Speakers
The Missions Academy brings to its students speakers who represent a wide array of careers and professions, and even speakers who have changed their paths many times. For example, a visiting tech entrepreneur had initially been in public relations, then got a law degree at age 50, practiced law in the entertainment business, then left the law to fund his own tech start up!
Among the speakers over the last three years were:
- The Academy Award-winning director who is now Dean at the North Carolina School of the Arts
- The Chief Executive Officer of the international public relations firm Rabin Martin, who had also been the President of the international nonprofit Africares, after growing up in Houston in situations similar to those of our students in Selma
- The President of Steward Construction Company, who started his first company when he was in high school
- Two women scientists aboard the International Space Station (OK, so we did not actually go to the Space Station…….)
- Selma’s first female judge
- Selma City Council president
- A Vice President of Bush Hog, one of the largest employers in the Selma area, who barely made it out of high school
- A U.S. Foreign Service Officer who had been a diplomat in Africa
- A corporate litigator who had been part of a legal team defending a Fortune 100 company in a Class Action Suit
- A program officer of the 12th largest philanthropic foundation in the U.S.
In all of these opportunities, our students had the chance not only to learn about what is possible with an education and determination, they asked their own questions about their own interests and their own dreams.
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
North Carolina School of the Arts
