WLS Keynote Speakers 2008

Afternoon Keynote
4 – 4:45pm

Robin Roberts has contributed to Good Morning America since June 1995, and has worked in broadcasting for more than 20 years. Other ABC assignments have included segments hosting Good Morning America Sunday and Prime Time. She was named third anchor of ABC News’ Good Morning America in May 2005. 

At Good Morning America, Roberts reports on a wide array of topics and issues for the morning broadcast. She has covered numerous special events ranging from the homecoming of soldiers aboard the USS Roosevelt to the Golden Jubilee at Buckingham Palace to the 25th anniversary of the papacy of Pope John Paul II in Vatican City. Roberts has also interviewed newsmakers from first lady Laura Bush to sports legends Tiger Woods and Shaquille O’Neal.

From 1990 to 2005, Roberts was also a contributor to ESPN, where she was one of the network’s most versatile commentators. Her assignments there included hosting SportsCenter, contributing to NFL PrimeTime from 1990-1994, and providing reports and interviews from the field. Roberts served as host of ESPN’s prime-time interview program, In the SportsLight, ESPN Classic’s Vintage NBA, provided coverage of the men’s NCAA Final Four, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament and of LPGA events. She has also hosted ABC Sports’ Wide World of Sports.

In 1983, Roberts graduated cum laude from Southeastern Louisiana University with a bachelor of arts degree in communications. She was also a standout performer on the women’s basketball team, ending her career as the school’s third all-time leading scorer. Roberts is a native of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and has worked to aid rebuilding efforts there after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

Lunch Keynote
1:15 – 2pm
 
Tina Packer, Founder and Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company is arguably one of the foremost leading experts on Shakespeare, not only in America but in the world. At Shakespeare & Company, Tina has directed over 50 Shakespeare productions, as well as new and contemporary works including the world premieres of Ice Glen by Joan Ackermann, The Scarlet Letter by Carol Gilligan, Summer, adapted from Edith Wharton by Dennis Krausnick, and The Fly-Bottle by David Egan. Other productions of note include the critically-acclaimed King John, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Henry IV part 1, and most recently an all-male production of Coriolanus in England for the Mercury Theatre in Colchester.  

Tina trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she won the Ronson Award for Most Outstanding Performer. In Britain, she was an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, performed in the West End, and acted with repertory companies in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leicester, and Coventry. She also worked for the BBC and ITV television companies and in film. As an actor, she worked with John Barton, Peter Hall, John Schlessinger, Sir Ian McKellan, Paul Scofield, Janet Suzman, and Ian Richardson, among others.  She is the subject of the WGBH documentary Sex, Violence and Poetry: A Portrait of Tina Packer, and Helen Epstein’s biography The Companies She Keeps.

In 1994-95 she received Guggenheim and Bunting Fellowships to create and perform her unique trilogy of work, Women of Will. Tina holds honorary doctorates of letters from Emerson College, Trinity College, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and Salem State College. She was named 1998 Woman of Achievement by the Berkshire Business & Professional Women’s Organization. She was the 1999-2000 Arts Recipient of the Commonwealth Award, the state’s highest honor for excellence in the arts. In 2004 she was given the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Travel & Tourism Leadership Award. In 2001 Tina’s book, Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership & Management, co-authored with Columbia Business School professor John O. Whitney, was published by Simon & Schuster, and she is the author of the award-winning Tales from Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s stories for children, published in 2004 by Scholastic.

Packer recently played Cleopatra in the Company’s 2007 critically-acclaimed production of Antony and Cleopatra and will reprise her 2006 role of Gertrude on tour this coming fall in the Company’s remount of Hamlet.

Morning Keynote
8:20 – 9:15am

Geri Denterlein, MPA (Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government) is president of Denterlein Worldwide Public Affairs.  As founder of Denterlein Worldwide Public Affairs, Geri Denterlein leads a growing company that specializes in strategic communications and is known for its successful public policy campaigns, crisis communications work and healthcare consulting.  Drawing on more than 25 years of experience in media, government and business, Geri provides executive level communications and public relations counsel to  business, nonprofits, colleges and healthcare organizations. 

Geri is the former Editorial Director of WBZ television and radio, where she was responsible for the station’s government and community outreach and also for the writing and on-air delivery of editorials and political analysis. Geri has written columns for or been featured in articles published in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Women’s Business, Boston Business Journal and Inc. Magazine. She is the author of “The Power Chicks’ Guide to Boston: In their own words.”