This year’s NJEA Convention features an exciting lineup of in-person keynote speakers to complement and enrich your overall experience in Atlantic City Nov. 9-10. In addition to these exciting keynotes, the hundreds of professional and career development opportunities that are the hallmark of the NJEA Convention continue this year.
Spike Lee
Thursday: 9:30-10:30 a.m.
Spike Lee needs no introduction. In person, the provocateur and media icon is never at a loss for words. As one of the most outspoken African American voices, he talks candidly, and with authority, about issues of race in mainstream media and Hollywood, using, as a backdrop, a rare behind-the-scenes look at his celebrated body of work, whose images of racial division and understanding have ingrained themselves on the popular consciousness for decades now.
Ani DiFranco
Thursday: 3-4 p.m.
Widely considered a feminist icon, Grammy winner Ani DiFranco is the mother of the DIY (Do It Yourself) movement, being one of the first artists to create her own record label in 1990. While she has been known as the Little Folksinger, her music has embraced punk, funk, hip-hop, jazz, soul, electronica and even more distant sounds. Her collaborators have included everyone from Utah Phillips to legendary R&B saxophonist Maceo Parker to Prince. She has shared stages with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Chuck D. and many more.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
Friday: 9:30-10:30 a.m.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author and writer who serves as Scholar in Residence at the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). She was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as a “rabbi to watch” and one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis. She’s also been listed as a faith leader to watch by the Center for American Progress, received the Lives of Commitment Award from Auburn Seminary, has been a Washington Post Sunday crossword clue (83 Down) and called (in her younger days) a wunderkund of Jewish feminism by Publishers Weekly.
Alisha De Lorenzo
Friday: 3-4 p.m.
Alisha De Lorenzo is a licensed therapist, certified high-performance coach and experienced speaker. She works at the intersection of individual and collective efficacy helping people do family, community and work in ways that are expansive and value our unique identities and contributions, instead of leaving them to the margins. From keynote speeches to coaching, her mission remains the same: to help move the future forward with a mattering mindset by making sure that everyone feels seen, heard, valued and like they matter.