Education / Lecture Platform


Week Three— July 8–14, 2012

Inspire. Commit. Act.

Each summer, Chautauqua becomes a forum for big ideas and conversation, inspiring audience members to commit those ideas to action when they return to their home communities. This week will examine that process on a larger scale. What stimulates people, and moves them from ideas to action? What defines accomplishment? We’ll hear from scholars who study motivation and inspiration to those who invest to enable ideas, and from people who have made amazing things happen. How do they do it? How can we?


Confirmed Lecturers

Monday 7/9
Tuesday 7/10
Wednesday 7/11
Thursday 7/12
Friday 7/13

Michelle Nunn

Jon Gertner

Jeff Nesbit

Josh Nesbit

H. Melvin Ming

Freeman A. Hrabowski

Monday, July 9

Michelle Nunn

CEO, Points of Light Institute

Michelle Nunn is the CEO of Points of Light Institute. She co-founded HandsOn Atlanta in 1989, and what began as a 12-person grassroots startup has grown into the largest volunteer network in the country. At Points of Light Institute, Nunn leads the organization and its business units — HandsOn Network, generationOn and AmeriCorps Alums — in engaging millions of volunteers each year to use their time, talent, voice and money to solve the pressing issues of our time.

A leader in the service and nonprofit sector for two decades, Nunn has served on the President’s Council on Service and Civic Engagement and as a co-convener of the Service Nation Coalition and Re-Imagining Service. Her many honors include the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award and being named for four consecutive years to The NonProfit Times “Power and Influence Top 50,” an annual list of change agents from the nonprofit sector.

Nunn is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she majored in history and minored in religion, and has studied at Oxford University and in India. She was a Kellogg National Fellow and has a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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Tuesday, July 10

Jon Gertner

author, The Idea Factory

Jon Gertner is an editor and writer whose stories on business, science, and society have appeared in a host of national magazines and have been widely anthologized. Between 2004 and 2011, Gertner worked as a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He is currently an editor at Fast Company magazine, where he writes and edits feature stories about innovation and technology.

Gertner’s new book from Penguin Press — The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation — arose from his interest in exploring the origins of modern communications technologies as well as Bell Labs' extraordinary influence on America's culture of innovation. His book was hailed by Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times as both “riveting” and “thrilling.” In The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Walter Isaacson noted: “The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation? Why does it happen, and how might we nurture it?”

A graduate of Cornell University, Gertner lives in Maplewood, N.J., with his wife and two children.

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Wednesday, July 11

Jeff Nesbit

executive director, Climate Nexus

Jeff Nesbit is the executive director of Climate Nexus, a new, national initiative based in New York that focuses on climate and clean energy communications. The initiative — supported by several foundations as a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors — works closely with an established network of science, technology, public health, clean energy and environmental organizations on climate and clean energy issues and solutions.

Previously, Nesbit was the director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation, where he formed a number of national media partnerships and the Science360 daily news service. Nesbit managed a successful strategic public affairs consulting business for more than a decade. His clients and projects included dozens of national nonprofit, trade associations, media companies, Fortune 500 companies, major health foundations, public relations agencies and advocacy organizations.

Nesbit was also a senior communications official at the Food and Drug Administration — where he helped convince the agency’s leadership to regulate the tobacco industry — the U.S. Department of Labor, the White House and in Congress. In addition, he was also a national journalist with Knight-Ridder Newspapers and others. He is the author of 19 novels. His latest, Peace, is a fictional account of what might happen if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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Wednesday, July 11

Josh Nesbit

chief executive director, Medic Mobile

Josh Nesbit is the chief executive officer of Medic Mobile, a nonprofit company that uses low-cost mobile technology and existing open-source platforms to create connected, coordinated health systems in the developing world. He also founded Hope Phones, a recycling campaign designed to engage millions of Americans in global health efforts through donations of unused cell phones.

Nesbit and his team have worked in 15 countries in East and West Africa, Asia and Latin America, using mobile technologies to support a wide range of programs — from infectious disease surveillance in rural Malawi to emergency response after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. He is an Ashoka Fellow, PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, Rainer Arnhold Fellow, Strauss Scholar, and Haas Public Service Fellow.

Selected by Devex as one of 40 Under 40 Leaders in International Development, Nesbit received the Truman Award for Innovation from the Society for International Development, was recently named by Forbes as one of the world’s 30 top social entrepreneurs and has had his writing published at CNN.com. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology.

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Thursday, July 12

H. Melvin Ming

president and CEO, Sesame Workshop

Appointed president and CEO of Sesame Workshop in October 2011, H. Melvin Ming leads the efforts around Sesame Street’s global presence as well as initiatives that address a wide range of issues for children and families including literacy, health and military deployment. Ming joined the Workshop in 1999 as chief financial officer and was named chief operating officer in 2002. In that capacity, he oversaw the content, product licensing, distribution, research, communications and business strategies of all of Sesame Workshop’s properties. He also managed organization’s human resources, facilities, information services, and technical operations.

Prior to joining the Workshop, Ming was the chief financial officer of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, chief operating officer at WQED Pittsburgh, and chief financial officer and chief administrative officer at Thirteen/WNET New York. Ming also served as vice president, finance and administration, at National Public Radio and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers (formerly Coopers and Lybrand) early in his career.

Ming serves on the boards of First Children’s Finance and Westwood One, Inc. A certified public accountant, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Temple University.

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Friday, July 13

Freeman A. Hrabowski III

president, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Freeman A. Hrabowski III is president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, ranked as the No. 1 “Up and Coming” university in the nation in 2009, 2010 and 2011 by U.S. News & World Report. Named among The Washington Post and Harvard Kennedy School’s seven “2011 Top American Leaders” and Time’s “10 Best College Presidents,” Hrabowski has received many honors for his leadership of UMBC, including the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence and the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Academic Leadership Award.

Hrabowski’s research and publications focus on science and math education, with emphasis on minority participation and performance. He co-founded, with philanthropist Robert Meyerhoff, UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program, now a national model for advancing minority students in pursuit of advanced degrees and research careers in science and engineering. He has also co-authored the books Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds.

A child-leader in the civil rights movement, Hrabowski was prominently featured in “Four Little Girls,” Spike Lee’s documentary on the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. He graduated from Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he received his master’s degree in mathematics and his doctorate in higher education administration and statistics at age 24.

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