At Virginia Tech, Dr. Zenobia L. Hikes provides leadership oversight for 15 university departments, including housing and dining programs, the Dean of Students office, career services, student health, and recreational sports. She is responsible for 2,000 employees and an annual budget of $83 million. Further, she collaborates with teams university-wide to create an invigorating college experience. Hikes also served as Vice President at Virginia Tech during the worse school shooting in U.S. history.

Previously, she was Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. At Spelman, she founded the acclaimed Women of Excellence Leadership Series, which prepares students to distinguish themselves competitively and live their lives with purpose. Prior to her appointment at Spelman, Hikes served in admissions and in the Office of the Vice President for Student Life at the University of Delaware. She also worked in the field of public relations in Okinawa, Japan.

Driven by her background in enrollment management and student affairs, Hikes has extensively researched and developed a successful race-specific recruitment and retention model for African-American students. Her research on Afro-centric student recruitment and retention, maximizing student success and first-generation college admissions has appeared in:

• – Instructing and Mentoring the African American College Student: Strategies for Success in Higher Education
• – ENCORE—Journal of the National Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts
• – Black Issues in Higher Education
• – The Admissions Strategist

Hikes has provided expert commentary to CNN, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, and national television and radio stations regarding the images of women in hip-hop music and the impact on society.

Geoffrey Canada is the acclaimed author of Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America, and the recent recipient of the prestigious McGraw Prize for Education. Canada also received the first Heinz Award in 1994 for his work as President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc. in New York City. He was chosen for his passionate concern for children and his selfless determination to make their lives safer and saner.

Canada enjoys a national reputation as both an advocate for and expert on issues concerning violence, children, and community redevelopment. In May 1994, he was the host of the national PBS special Jobs: A Way Out?, which explored the importance of employment opportunities for young people in keeping them from following a path of violence. He has also frequently appeared on This Morning, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Nightline, and many other national and local television programs.

Canada, who grew up in the South Bronx, has dedicated his life to helping secure educational and economic opportunities for children from a similar background. Prominent among his many efforts are the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Beacon Schools, Peacemakers Institute Program, and Community Pride Initiative. The Beacon Schools’ programs provide support 12 hours a day, 365 days a year to children and families in Central Harlem, and the Harlem Children’s Zone Project works with all the children and families in a 24-block area there. In 1983, Canada became the Program Director for Harlem Children’s Zone’s Truancy Prevention Program, and in 1990, he was named President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc. Before joining Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc., he served as Director of the Robert White School, a private day school for troubled inner city youth in Boston.

In 1983, he founded the Chang Moo Kwan Martial Arts School. As the school’s chief instructor, Canada (a 3rd Degree Black Belt) teaches the principles of Tae Kwon Do to community youth along with anti-violence and conflict resolution techniques. Today, the Chang Moo Kwan Martial Arts School is a nationally recognized model for violence prevention efforts. Canada is also the East Coast Regional Coordinator for the Black Community Crusade for Children, a nationwide effort that aims to make saving Black children the number one priority in the Black community. This initiative is being coordinated by Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund.

Geoffrey Canada has won numerous awards, including:

• – The Robin Hood Foundation’s Heroes of the Year Award
• – The Spirit of the City Award from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
• – Bowdoin College’s Common Good Award

Passionate about seeking more effective ways to lead inspired teams, Gary Heil helps organizations see things as they really are—not as they wish they were—to make change happen. For the last 3 decades, he has been an ardent student of the human side of organizations. Heil was a pioneer in the study of loyal customer relationships, and he remains a vocal and passionate advocate for finding better leadership techniques.

Heil is the co-author of:

• – Leadership and the Customer Revolution
• – One Size Fits One
• – Maslow on Management
• – Revisiting the Human Side of Enterprise
• – The Leader’s New Clothes
• – The Winning Coach

In addition, he is the co-founder of the Pitch It Forward Foundation and the Leadership Lessons from the Fast Lane webcast.

He has been a commentator on Australian and American radio and television and has served as an examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Heil presently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Gymboree and FrontRange Solutions corporations.

