Talking About Race Now: How to Build Success Without Forgetting the Struggle

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She has covered six presidential campaigns and also moderated the vice-presidential debates during the presidential elections in 2004 and 2008.

Ifill recently released the book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, with analysis the Washington Post called both "unargumentative" and "refreshingly skeptical."

Sherrilyn Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and nationally recognized as an advocate in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, judicial diversity and judicial decision-making. She teaches Civil Procedure, Legal Writing, and a seminar on Reparations, Reconciliation and Restorative Justice.

Ifill co-founded with Professor Michael Pinard the Reentry of Ex-Offenders Clinic. Prior to joining the faculty in 1993, Ifill served as an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. in New York, where she litigated voting rights cases, including Houston Lawyers’ Association v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court held that judicial elections are subject to the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

Ifill is author of the book On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century. She is an Open Society Institute board member.

Carla Hayden is executive director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Director
OSI-Baltimore

Diana L. Morris, JD, is the director of OSI-Baltimore. From 1991-1997, she served as the executive director of the Blaustein Philanthropic Group, a set of eight family foundations based in Baltimore that awards local, national and international grants.

Previously, Morris was a program officer at the Ford Foundation, first for refugee and migrant rights (1982-1987) and then for human rights and social justice for Eastern and Southern Africa (1987-1990). Morris began her career as an attorney-adviser for human rights and refugee matters in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State.

She holds an AB from Smith College and a JD from Boston University and is a member of the New York State Bar. Morris served as president of the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers from 1996-2000 and was a member of its board from 1994-2001. She is a member of the board of directors of the Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems and the chair of the board of the Safe and Sound Campaign. She was named to The Daily Record's Top 100 Women in Maryland in 1999 and 2001.  Morris is a recipient of a Special Recognition Award from the Maryland Legal Services Corporation and a Public Service Award from Boston University Law School.