NAFSA 2019 Annual Conference & Expo

Join peers and experts at the premier global professional learning and networking event for all international educators and organizations that support international education for the NAFSA 2019 Annual Conference & Expo, "Global Leadership, Learning, and Change."

Up Close with Isabel Wilkerson

Before her plenary address at NAFSA 2017, Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Warmth of Other Suns, sat down with NAFSA Board Member LaNitra Berger, PhD, to share her insights on migration and discuss why it is important for all people expand their horizons.

 

About Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson is an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author who continues to chronicle the impact of immigration on both America’s history and future.

Wilkerson spent 15 years writing The Warmth of Other Suns. The book explores “The Great Migration” of over six million African-Americans who moved from the southern United States during the 20th century in search of a better life. The Warmth of Other Suns received numerous awards including the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

As a journalist, Wilkerson served as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994. She is the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African-American to win for individual reporting in the history of American journalism. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2015 National Humanities Medal and she is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Wilkerson has lectured on narrative nonfiction at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has taught as a Professor of Journalism at Princeton, Emory, Northwestern, and Boston University. Wilkerson also frequently writes op-ed pieces for The New York Times on issues of social injustice and racial equality. She holds a BA in education from Howard University.