2010 Annual Conference and Members' Meeting
Keynote Address
November 4, 2010

One in six American children lives in poverty, with more than 40 percent of those in extreme poverty. Our failure as a nation to address the needs of our children ultimately results in nearly $500 billion in lost productivity, rising incarceration rates and skyrocketing health care costs. Child poverty impacts dropout rates at our schools, homelessness in our streets and the very fabric of life in our communities.

In her keynote presentation, Marian Wright Edelman will address how funders can work together--with one another and the nonprofits we serve--to find solutions to the critical issues facing children, families and our communities as a whole. She will explore how philanthropy can bring its unique strengths as a sector to create new and innovative ways to address social problems, as well as how society needs to change its priorities in order to meet the needs of our children and build healthier, more productive lives for all.

Keynote Speaker:
Marian Wright Edelman
President, Children's Defense Fund

Civil rights activist and Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Founder and President Marian Wright Edelman has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans her entire professional life, and under her leadership, CDF has become the nation's strongest voice for children and families. 

She began her career in the mid 1960s when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968 she moved to Washington, D.C. and acted as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children's Defense Fund. For two years she served as the director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and in l973 began CDF.

Edelman has received over one hundred honorary degrees and many awards, including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom--the nation's highest civilian award--and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings.