Guests
Elliott Ferguson serves as President and CEO of Destination DC, the official destination marketing organization for Washington, DC. A 30-year veteran of the travel and hospitality industry, Ferguson leads Destination DC’s efforts to generate economic opportunity for the District through meetings and tourism, overseeing the organization’s convention and tourism sales, marketing, finance and business development operations. Ferguson began his tenure with Destination DC in December 2001 as the Vice President of Convention Sales, became Senior Vice President of Convention Sales and Services in 2005 and has served as President and CEO since 2009. Prior to working at Destination DC, he served as Director of Sales and Vice President of Sales at the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. He has also served as Director of Sales at the Savannah CVB. Ferguson currently serves as National Chair of the board of directors for the U.S. Travel Association, where he guides the board [...]
Jeff Jenkins is an award winning travel content creator and Founder of Chubby Diaries. He is also the host of the National Geographic show, Never Say Never. A true renaissance man, this musically gifted travel journalist is also a speaker and philanthropist. Jeff Jenkins has been featured in several notable publications such as Forbes, New York Times, Google, Travel Noire, Essence, The Matador Network, and Facebook. He helps people travel the world no matter their weight and height through community, branded content, and motivational talks. You can expect 100% authenticity, transparency, and lots of fun. While being a full time content creator, Jeff Jenkins also co-founded a sustainable well project in Rwanda back in 2017. He has a skill of drawing out big dreams in people and every time you are around him you can expect to enjoy yourself! Jeff’s enthusiastic personality, charisma, and contagious big smile makes him one [...]
An avid traveler who has visited every continent, Nancy Brown Diggs has lived in France, participated in language immersion/homestay programs in Japan and Mexico, and volunteered in Ecuador, Romania, and Haiti. Her long interest in other cultures is reflected by her PhD in East Asian Studies, by her language skills, and by the books she has written, which include: Breaking the Cycle: How Schools Can Overcome Urban Challenges (Rowman and Littlefield), Hidden in the Heartland: The New Wave of Immigrants and the Challenge to America (Michigan State University Press), Looking Beyond the Mask: When American Women Marry Japanese Men (State University of New York Press), and Steel Butterflies: Japanese Women and the American Experience (State University of New York Press). Most recently, having authored books on other cultures, she decided to write about one closer to her own: the Appalachian, never dreaming that it was her own, and that the [...]
Cory Lee was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy at the age of two but that didn't curb his thirst for adventure. Cory has traveled across all 7 continents in his wheelchair, while managing to run his travel blog CurbFreeWithCoryLee.com, where he shares his accessible, and sometimes not so accessible, travel adventures with others. Cory’s blog has received the prestigious Webby Award for Best Personal Blog and 2 Lowell Thomas Awards for Best Travel Blog. He was also named New Mobility Magazine’s Person of the Year. Cory hopes to inspire other wheelchair users to roll out of their comfort zone and see all of the beauty that the world has to offer. Cory Lee started his blog in 2013 when researching for a trip to Australia. He realized that there wasn’t any information about wheelchair accessible things to do in Australia. Doing further research, he realized there wasn’t a lot of [...]
Ernest Green is a history maker. Born Ernest Gideon Green on September 22, 1941 in Little Rock Arkansas, he is one of a group of African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine who, in 1957, desegregated the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that ruled on the unconstitutionality of segregated public school, Green was the oldest of the high school students to be escorted into the school by federal troops under order from President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 25, 1957. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had summoned National Guardsmen to turn away the Black pupils in direct defiance of the federal government, which had already approved a desegregation plan for the school. Because of President Eisenhower’s order to send in troops to protect the students, the nine students prevailed. (This was the first time [...]
Gary Knight is co-founder and principle architect of the VII Photo Agency, co-founder of the VII Foundation and founder of the VII Academy. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Frontline Club, London; co-founder of The GroundTruth Project, Boston; founding Director of the Program for Narrative & Documentary Practice at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University; twice Chair and President of the World Press Photo Award; was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2009, a Logan Non Fiction Fellow at the Carey Institute in 2017, and an acclaimed photographer. How do you imagine hope in a seemingly hopeless situation? And once that hope is imagined, how do you manifest those dreams into a sustained reality? These are the questions at the heart of IMAGINE: REFLECTIONS ON PEACE (Hemeria/SparkPress, October 6, 2020) by The VII Foundation (VIIF), a stunning, remarkable collection of first-person [...]
