Speaker Bios
Byllye Y. Avery
Byllye Y. Avery, founder of The Avery Institute for Social Change and the Black Women's Health Imperative, has been a health care activist for over 25 years focusing on women's needs. She is also a member of the LLuminari and Be Well health expert network.
Prior to her entry into the health care arena, Avery taught special education to emotionally disturbed students and consulted on learning disabilities in public schools and universities throughout the southeastern United States. Avery also co-founded both the Gainesville Women's Health Center and Birthplace, an alternative birthing center, in Gainesville, Fla.
The Black Women's Health Imperative has served as a non-profit organization committed to defining, promoting and maintaining the physical, mental and emotional well-being of black women. The Avery Institute for Social Change has focused its work on health care reform.
A dreamer, visionary and grassroots realist, Avery has combined activism and social responsibility to develop a national forum for the exploration of the health issues of black women. She continues to gather, document and speak on black women's health experiences in America, rallying support for black women.
Avery has been the recipient of many honors and awards. In 1989, she received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for Social Contribution and the Essence Award for Community Service. In 1994, she received the Academy of Science Institute of Medicine's Gustav O. Lienhard Award for the Advancement of Health Care, and the Grassroots Realist Award by the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. In 1995, she received the Dorothy I. Height Lifetime Achievement Award and the President's Citation of the American Public Health Association. In 1998, Business and Professional Women presented her with the New Horizons Award and she accepted a Leadership Award from the University of Florida's School of Medicine. She recently received the Ruth Bader Ginsberg Impact Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women.
Avery has served on the Charter Advisory Committee for the Office of Research on Women's Health of the National Institutes of Health. In addition, she has served two years as a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. She has received honorary degrees from Thomas Jefferson University, the State University of New York at Binghamton, Gettysburg College, Bowdoin College and Bates College.
John Prendergast
John Prendergast is a co-founder of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. During the Clinton administration, he was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa while he was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and special advisor at the Department of State. Prendergast has also worked for members of Congress, the United Nations, human rights organizations, and think tanks, and has been a youth counselor and basketball coach in the United States.
He has authored eight books on Africa, including Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year that he co-authored with actor Don Cheadle. He is now working on two new books, one that focuses on his 20 years in the Big Brother program, and the other on human rights and peace advocacy.
Prendergast has helped produce documentaries, consulted on movie scripts, and was part of a series of episodes of CBS' 60 Minutes which earned an Emmy Award for Best Continuing News Coverage. With NBA stars Tracy McGrady and Derek Fisher, he co-founded the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program, which connects schools in the United States with schools in the Darfurian refugee camps. He also helped create the Raise Hope for Congo Campaign aimed at ending violence against women and girls in the Congo.
His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the International Herald Tribune, and he has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Men's Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Capitol File, The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. John travels regularly to Africa's war zones on fact-finding missions, peace-making initiatives, and awareness-raising trips. He is a visiting professor at the University of San Diego and the American University in Cairo.
