Last summer Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Roberta Gbowee visited with 32 lucky students in the Master of Public Administration class Fund Raising and Grants Administration in Not-for-Profit and Voluntary Organizations, taught by Adjunct Professor Michael Seltzer.
Gbowee was responsible for leading a women’s peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. In the peace that followed, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia, becoming the first female president of an African nation. Gbowee, Sirleaf, and Tawakkul Karman shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for their nonviolent approach to ensuring the safety of women and for laying the groundwork for women’s rights to full participation in the peace-building process. Gbowee is the executive director of the Women, Peace and Security Network–Africa.
“My students were inspired,” said Seltzer of the lively and intimate Q&A shared by the students and Gbowee. “For the rest of their lives, these graduate students will remember the night a Nobel Peace Prize winner came to their class.”
—Manny Romero