JAMES WHITTAKER is the bestselling author of "Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy" - the official companion to the multimillion-dollar film based on Napoleon Hill’s timeless classic. James is also a co-executive producer of that film. His first book, The Beginner’s Guide to Wealth, was named book of the month by Money Magazine. He has been interviewed extensively for television, print, and digital media around the world, including The Today Show, Success Magazine, and The Sydney Morning Herald. James lives in LA. The union between Napoleon Hill and Andrew Carnegie ignited a flame of ambition around the world, helped end The Great Depression, and become the foundation of Think and Grow Rich, the bestselling self-help book of all time. NAPOLEON Hill was an American author and entrepreneur best known for Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, which has become one of the bestselling books of all time. Now, more than [...]
Eric Deggans is NPR’s first full-time TV critic. He came to NPR from the Tampa Bay Times newspaper in Florida, where he served as TV/Media Critic and in other roles for nearly 20 years. He also serves as a contributor and media analyst at MSNBC/NBC News. A journalist for more than 20 years, he is also the author of Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, a look at how prejudice, racism and sexism fuels some elements of modern media, published in October 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan. He has guest hosted CNN’s media analysis show Reliable Sources many times, joining a select group of journalists and media critics filling in for departed host Howard Kurtz. In 2013, he was awarded the Florida Press Club’s first-ever Diversity award, honoring his coverage of issues involving race and media. That year, he also received the Legacy award from the [...]
Sahera Chohan is a TV, radio and corporate presenter, where she has presented a number of prominent shows for the BBC, Sky TV and the BBC World Service. These include ‘Countryfile’; ‘The Really Useful Show’; and the hard-hitting documentary series ‘East’, where she was nominated an RTS Award for Best On-Screen Talent. These days Sahera works as a leadership development trainer and coach in business. Sahera is an L&D Consultant, Facilitator, Coach, Speaker & Author with 25 years’ experience working with individuals and teams in a wide range of global corporate and public sector organisations. She specialises in Leadership Development, Team Engagement, Personal Impact, Building Resilience & Self-Esteem and Presentation Skills. Sahera Chohan is passionate about helping people achieve their maximum potential in all walks of life, having achieved much in my own life. At the age of 7, she dreamt of being on television. Twenty years later she was [...]
Elizabeth Rusch is a public policy and youth activism expert, speaker, and author of the new nonpartisan book You Call THIS Democracy? How to fix our government and deliver power to the people, which examines in simple terms our democracy’s missteps and how we can work together to create “a more perfect union.” You Call THIS Democracy?, an Amazon Bestseller, was featured in the New York Times Book Review, received a starred review from Kirkus, which called it “a riveting must-read,” and has been endorsed by Hillary Clinton and commenters from CNN and FOX News, among others. Rusch is also the creator of the “50 State Democracy Report Card,” a simple tool people can use to check how elections function in their state overall and on specific metrics; and a series of short, fun, informative YouTube videos on the issues covered in the book, called Flash Course on Democracy, which [...]
After graduating from Indiana University in 1964, Janet Cheatham Bell began her professional career as a high school librarian in Saginaw, Michigan. In early 1968 she accepted a position at the Ohio University Library in Athens. A few months later, in the wake of student responses to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the university recruited her to teach freshman composition and African American literature. Bell left Ohio University in 1970 to work as associate editor of The Black Scholar in Sausalito, California. Several months later she accepted the position of research associate for the African and Afro-American Studies Program at Stanford University where she worked with the director and eminent scholar, the late St. Clair Drake. Under the auspices of Dr. Drake's Multi Ethnic Education Resource Center, they published Teaching Black: an Evaluation of Methods and Resources in 1972. When that project was completed, Dr. Drake requested that Bell develop [...]
Helen Hernandez is the CEO and owner of the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA). This organization represents approximately 300 travel journalists from the United States and Canada as well as Convention and Visitors Bureaus around the United States. NATJA has grown significantly under her leadership. By providing an annual conference, connecting media with destinations, developing one of the largest awards competition in the travel media industry, NATJA has gained the respect of travel industry professionals in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In addition, Helen is the President and Founder of The Imagen Foundation and Executive Producer of the Imagen Awards. Over the last 35 years, the Imagen Foundation has honored such entertainment industry professionals such as George Lopez, Andy Garcia, Kenny Ortega, Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, John Leguizamo, Edward James Olmos, Jimmy Smits, Rita Moreno, Jennifer Lopez and Hector Elizondo. Under her leadership, the Imagen Awards have become [...]
