Southern Regional Director

The Trump administration has decided to reduce former first lady Michelle Obama's efforts to create a healthy school lunch program to combat childhood obesity. To discuss what this could mean for public schools, we FEATURE Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald. Oleta is Director of the Children's Defense Fund's Southern Regional Office (CDF-SRO), and also serves as the Regional Administrator for the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative for Economic & Social Justice (SRBWI). SRBWI operates in 77 counties across the Black Belts of Alabama, Southwest Georgia and Delta Mississippi. CDF-SRO also serves as the lead for the W.K. Kellogg funded Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) Initiative. Media includes: All local and regional broadcast media networks; local, state, regional and national print media.

Former US Assistant Surgeon General; Real Admiral (ret), First Deputy Asst. Secretary for Women's Health; Visiting Professor, MIT Media Labs; Distinguished Provost Professor, Northeastern University; Senior Medical Advisor, amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research.

With the new healthcare bill being rejected by both advocacy groups and influential Republican representative Fred Upton, we FEATURE Susan Blumenthal, M.D. Susan served as U.S. Assistant Surgeon General, Senior Global Health Advisor and the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Women’s Health in the US Department of Health and Human Services and was a White House Advisor on Health. She is currently a Senior Fellow in Health Policy at the New America, Senior Policy and Medical Advisor at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and Chair of the Global Health Program at the Meridian International Center where her work focuses on a broad range of public health and science issues facing the nation and world. She also serves as a Clinical Professor at Georgetown University and Tufts University Schools of Medicine. Dr. Blumenthal has served as Director of the Health and Medicine Program at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. Media includes: Extensive media experience.

Professor of Political Science

The French election is still underway with centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen being the frontrunners and we FEATURE Terri Givens. Terri is the Provost at Menlo College and formerly a Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University and her doctoral degree in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles. As a scholar, she focuses on the global politics of immigration, European politics, international relations and party politics. She joined The University of Texas at Austin as a government professor in 2003. Her publications include Voting Radical Right in Western Europe, Immigration Policy and Security and Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy in Europe. Media includes: BBC, PBS (To the Contrary), Australian Broadcasting, NPR, Austin Statesman Newspaper.