July 2020
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
A Fireside Chat with the Honorable Frances R. Johnson
A Celebration in Diversity—A Conversation Toward a Just and Inclusive Community
“The empowerment of black women constitutes the empowerment of our entire community.”
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Lawyer, Civil Rights Advocate, Professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School; Developed the theory of intersectionality. Born 1959 (age 61 years)
“More is required of public officials than slogans and handshakes and press releases. More is required. We must hold ourselves strictly accountable. We must provide the people with a vision of the future.”
-Barbara Jordan, United States Senator and Civil Rights Leader, 1936-1996
“Belonging shouldn’t mean you are like everyone else.”
-Misty Copeland, First African American Woman to become the American Ballet Theatre’s Principal Dancer after 75 years. Born September 10, 1982 (age 37 years)
“Even as a professional in an integrated world, I had been the only black woman in enough drawing rooms and boardrooms to have an inkling of the chutzpah it took for an African American woman in a segregated southern workplace to tell her bosses she was sure her calculations would put a man on the Moon.”
– Katherine Johnson, Mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics at NASA were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. spaceflights. President Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. 1918-2020
“We need to move beyond the idea that girls can be leaders and create the expectation that they should be leaders.”
- Condoleezza Rice, Professor at Stanford University, Former Secretary of State, 2005-2009
Highlights:
- Shifting from a focus on the business case for racial and gender diversity to embracing an expansive moral one.
- Engaging in honest and vulnerable conversations about gender and race, and deeply questioning our own biases, both explicit and implicit..
Program Description:
No matter our professional and personal contributions across Colorado and the nation, we need better strategies for more significant and more meaningful representation of African American women at all levels of leadership. There’s no better time to make real these transformations than right now.
Join Denver County Court Judge Gary Jackson in a fireside chat with the Honorable Frances R. Johnson, as we celebrate, the first African American woman to be appointed to the District Court bench in Colorado’s 4th Judicial District.
Honorable Gary M. Jackson will interview Judge Johnson regarding her career, her path to the bench, and being the first African American woman to be appointed to the District Court bench in El Paso County.
Home studies will be available 2-3 weeks after the LIVE program.