Category Archives: Guest Speakers

August 20th Meeting

AAUW’s Raleigh-Wake Branch is proud to present the speaker for our

August 20^th Meeting

Shaunda Cooper

Dr. Cooper will discuss the topic of creating female leaders and strategies to bring them into powerful learning environments.

About our Speaker:

Dr. Shaunda Cooper is a native of Raleigh NC where she began her work with youth as a counselor in Urban Services at the YMCA. After graduation from college, Dr. Cooper began her career as a teacher, Reading Specialist and NC Principal Fellow. After completing years of school administration, she transition to the North Carolina Department of Education. There she managed contracts for over 200 NC Charter Schools across the state. While growing in her career, Dr. Cooper also founded a nonprofit for young ladies ages 12 to 18. The founding principles are love of self, love of others, community service and international travel. Incredible Ladies United has provided financial scholarships for the last 5 years, even during the pandemic. The recipients are simply fantastic young ladies learning at NCSU, UNCG, WSSU, NCCU and UNC!

Dr Cooper loves to travel, and finds time to do guidance and meditation sessions when over seas. She also owns a for profit company Superior Solutions Ed. which serves students and families in a support capacity. Loving children, and the community is where her heart is.

When: Tuesday, August 20th, 2024, 7PM

7:00 pm – 7:15 pm Network

7:15 pm – 7:45 pm Program

7:45 pm – 8:00 pm Business Meeting

Where: Zoom

Zoom coordinates will be sent out via the AAUW-RWC Branch email list.

For more info, contact Terry: terry.c.wall@gmail.com

February Meeting

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Chavis Heights site for Communities In Schools of Wake County

Duke Energy Learning Center

781 Bright Creek Way, Raleigh, NC 27601

Shaunda Cooper is currently an Educational Planning & Development Consultant supporting 196 charter schools across the state of North Carolina. She is the project manager of Charter School Renewals and serves as the specialist providing comprehensive Renewal reports to the North Carolina State Board of Education. Additionally, Ms. Cooper is a certified Comprehensive Needs Assessment evaluator working in collaboration with the District and Regional Support Department of the Department of Public Instruction to review district schools across North Carolina.

Remember: we meet from 5:00pm to 7:30pm.

Light refreshments served

November Meeting

March 15th Meeting

A STE(A)M Education: Exploring the value of the arts in a science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.

with speaker Ian Finley

Hear what an entertaining & talented local arts educator believes about how arts experience provides a crucible that imparts a variety of technical skills. He argues that arts education also introduces alternative measures for what constitutes success—i.e., not just a career but a purposeful life.

The Information Age is hardly a thing of the past, but ways of preparing students to perform in that world are taking a new shape. Technical skills are simply not enough to equip graduates for the reality that they must also demonstrate the time-honored arts of interpersonal communication and personal reflection. One of the most effective means of introducing such innovation into education is the infusion of a significant arts component into today’s typical curriculum.

Arts courses and hands-on experience, valuable in themselves, also provide an experimental crucible for acquiring a wide spectrum of technological abilities. And perhaps even more powerfully persuasive to educational reformers and students alike, the arts provide not just the skills for success, but an alternative measure of success–a path not only to a career but to a purposeful life.

IAN FINLEY holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, where he was awarded the Harry Kondoleon prize for playwriting. Currently, Ian serves as the Chair of Fine Arts at Research Triangle High School.

Come & bring a friend to the meeting of your Raleigh-Wake Branch:

Where: The Junior League Center for Community Leadership

711 Hillsborough St, Raleigh 27603

When: Tuesday evening, March 15, 2016
5:15 – Hospitality ~~ 5:30 -Program

The Center for Community Leadership is in the Junior League of Raleigh building. There is parking behind the building — enter from St. Mary’s St.

Presentation by Karen (Galloway) Bethea-Shields

Karen (Galloway) Bethea-Shields

Our February program featured an informative, sometimes challenging and often entertaining talk by the Honorable Karen Bethea-Shields. Bethea-Shields broke a number of barriers during her career as attorney and judge. Her first case as a freshly-minted lawyer was later called “The Trial of the Century,” i.e., the Joan Little case involving the murder of an abusive jailer. Before she was 30 years old, this young lawyer (then named Galloway) became Durham’s first female judge.

Our speaker’s story tracked the issues raised and in part resolved by both the civil rights and the women’s movements. Despite the fact that Bethea-Shields was often “on trial as much as her client was,” she made a point of being engaged in civic and cultural concerns instead of seeing her career as merely a personal journey. She lives by a creed that “If you’re only in it for yourself, you’re wasting your time.” With this as her guiding principle, she has enjoyed being a lawyer and continues to practice.

We heard from our speaker some of the most difficult but enduring truths that any of us has heard in recent years. To paraphrase, she said that integration has not yet happened. Instead, one race was assimilated into the cultural practices of another. She left us with the thought that mutual respect must precede any meaningful blending of cultures and ethnicities.

— Terry Wall

November Branch Meeting

November Branch Meeting

Program: School board–Score Card

Speaker: Rukiya Dillahunt, Education and Labor Activist

Dillahunt—a retired Wake County school teacher and assistant principal—will raise our awareness of critical issues that face the current board if they wish to break the cycle that has come to be known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” As founder of Black Workers for Justice, Dillahunt has won accolades for her insight into the ways power is used to derail attempts to address injustice.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Center for Community Leadership
711 Hillsborough St. Room #104 (map)
4:00 – 5:00 PM

Light refreshments served at 3:45. Program starts at 4:00.

Note that the meeting starts early, at 4PM, so members may attend the school board meeting in Cary at 5:30. Here is a map with directions to the Office of the Wake County School Superintendent : Map with directions.

The Center for Community Leadership is in the Junior League of Raleigh building. There is parking behind the building — enter from St. Mary’s St.

October Branch Meeting

October Branch Meeting

Program: Be a Friend First (BFF) – anti-bullying program

Speaker: Shawna Peaks of Wake County division, Girl Scouts of the Coastal Pines

Shawna will speak on “Be a Friend First” (BFF), an anti-bullying program that the branch will deliver to scout troops in 2015. Please feel free to bring a friend!

Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Center for Community Leadership
711 Hillsborough St. Room #104 (map)
5:30 – 7:00 PM

Light refreshments served at 5:15. Program starts at 5:30.

The Center for Community Leadership is in the Junior League of Raleigh building. There is parking behind the building — enter from St. Mary’s St.

Meeting October 15, 2013

Susanna K. Gibbons,

Employment Law Attorney and Partner with Poyner & Spruill,

will speak on

Understanding Workplace Culture: Implementing best practices to prevent discrimination and injustice

Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Center for Community Leadership
711 Hillsborough St. Room #104 (map)
5:15 – 7:00

Light refreshments served at 5:15. Program starts at 5:30.

The Center for Community Leadership is in the Junior League of Raleigh buidling. There is parking behind the building — enter from St. Mary’s St.

For more information about the speaker, please click: Gibbons-Susanna_2013