Keynote Speakers

Tuesday, November 8

MICHAEL L. LOMAX, PH.D.

President and Chief Executive Officer
United Negro College Fund (UNCF)

Since 2004, Dr. Michael Lomax has been president and chief executive officer of UNCF, the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to minority and low-income students.  Before coming to UNCF, Lomax was president of UNCF-member institution Dillard University in New Orleans and a literature professor at UNCF-member institutions Morehouse and Spelman colleges.  He also served as chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta, the first African American elected to that post. 

Throughout his career, Lomax has worked to provide educational opportunities for under-represented Americans.  As president and CEO of UNCF, he oversees UNCF’s 400 scholarship programs, including the UNCF Gates Millennium Scholars Program, a 20-year, $1.6 billion program whose 14,000 low-income minority recipients have a 90 percent college graduation rate.  He also launched the UNCF Institute for Capacity Building, which helps UNCF’s 39 member historically black colleges and universities become stronger, more effective and more self-sustaining in such critical areas as fund-raising and building strong academic programs that prepare their students for careers in the global economy. 

A leading advocate for the importance of cradle-through-college education for all Americans, Lomax is co-chair of the Education Equality Project, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind and a member of the governing boards of Teach For America, the KIPP Foundation and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.  He is also a frequent contributor to the National Journal’s Education Experts blog and author of the “MorehouseMan” blog at Essence.com.  Lomax also serves on the boards of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African American History and Culture and the Studio Museum of Harlem.  He founded the National Black Arts Festival. 

SIMON T. BAILEY, MA, CSP

Founder
The Brilliance Institute, Inc.

Voted the best keynote speaker ever heard or used by the readers of Meetings and Conventions magazine, Simon T. Bailey is a compelling instigator who enriches people’s lives by encouraging them to create the destiny they want. He does this by illuminating and then magnifying the brilliance inherent in everyone through his positively contagious energy and enthusiasm.

His transformational insights, delivered with compassion and humor, connect viscerally with audiences; and have earned Simon recognition as one of the Top 25 Speakers Shaping the Speaking Profession.

Since leaving the Walt Disney Company and discovering his vocation eight years ago, Simon has worked with three hundred of the Fortune 1000 and written 6 books, one of which, Release Your Brilliance, was voted #17 of the top 100 books being read by corporate America. A repeat speaker at Microsoft, Dell, Society of Human Resource Management and the University of Phoenix, Simon is also the founder of Brilliance Institute, Inc., a consulting and educational think tank. Somehow he still finds time to write columns for Prestige Magazine, London UK and Destiny Magazine, South Africa. Simon’s seventh book will be published in 2011.

CALVIN MACKIE, Ph.D.

President and CEO, Channel ZerO Group, LLC Partner, Golden Leaf Energy, LLC
Chair, Louisiana Council on the Social Status of Black Boys and Men