2018 Commencement Address: Michele Norris

Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist Michele Norris, longtime NPR host, founder of The Race Card Project and executive director of The Bridge, will address this year’s graduates during the College of the Holy Cross Commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 25, at 10:30 a.m. at the DCU Center in Worcester. Norris is one of the nation\u27s most recognized voices in radio, having served as NPR’s first African-American female host of its flagship program “All Things Considered.” From 2002 to 2015, she interviewed world leaders, American presidents, Nobel laureates, leading thinkers, groundbreaking artists, even astronauts traveling in outer space. While working at NPR, Norris created The Race Card Project, an initiative to foster a wider conversation about race in America, by inviting people to submit comments on their experience of race in six words. The project was spurred by the publication of Norris\u27 family memoir, The Grace of Silence, where she examines how America talks about race in the wake of the Obama presidential election, and explores her own family\u27s racial legacy. In 2017, The Race Card Project became the cornerstone of The Bridge, a new initiative of the Aspen Institute, a program on race, identity and inclusion. Prior to her tenure at NPR, Norris served as an ABC News Correspondent based in Washington D.C. where she covered the White House. She also spent time as a print reporter, serving as a staff writer for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Time and National Geographic magazines. Norris attended the University of Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Holy Cross alumnus Broderick Johnson ’78.https://crossworks.holycross.edu/commence_address/1004/thumbnail.jp