Heil has been a private consultant for retailers and other service sector companies on topics primarily related to customer loyalty and leadership development since 1987. His client list includes:

• – Disney
• – American Honda
• – Fidelity Investments
• – Intel
• – Williams-Sonoma
• – Target
• – BP
• – Patagonia
• – Hard Rock Cafe
• – General Electric
• – Harley Davidson
• – Lands End and many others

At age 35, John Wood left an executive career track at Microsoft Corporation to form Room to Read, a non-profit organization that “combines the heart of Mother Teresa with the scalability of Starbucks” to help over 1 million children across the developing world to break the cycle of poverty through the power of education.

Wood founded Room to Read out of deep concern that nearly 1 billion people lack basic literacy. “I was blessed with a solid education, which was a wonderful foundation for my future. As a result, I had a great career at a company that encourages people to dream big dreams. I started this non-profit as a way to give that same foundation and opportunity to children in the world’s poorest places.”

Since its start in 2000, Room to Read has sponsored the opening of more than 280 schools and 3,600 multi-lingual libraries across the developing world. The organization has distributed more than 2.8 million children’s books, and it supports more than 2,300 girls with long-term scholarships. Wood describes these results as the “total tip of the iceberg” as Room to Read plans to increase this literacy network to 20,000 libraries and schools serving at least 10 million children. The organization currently operates in 8 countries in Asia and Africa, ranging from Cambodia to Nepal to South Africa and Zambia.

Wood raised more than $25 million of financial commitments from a “standing start” and illustrates this experience in a recent memoir, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, a book described by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as “an infectiously inspiring read.” Translated into 10 languages, the book is popular with entrepreneurs, philanthropists, educators, and internationalists alike, and it was voted a Top 10 Non-Fiction Title of 2006 by Hudson’s Books.

During his career at Microsoft, Wood ran significant parts of the company’s international business divisions, including positions as Director of Marketing for the Asia-Pacific Division; Director of Marketing for Microsoft Australia; and Director of Business Development for the Greater China region.

The recipient of several honors, Wood has been profiled by PBS as one of “America’s Great Leaders,” and was selected as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. He was the 2nd recipient of the Draper Richards Fellowship, America’s largest fellowship for early-stage social entrepreneurs, and is a 4-time winner of the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award. Wood has twice won the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Innovation (grants of $200,000 and $1.2 million) and was a recipient of Time magazine’s “Asian Heroes” Award, recognizing “20 People under 40 who have done something brave, bold, or remarkable.” He is the only non-Asian ever chosen for this honor.

Pensal McCray said she got more help from a custodian than a high school counselor in getting her children into college. When McCray’s oldest daughter was a senior, she asked her counselor about college scholarships. “He said there were none,” McCray said. So McCray and her late husband, Christophe, began researching on their own. They found enough to enable all 5 of their children to get 4-year degrees.

When McCray’s friends heard she had helped her children get into, as McCray describes them, “historically black colleges,” they asked if she would help theirs, too. And then friends of friends started asking. These experiences led to the formation of the Ethnic College Counseling Center, which McCray runs out of Denver’s Park Hill United Methodist Church, which has backed her project from the beginning. Even though the name remains the same, the Ethnic College Counseling Center, now helps any student who needs it. “We didn’t see any need to change the name,“ she said.

Since 1983, the former teacher has helped 1,800 minority students tap into scholarships at schools ranging from Morehouse College to Yale University. For her efforts, McCray was named one of People magazine’s “Heroes Among Us” in November 2007.

Eric Liu is the author of Guiding Lights: How to Mentor—and Find Life’s Purpose, the Official Book of National Mentoring Month. He also wrote The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, a New York Times Notable Book featured in the PBS documentary Matters of Race, and he edited the Norton anthology Next: Young American Writers on the New Generation. Eric served as a speechwriter for President Clinton in the first term and as White House deputy domestic policy adviser in the second. After his stint at the White House, he was an executive at the digital media company RealNetworks. He’s also been a frequent commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC. In 2002, Eric was named one of the “100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum. He lives in Seattle, where he teaches at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs and hosts an acclaimed television interview program called “Seattle Voices.” In addition to organizing the annual Guiding Lights Weekend, Eric speaks regularly at conferences, corporations, and campuses around the country. He also serves on the boards of numerous civic organizations, including the Washington State Board of Education, the Seattle Public Library, Demos, and the League of Education Voters.