Breakfast with celebrated author, Johnnetta Cole
Johnnetta B Cole, one of America’s Top 50 dynamic speakers, author of several publications and holder of 47 honorary degrees and 50 awards, is to be in Jamaica on Tuesday, July 2 for a Rotary Club of St Andrew seminar to benefit the Dialysis Unit at the Kingston Public Hospital.
The seminar, “A Morning with Dr Johnnetta Cole”, will be held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.
Dr Cole is the first African-American woman to have been appointed president of the Ivy League Spelman College in the United States. And at her inauguration in 1987, leading African-American actor Bill Cosby and wife Camille made a US$20-million donation to the college, which at that time was the largest single gift from individuals to any historically Black college or university.
That same year, Dr Cole was named to US President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team as cluster co-ordinator for education, labour and the arts and humanities.
In 1998 she was appointed by President Clinton to the 11-member Commission on the Celebration of Women in American History and one year later, was appointed to Governor Roy Barnes’ Education Reform Study Commission.
She is an active participant in numerous community and civic organisations, including the Carter Center, the TransAfrica Forum and the United Way of Metro Atlanta. She is a member of the National Council of Negro Women and serves on the Board of Directors of Coca-Cola Enterprises and Merck & Co Inc. She is also a trustee of Gallaudet University and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Her career as a college and university teacher and administrator has spanned 37 years. Today she is President Emerita of Spelman College and Professor Emerita of Emory University, from which she recently retired as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies and African-American Studies.
Her visit is courtesy of Air Jamaica, while complimentary accommodation is being provided by the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel for her four-day stay.
