2020 Black New England Conference Keynote Speakers & Special Guests
(In order of appearance)
Sheryl Lee Ralph
Sheryl Lee Ralph is a multifaceted artist who continues to blaze trails in the entertainment industry. Whether she appears on TV, film, or the Broadway stage. Sheryl Lee Ralph also sparkles as a director, voice and screen actor, author, singer, philanthropist, community activist, wife, and mother.
She can be seen in the Freeform series Motherland: Fort Salem, performing as US President Kelly Wade and closing out the last season of Ray Donovan as Mickey’s love, Claudette. Ms. Ralph recently launched “DIVA Defined,” a podcast featuring powerful women making moves in their various career paths, and a new digital talk series, “DIVAS Simply Quarantined,” on Facebook LIVE.
Aside from her career pursuits, Sheryl is a fierce community activist and advocate. She is fierce voice in the activation of citizens to vote and has designed her own line of ‘VOTE’ and ‘POWER’ Activism Apparel at www.shopwithsheryllee.com. Ralph also produces the annual benefit concert, DIVAS Simply Singing! which raises awareness for HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening diseases, hunger, poverty, and the health disparities in communities of color exposed by COVID-19. This year will mark the 30th year of the event and 31 years of her foundation, The D.I.V.A. Foundation. The week-long events will be held virtually during the first week of December and will culminate with the 30th Annual DIVAS Simply Singing! Televised concert on KTLA 5 Los Angeles and on www.diva.foundation.
Sheryl Lee Ralph has received numerous community awards for her commitment to service. In February 2020, Sheryl Lee was one of seven creative legends honored for her contributions to the arts and entertainment in the City of Los Angeles. Ralph was inducted as an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. in July 2004 for her HIV/AIDS activism at the 47th National Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was also awarded the first Red Ribbon Award at the UN for creating “The Red Ribbon DIVA” T-Shirt for HIV/AIDS awareness.
Ralph was awarded Honorary Doctorates in Humane Letters for her HIV/AIDS activism from Houston Tillotson University and Tougaloo College. Sheryl resides in Los Angeles and Philadelphia with her husband, Senator Vincent Hughes.
Susan Taylor
Susan L. Taylor is founder & CEO of National CARES Mentoring Movement
and Editor- in- Chief Emerita of Essence Magazine and a best-selling author of four books, and editor of eight others,and is a fourth-generation entrepreneur, who grew up in Harlem working in her father’s clothing store. At 24, she founded her own cosmetics company, which led to the beauty editor’s position at Essence, the publication she would go on to shape into a world-renown brand with more than 8 million readers. It was that enterprising spirit wedded to a deep love for her community that led to the founding of the National CARES Mentoring Movement in 2005 as Essence CARES. With local affiliates in 58 cities, National CARES has recruited, trained and deployed more than 150,000 mentors to schools and youth-support and mentoring organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, as well as to its own culturally rooted, academic- and social-transformational initiatives. A community-mobilization movement, National CARES is the only organization dedicated to providing mentoring, healing and wellness services on a national scale for Black children.
Ms. Taylor is a recipient of more than a dozen honorary doctorates and hundreds of awards, including the Phoenix Award, which is the highest honor given by Congressional Black Caucus. A lifelong activist who has worked to ensure people across the globe, from South Africa to those who struggled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Susan Taylor says that securing our vulnerable children is her highest calling and the big business of our nation and Black America today.
Andrea Jenkins
Andrea Jenkins is an American policy aide, politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is known for being the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, serving since January 2018 on the Minneapolis City Council. Besides a Master of Fine Arts degree from Hamline University, Andrea also earned an Master of Science in community economic development from Southern New Hampshire University.
Ayanna Pressley
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley is an activist, a legislator, a survivor, and the first woman of color to be elected to Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Throughout her career as a public servant, Congresswoman Pressley has fought to ensure that those closest to the pain are closest to the power – driving and informing policymaking. Throughout her first term in Congress, Congresswoman Pressley has been a champion for justice: reproductive justice, justice for immigrants, consumer justice, justice for ageing Americans, justice for workers, justice for survivors of sexual violence, and justice for the formerly and currently incarcerated. Currently, Congresswoman Pressley serves on two powerful Congressional committees – the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Committee on Financial Services– both of which have remained focused on legislatively addressing issues of care, concern, and consequence to the American people.
