Calif., and was vice president of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. She currently serves on the board of the Boys and Girls Club of America.

Rice has been involved in a number of humanitarian pursuits, most notably with
PEPFAR (The President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) and in creating and serving on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Both endeavors increased aid to developing countries and the world's poorest, most disadvantaged populations. PEPFAR was the largest commitment of funds from any single nation to combat a single disease at any time in history and the Millennium Challenge Corporation promotes sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction.

She currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rice earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master’s from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

JIM WEBB
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 – 8:15 p.m.

Jim Webb presently serves as the senior Senator from Virginia. Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, receiving the Superintendent's Commendation for outstanding leadership contributions while a midshipman, and subsequently chose a commission in the Marine Corps.

First in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officers' Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, Webb served with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam, where as a rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous An Hoa Basin west of Danang he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. He later served as a platoon commander and as an instructor in tactics and weapons at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, and then as a member of the Secretary of the Navy's immediate staff, before leaving the Marine Corps in 1972.

Webb received his J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center in 1975. He served in the U.S. Congress as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981. In 1984, he was appointed the inaugural Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. In 1987, he became the first Naval Academy graduate in history to serve in the military and then become Secretary of the Navy.

In 2007, he made his first-ever run for political office and was elected to the United States Senate.

In addition to Webb's public service, he has enjoyed a long career as a writer. He has authored nine books, including Fields of Fire, widely recognized as the classic novel of the Vietnam War, Born Fighting, an ethnography that explores how the Scots Irish shaped America, and A Time to Fight, his latest best-selling non-fiction about reclaiming a fair and just America. He has worked extensively as a screenwriter and producer in Hollywood, taught literature at the Naval Academy as their first visiting writer, has traveled worldwide as a journalist, and earned an Emmy Award for his PBS coverage of the U.S. Marines in Beirut. In 2004, Webb went into Afghanistan as a journalist, embedded with the U.S. military.

Webb speaks Vietnamese and has done extensive pro bono work with the Vietnamese community dating from the late l970's. He is the proud father of children Amy, Jimmy, Sarah, Julia, Georgia, and step-daughter Emily. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Hong Le Webb.

DANIEL PINK
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 – 8:15 p.m.

Daniel H. Pink is the author of four provocative, bestselling books on the changing world of work. In his latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Pink shows us that the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Based on forty years of scientific data supporting his argument that people need intrinsic rather than external motivation, Pink’s work revolutionizes the way that we look at performance and motivation.

In A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Pink charts the rise of right-brain thinking in modern economies and describes the six abilities individuals and organizations must master in an outsourced, automated age. A Whole New Mind is a long-running New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller that has been translated into 20 languages.

Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need is the first American business book in the Japanese comic format known as manga. (In 2007, he won a Japan Society Media Fellowship that took him to Tokyo to study the manga industry.) Illustrated by award-winning artist Rob Ten Pas, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko was one of the bestselling graphic novels of 2008 and the only graphic novel ever to become a BusinessWeek bestseller. The book is now being translated into 14 languages.

His first book, Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself, was a
Washington Post bestseller that Publishers Weekly says “has become a cornerstone of employee-management relations.”

Pink's articles on business and technology appear in many publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Wired, where he is a contributing editor. He has provided analysis of business trends on CNN, CNBC, ABC, NPR and other networks in the U.S. and abroad. He also lectures to corporations, associations and universities around the world on economic transformation and the new workplace.

A free agent himself, Pink held his last real job in the White House, where he served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore. He also worked as an aide to U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich and in other positions in politics and government.

He received a BA, with honors, from Northwestern University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a JD from Yale Law School. To his lasting joy, he has never practiced law. Pink lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and their three children.

DAVE BARRY
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 – 8:15 p.m.

Dave Barry is a humor columnist. For 25 years he was a syndicated columnist whose work appeared in more than 500 newspapers in the United States and abroad. In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Barry has also written a total of 30 books. Two of his books were used as the basis for the CBS TV sitcom “Dave's World,” in which Harry Anderson played a much taller version of Dave.

Barry plays lead guitar in a literary rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose other members include Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson and Mitch Albom. They are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud. Barry has also made many TV appearances.

Barry lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife, Michelle, a sportswriter. He has a son,
Rob, and a daughter, Sophie, neither of whom, according to Barry, thinks he's funny.