SACRAMENTO SPEAKERS SERIES ANNOUNCES THAT PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON JOINS THE 2012-2013 SEASON

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SACRAMENTO SPEAKERS SERIES ANNOUNCES THAT PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON JOINS THE 2012-2013 SEASON

Sacramento, California, March 9, 2012. Sacramento Speakers Series announces an impressive list of political leaders, authors, scientists, and visionaries participating in the 8^th season of the series. The Sacramento Speakers Series is a community lecture series that provides an open forum for a free discussion of timely and important issues by nationally acclaimed speakers and patrons of the Series. Managing principal and attorney Mitchell Ostwald describes the Series as “an extraordinary community experience that gives our patrons an opportunity to hear about and question renowned and influential people from a wide variety of backgrounds on an even wider variety of topics.” The speakers are chosen on the basis of their career achievements, unique expertise in their particular field of endeavor, and ability to communicate their particular passion to the audience.

The series kicks off on Tuesday October 23^rd with Sanjay Gupta, MD awarding winning chief medical correspondent for CNN. His medical training and public health experience provides TV viewers with a profound insight to a wide range of topics including healthcare reform, fitness, military medicine and other areas.

President Bill Clinton, founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the 42^nd President of the United States, will come to Sacramento to deliver his speech “Embracing our Common Humanity”  on Tuesday, December 4^th. President Clinton was the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice – first in 1992 and then in 1996. Under his leadership, the country enjoyed the strongest economy in generations and the longest economic expansion in US history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs.

Thomas Friedman internationally renowned author, reporter, and New York Times columnist will be speaking Tuesday January 8th. Friedman is the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of five bestselling books, among them “From Beirut to Jerusalem,”  “The World Is Flat,” and “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.” While critics may take issue with his views, writings style, his penchant for excessive optimism, his support of the Iraq war and views on globalization, he is the writer much of the public looks to for straight talk about world events.

Michelle Rhee a leading advocate for school reform will be speaking Tuesday January 29th; Rhee founded The New Teacher Project in 1997, which has recruited 23,000 new teachers across the country. Under her leadership as Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, the worst performing school district in the country at the same time saw double-digit growth in state reading and math scores among seventh, eighth and tenth graders. Rhee most recently founded StudentsFirst, an organization aiming to raise $1 billion to reform education in the nation, and is now a member of the Sacramento community.

Dr. Louise Leakey paleontologist, conservationist, educator and National Geographic explorer-in-residence will be speaking Wednesday February 27th; it’s the third generation of the famous Leakey family to dig for humanity’s past in East Africa. Louise first set foot in the region at age six weeks. Since then, she has spent considerable time on many field expeditions, and today she co-directs the Koobi Fora Research Project with her mother, Dr. Meave Leakey.  Now an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Stony Brook in New York, Dr. Leakey is helping to develop a major centre for human origins research that will include field programs for students. Louise is a Ph.D. graduate of London University, where her research focused on the influence of climate change 3.5 to 1.5 million years ago.

Dr. Robert Ballard - Deep-sea explorer, famous for his historic discovery of the wreckage of the Titanic more than 12,000 feet below the surface of the North Atlantic, will speak on Tuesday April 2^nd 2013. A pioneer in the early use of deep-diving submarines, Ballard was part of the first manned expedition of the largest mountain range on Earth, the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Later, he led an expedition off the Galapagos Islands, during which he and his crew found new life forms, a discovery that has revolutionized understanding of the origin of life on the planet and increased the likelihood of discovering life elsewhere in the solar system.

Each of these extraordinary speakers will be seen at the Community Center Theater, in downtown Sacramento, except for President Bill Clinton, who will share his insights with us in the venerable Memorial Auditorium.

Tickets are available for the series online at sacramentospeakers.com or by phone 916.388.1100. BIG NAMES ARE COMING 2012-2013!

For further information, interviews, and/or high-resolution images, please contact: The Sacramento Speakers Series at (916) 388-1100