Plenary Speaker Highlights
Stephanie Land
|
Opening Session Speaker:Stephanie Land, Best-Selling Author, Executive Producer of Netflix’s Maid, and Social Justice Advocate
Stephanie Land is the New York Times bestselling author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, which has sold over half a million copies worldwide. The book inspired the Netflix Golden Globe- and Emmy-nominated series Maid, on which Land served as an executive producer. She is also the author of Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education.
Land’s writing chronicles her experiences as a single mother navigating poverty, domestic work, and higher education, illuminating systemic inequities while highlighting resilience, hope, and perseverance. Her essays and reporting on economic and social justice, domestic abuse, and motherhood have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and other outlets.
Land is a writing fellow at the Center for Community Change, an arts and entertainment ambassador for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and is at work on her third book, The Privilege to Feel.
Dr. Karen A. Stout |
Plenary Speaker: Dr. Karen A. Stout is president and CEO of Achieving the Dream (ATD), leading a national network of community colleges focused on whole-college transformation that directly addresses inequitable outcomes for students. She was named the American Association for Women in Community College’s Woman of the Year and one of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s Leading Women, Washington Monthly’s 16 most innovative higher education leaders, Washingtonian’s 500 most influential people in 2023, and Ed Tech’s 30 higher education IT influencers to follow in 2023. She is the recipient of the Robert Zemsky Medal for Innovation in Higher Education, among many recognitions.
Dr. Stout serves as chair of the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research Advisory Board at North Carolina State University, as co-chair of the University of Maryland Global Campus Doctorate of Management in Community College Policy and Administration Advisory Board, and is a member of the Community College Research Center Presidents Advisory Board, Common App Board of Directors, and College Promise National Advisory Board. In 2022, Dr. Stout was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate to serve a six-year term as a member of the National Council on the Humanities.
Before joining ATD in 2015, Dr. Stout was president of Montgomery County Community College. Upon leaving the college, the Board granted her President Emerita status and named the student success center in her honor. A frequent speaker and writer, Dr. Stout focuses on strategies for enhancing student success, equity and completion; accelerating and scaling innovation; advancing next generation metrics; and launching a new era of community college fundraising.
|
Sarah Lewis
|
Plenary Speaker: Sarah Lewis is an acclaimed art and cultural historian and a scholar whose work explores the intersections of art, race, and justice. Her Vision & Justice initiative explores the role of art and culture in advancing equity and justice through a Harvard course, national convening, and book series with Aperture.
Lewis’ award-winning books include The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America and the bestseller The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, alongside the Vision & Justice issue of Aperture magazine. Her forthcoming book, Vision & Justice, will be published by One World/Random House.
A celebrated speaker whose TED Talk has over 3 million views, Lewis has addressed audiences from the UN General Assembly to the World Business Forum and serves on the boards of Thames & Hudson, Creative Time, and Civil War History journal.
Experience Sarah Lewis at DREAM 2026.
