Profiles:
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Benjamin Jealous*
President/CEO, NAACP

Benjamin Todd Jealous is the 17th President and CEO of the NAACP. Appointed at age 35 in 2008, he is the youngest person to lead the century old organization. During his tenure, the NAACP's online activists have swelled from 175,000 to more than 600,000; its donors have increased from 16,000 individuals per year to more than 120,000; and its membership has increased three years in a row for the first time in more than 20 years.

Jealous began his career as a community organizer in Harlem in 1991 with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund while working his way through college. In 1993, after being suspended for organizing student protests at Columbia University, he went to work as an investigative reporter for Mississippi's frequently firebombed Jackson Advocate newspaper.

Over the past two decades, he has helped organize successful campaigns to abolish the death penalty for children, stop Mississippi's governor from turning a public historically black university into a prison, and pass federal legislation against prison rape. His journalistic investigations have been credited with helping save the life of a white inmate who was being threatened for helping convict corrupt prison guards, free a black small farmer who was being framed for arson, and spur official investigations into law enforcement corruption.

A Rhodes Scholar, he is a graduate of Columbia and Oxford University, the past president of the Rosenberg Foundation and served as the founding director of Amnesty International's US Human Rights Program. While at Amnesty, he authored the widely-cited report: Threat and Humiliation-- Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States.
As President of the NAACP, he has opened national programs on education, health, and environmental justice. He has also greatly increased the organization's capacity to work on issues related to the economy and register and mobilize voters.

A fifth-generation member of the NAACP, Jealous comes from a long-line of American freedom fighters. His mother, who descends from two black Reconstruction statesmen, desegregated Baltimore's Western High School for Girls in 1954 as a member of the NAACP's Youth and College Division. His father, who descends from a Revolutionary War soldier who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill and Sufragettes, was one of a small number of white men jailed during the Congress of Racial Equality's efforts to desegregate Baltimore's downtown business district. He is married to Lia Epperson Jealous, a civil rights lawyer and professor of constitutional law. They have two children and live in Silver Spring, MD.

*Separate registration is required go to: http://z.umn.edu/worldconferencedinner to make a reservation.

Mr. Kjell Magne Bondevik
Founder and President of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights

Mr. Kjell Magne Bondevik currently serves as president of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, an NGO that he cofounded with his long-time colleague Mr. Einar Steensnaes, in 2006.  The Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, founded in 2006 to promote democracy, human rights, and interfaith and intercultural dialogue, have over the past six years refined their focus toward support for emerging democracies in “fragile” nations. Human rights and dialogue, the other core strengths of OCN, are necessary “pillars” for building sustainable democracies. The Oslo Center currently works in Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan among other countries.

Mr. Bondevik was Prime Minister of Norway 1997 – 2000 and 2001 – 2005.  He was Minister of Foreign Affairs 1989-1990, Minister of Church and Education 1983-1986 and State Secretary of the Office of the Prime Minister 1972-1973.  Mr. Bondevik was a member of Stortinget (the Parliament) from 1973 – 2005 representing the Christian Democratic Party.  He was a deputy member 1969-1973 and the party’s Parliamentary Leader 1981-1983, 1986-1989, 1993-1997 and 2000-2001. Mr. Bondevik was leader of the Christian Democratic Party 1983-1995.

Immediately following Mr. Bondevik’s second term as Prime Minister, in response to recurrent drought and food insecurity devastating the region, he was appointed the UN Secretary General’s Special Humanitarian Envoy for the Horn of Africa and served from February 2006 – June 2007.
Mr. Bondevik is a Theological Candidate from Norway’s Free Faculty of Theology.  In 1979 he was ordained as a minister in the Lutheran Church of Norway.

Mr. Bondevik was awarded degrees of Honorary Doctor of law at Suffolk University in Boston, USA, Honorary Doctor of Politics at Wonkwang University in Seoul, Republic of Korea, Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Republic of Korea, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Honorary Degree: Doctor of Humane letters, “honoris causa” at the University of San Francisco and Honorary Professor at the Gumiljov University in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Mr. Bondevik is bearer of the Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, the Grand Cross of Latvia’s Terra Mariana Order, the Grand Cross of Italia’s Order of Merit, the Grand Cross of Portugal’s Order of Merit and the Grand Cross of Guatemala’s Order of the Quetzal.
Mr. Bondevik was born in Molde, Norway, on 3 September 1947.  He is married to Bjørg Bondevik (born Rasmussen).  They have three children.

Bernard Anderson
PROFESSOR, WHARTON SCHOOL OF FINANCE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, AND
FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Dr. Bernard E. Anderson has been the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania since 2001, when he returned from serving in the Clinton Administration. The U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Anderson in early 1994 as Assistant Secretary for the Employment Standards Administration, the Department of Labor agency that leads the campaign against sweatshops, child labor violations, migrant worker abuse, and employment discrimination. The Employment Standards Administration also protects workers’ rights to prevailing wages, workers’ compensation benefits, and promotes labor management relations through collective bargaining. While serving as Assistant Secretary, Dr. Anderson strengthened the enforcement of worker protection policies through agency reinvention initiatives, compliance assistance, and outreach to program constituencies.

Prior to his appointment by President Clinton, Dr. Anderson held a number of different positions. He was President of the Anderson Group, a Philadelphia economic and management advisory firm that provides strategic planning information for private and non-profit organizations; Professor of Industry at the Wharton School of Business; a lecturer in economics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania; the Director of the Social Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation; and a Visiting Fellow in Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Dr. Anderson has authored six books and numerous articles on economic and employment policy, and was a member of the Black Enterprise Magazine Board of Economists. He began his career as an economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Before his appointment to the Federal Service, Dr. Anderson participated on numerous boards and advisory councils addressing employment and economic development issues. Between 1991 and 1994, he served as Chairman of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority - the fiscal oversight board for the City of Philadelphia. His memberships on professional and corporate boards included the Manpower Demonstration and Research Corporation for which he was Vice Chairman; the Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company; and Lincoln University, for which he was Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He is a member of the American Economic Association, a former executive board member of the Industrial Relations Research Association, and a former President of the National Economic Association. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter recently appointed Dr. Anderson to the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Construction Industry Diversity.

Dr. Anderson received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, graduating with highest honors from Livingstone College, in Salisbury, North Carolina; a Masters of Arts in Economics from Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan; and a Ph.D. in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He also received honorary degrees from Bennett College, Livingstone College, Shaw University, and Tuskegee University.