Keynote Speakers

International Convention Speakers

Jacqueline Lougheed World Understanding Lecturer

AVRIL BENOIT

Avril Benoît the executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States (MSF-USA) is the Jacqueline Lougheed World Understanding Lecturer. She has worked with the international medical humanitarian organization since 2006 in various operational management and executive leadership roles, most recently as the director of communications and development at MSF’s operational center in Geneva, a position she held from November 2015 until June 2019. Throughout her career with MSF, Avril has contributed to major movement-wide initiatives, including the global mobilization to end attacks on hospitals and health workers. She has worked as a country director and project coordinator for MSF, leading operations to provide aid to refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in Mauritania, South Sudan, and South Africa. Avril’s strategic analysis and communications assignments have taken her to countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, and Syria. From 2006 to 2012, Avril served as director of communications with MSF Canada.

Prior to joining MSF, Avril had a distinguished 20-year career as an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in Canada. She was a documentary producer and radio host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), reporting from Kenya, Burundi, India, and Brazil on HIV stigma, rapid urbanization, sexual violence in conflict, and political inclusion of women, among numerous other assignments and topics. Avril Benoit

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

MARY ANN RADMACHER

Mary Anne Radmacher is a writer, artist and motivational speaker. She conducts digital and in-person workshops on living a full, creative, balanced life, and works with individual clients. She has been writing since she was a child, and she uses her writing to explore symbols and find meaning. She is the author of Lean Forward into Your Life, Live Boldly, and ten other books. She has been designing and producing greeting cards, posters and journals for over thirty years and her inspirational products are available internationally. She is included in the Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations. One of her poems that has circled the globe is, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

Mary Ann Radmacher

DR. BERTICE BERRY

No one defies stereotypes, generalizations or cliches more than Dr. Bertice Berry. Growing up poor in Wilmington, Delaware, the sixth of seven children, Bertice was told by a high school teacher that she was “not college material”. Fortunately, there was another teacher who believed that she was destined for more. Dr. Berry went on to teach at Kent and demonstrated that she knew a few things about humor as well. She became one of the most popular teachers at the university; so popular, in fact, larger lecture halls had to be found to accommodate the ever-increasing number of students. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Bertice Berry left Kent to become an award-winning entertainer, lecturer and comedienne. From 1991 through 1994 she won the coveted national Comedian of the Year Award, and was also named Campus Lecturer of the Year and Campus Entertainer of the Year.

Dr. Berry was the host and co-executive producer of her own nationally syndicated talk show. She’s been featured on numerous other television programs. Dr. Bertice Berry is also the best-selling author of an inspirational memoir, I’m On My Way, But Your Foot Is On My Head, and the hilarious bestsellers Sckraight From the Ghetto, You Might Be Ghetto If and the sequel You STILL Ghetto. Her first work of fiction, Redemption Song, is also a best seller and has been praised by critics for it’s ability to entertain, inspire and educate.

Dr. Bertice Berry