About this Event
About The Talk:
This finale of this year's Annenberg Conversations event series will be a discussion between Joe Kennedy III, Marjorie Margolies, and David Eisenhower.
Kennedy, Margolies, and Eisenhower will discuss the Annenberg Conversations theme -- Public Service in a Time of Polarization -- with Kennedy sharing insights from the Groundwork Project, a nonprofit he founded to create sustainable and long-term progressive change through community organizing.
About The Speakers:
Joseph P. Kennedy III, Joseph Kennedy III has dedicated his career to social and economic justice, fighting for the basic needs of every American family and a political system that is inclusive, representative, and fair. The U.S. Representative for Massachusetts’s 4th congressional district from 2013-2021, he ran for office to tackle the systemic inequities – from health care and housing to climate and education – that have left countless American families locked out and left behind. A former Peace Corps member, legal aid volunteer, and assistant district attorney, he has worked tirelessly for the people most at risk, most marginalized, and most in need. Over his four terms in the House of Representatives, Kennedy emerged as a national figure in the Democratic Party’s most pivotal debates while demonstrating a unique talent for building diverse coalitions and the political will to get things done. Sitting on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, he built an impressive legislative record in a polarized Washington – spearheading bipartisan efforts to extend mental health coverage for children and pregnant women, support the domestic manufacturing industry, protect consumer voices online, make hearing aids more affordable, and defend access to legal assistance for struggling families.
Kennedy is currently the Managing Director at Citizens Energy, a non-profit energy company founded in 1979 by his father, Joseph P. Kennedy II. Under its innovative business model, Citizens builds major energy infrastructure projects while serving the needs of low-income and frontline communities. Throughout its history, Citizens has provided millions of citizens with free or discounted heating oil, run global and national energy ventures, developed the largest low-income community solar program in the nation and pays the heating bills of over 130 homeless shelters and food pantries across Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 2012, after serving as an Assistant District Attorney in Massachusetts. He is the founder of Groundwork Project, a non-profit dedicated to supporting local community organizing efforts in communities that do not receive the investment they deserve.
He serves on numerous non-profit boards, including the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate and is a special advisor to the Poor Peoples Campaign. He attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School and spent two years in the United States Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. He is married to Lauren Birchfield Kennedy and they have two young children, Eleanor and James and a rescue dog, Banjo.
David Eisenhower, J.D. , David Eisenhower teaches Communication and the Presidency, which examines the impact of the “Bully Pulpit” on recent and contemporary national politics. As the Director of the Institute for Public Service at the Annenberg School, he oversees ComPS (Communication and Public Service) undergraduate students' course work and internships. The Institute also sponsors events and symposia, and brings teaching fellows to the Annenberg School.
Additionally, every four years Eisenhower teaches the “Conventions” class, whereby a group of undergraduate students attend the Democratic and Republican national political conventions, getting a first-hand and close-up look at the selection of presidential candidates.
Marjorie Margolies, Marjorie Margolies is the founding President of Women’s Campaign International (WCI), a group that provides advocacy training for women throughout the world. During the past several years, WCI has conducted several successful trainings in the countries of Tanzania, Venezuela, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Namibia, Malawi, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Ethiopia among others. WCI’s work in these countries has yielded phenomenal successes, including doubling the number of women in parliaments and inspiring the creation of various women’s caucuses on local levels.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a CBS News Foundation Fellow at Columbia University, Margolies began her career as a television journalist at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia. Margolies was a journalist with NBC and its owned and operated stations both in New York and Washington, DC. She was a contributing correspondent to the Today Show, Sunday Today, A Closer Look, CNBC, and Real Life with Jane Pauley. Margolies’s reporting has won numerous awards including five Emmys.
In 1992, Margolies was the first woman ever elected to Congress from Pennsylvania in her own right. She was also the first Democrat since 1916 elected from Pennsylvania’s 13th district. Margolies was appointed to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, with subcommittee assignments on Oversight and Investigations and Telecommunications and Finance. In addition, she was a member of the Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Government Operations.
In 1995, Margolies served as the Director of the United States delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. Margolies is currently at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to ASC, she taught at the Fels Institute where she taught “Women Leaders in Emerging Democracies” based on her work with WCI and “Dealing with the Media,” a course which analyzes the ways in which politics and the media interact. In 2015, she was given the Outstanding Teacher Award by the students and faculty of Fels. Margolies has been a senior fellow at ASC as part of its Institute for Public Service. There she has co-taught two classes, one studying political conventions, another focusing on the first 100 days of new presidential administrations. In addition, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Margolies lectures at universities throughout the country. Margolies was a presidential appointee to the Vietnam Education Fund, which focused on scientific education and exchange between the United States and Vietnam. In addition, she was appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.
Margolies became the first unmarried U.S. citizen to adopt a foreign child. Lee Heh arrived from Korea in 1970 and was joined four years later by Holly from Vietnam. Margolies chronicled their experiences in the 1976 best-seller, They Came to Stay (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976), the first of five books she has authored. Her most recent book is entitled And How Are the Children?, which won two National Indie awards. The book chronicles her life as the mother of adopted, homegrown, step, and sponsored children.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Annenberg School for Communication, Walnut Street, Philadelphia, United States
USD 0.00