Keynote Speaker - Frank Bruni

We are privileged to announce Frank Bruni as the keynote speaker during the President’s Opening Plenary Session being held on Thursday, November 9, at 10:00 AM.

Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than 25 years at The New York Times. For the last 10 years he has contributed as a nationally renowned op-ed columnist and has appeared frequently as a television commentator on CNN, MSNBC, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” and more. He was previously a White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief and, for five years, chief restaurant critic of The New York Times.

Frank is the author of four books that appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, including most recently “The Beauty of Dusk,” which describes an extraordinary medical and emotional odyssey: He woke up one morning with blurry vision and later discovered that a stroke had destroyed the optic nerve in one of his eyes, leaving the other eye vulnerable to a similar fate, and Frank at risk of total blindness. “The Beauty of Dusk” casts the experience as an inspirational education in vulnerability, resilience, and optimism. It reached number five on both the hardcover nonfiction and the combined print and e-book nonfiction best seller lists. The book has earned rave reviews from a range of reviewers and publications, including Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, People magazine, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

In July 2021, Frank became a full professor at Duke University, teaching media-oriented classes in the Sanford School of Public Policy. He continues to write his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and produces essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers. Frank lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.