Speaker

Award-winning journalist Michele Norris is one of the most recognized voices in radio. She was host of NPR's longest-running national program, "All Things Considered," until 2012. Norris and "All Things Considered" received many of journalism's highest honors, including a Peabody Award, a duPont Award and an Overseas Press Club Award, and she was named the 2009 Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists, solidifying her as an in-demand speaker on current events and American culture.

In 2013, Norris was named host and special correspondent for NPR. While on sabbatical, Norris spent a time traveling the country and developing two successful initiatives: The Race Card Project and NPR's Backseat Book Club. Her new role will allow her to continue this work while producing in-depth segments for all NPR programs.

Before joining NPR, she served as a correspondent for ABC News, where she reported extensively on education, inner city issues, the national drug problem, and poverty. While at ABC, she earned an Emmy Award and Peabody Award for her contribution to the network's coverage of 9/11.

In her 2010 book, The Grace of Silence: A Memoir, Norris focuses on how America talks about race in the wake of the Obama presidential election, and explores her own family's racial legacy. Tom Brokaw says the memoir makes her personal story a universal one: "Michele Norris takes us on a riveting personal journey from north to south and back again through the tangled landscape of race in America -- and teaches anew about the pain and possibilities of our past and future." It was named one of the year's best books by The Christian Science Monitor.