The Adler University community is honored to announce the two social justice trailblazers who will address this year’s master and doctoral graduates at ceremonies in Vancouver and Chicago.
Longtime Canadian politician, activist and current Adler University Board of Trustees Chair Joy MacPhail will be the keynote speaker at Vancouver’s convocation on Saturday, Oct. 13. Internationally recognized, award-winning journalist Natalie Moore will take center stage in Chicago on Sunday, Oct. 21, before Online and Chicago campus graduates. University President Raymond E. Crossman, Ph.D., will confer degrees.
MacPhail was a three-term member of the British Columbia New Democratic Party (NDP) for Vancouver-Hastings from 1993 to 2001. She held cabinet portfolios in social services, health, education, labour and finance, and has served as the British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly’s Minister of Health, Minister of Finance, Deputy Premier, and Leader of the Opposition.
In addition to her current role at Adler, she is chair of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) and an owner of OUTtv, the world’s longest-airing LGBTQ television network.
“Throughout my career, I have advocated for working families, for women, and for marginalized people,” MacPhail said, adding that she shares Adler students’ passion for community engagement and social justice.
Moore’s career has spanned areas as near as Detroit, Michigan, and St. Paul, Minnesota, and as far as Libya and Jerusalem. She is an author, the South Side reporter for WBEZ in Chicago, and a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her coverage of segregation, inequality, housing, economic development, violence and injustice has been featured in publications including Essence, Ebony, the Chicago Reporter, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian.
Moore received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award in 2010 for her reporting on the city’s diverse neighborhoods, and the Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century award in 2017 — the same year The Chicago Reader named her best journalist. She has also won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and recognition from the Radio Television Digital News Association, National Association of Black Journalists, and Illinois Associated Press, to name a few.