Keynote Speakers
Each year, The Global Engagement Summit hosts three keynote speakers to educate and engage with delegates and the Northwestern community. The individuals we recruit to speak out the summit have dedicated their lives and careers to creating a fairer, more equitable world through nonprofit work, social innovation, and giving back to their communities. Our keynote speaker events feature opportunities for attendees to engage in Q&As with speakers and even offer meet-and-greet sessions, making sure delegates and Northwestern community are able to meaningfully engage with these renowned individuals.
Our speakers come from a variety of backgrounds and endeavors, reflecting the Summit’s mission to appeal to all our delegate’s unique projects. With each speaker, our goal is for delegates and the Northwestern community to gain learn new, valuable advice to guide them as they continue with their own social innovation.
Previous speakers include:
Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate & Founder of Nadia’s Initiative
Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code
Ted Gonder, Co-Founder & CEO of Moneythink
Nadia Murad speaking and engaging with delegates at GES 2024
Dr. Garry Cooper, CEO and Co-founder of Rheaply—a climate technology company working to scale reuse and the circular economy by improving visibility and utilization of physical resources—speaking at GES 2025.
Speaker Highlight: Khary Lazarre-White
CO-FOUNDER, The Brotherhood Sister Sol
Born and raised in New York City, Khary Lazarre-White is a social entrepreneur, novelist, educator, activist and civil rights lawyer whose work centers on the intersection of race, class, gender, education, organizing and the law.
In 1995, at the age of 21, Khary co-founded The Brotherhood Sister Sol. He now serves as Executive Director of this nationally renowned, Harlem based, comprehensive social justice youth development and educational organization that works on issues of education, organizing and training the field, nationally and internationally, to advance justice. BroSis programs include rites of passage programming, arts and enrichment based after school care, counseling, summer camps, job training, college preparation and scholarship, employment opportunities, community organizing and environmental training, legal representation, and month long international study programs to Africa, the Caribbean and South America.
His awards include the Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network Use Your Life Award, as well as from institutions that include Ford Foundation, Black Girls Rock, Andrew Goodman Foundation, Union Square Awards, Brown University, African American Literature Awards, a National Recreation Foundation’s Robert W. Crawford Achievement Prize, and a Resident Fellowship Award to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.
Khary has extensive experience as a speaker across the country and has appeared widely on national media sites as well. He has written opinion pieces and essays for publications that include the Huffington Post, Nation Books, Essence Magazine, MSNBC, and New York University Press. Seven Stories Press published his novel, Passage, which is distributed by Penguin Random House. Reviewed widely, it was named among “Best New Fiction” by The Wall Street Journal.
Khary serves on the Board of Trustees for the Community Service Society; on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the CUNY School for Public Health; and is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Elba Hope Foundation.
Khary is a member of the Bar in the States of New Jersey and New York. Khary received his Bachelors in Arts in Africana Studies, with honors, from Brown University, and his Juris Doctorate from the Yale Law School where his focus was international human rights law and constitutional law.
Kharry Lazarre-White speaking at his GES 2025 fireside chat moderated by Haley Stoecker
Should you have any questions about being a GES keynote speaker, please reach out to our Content team at content@thegesnu.org.