Community Foundation of WNC features author Doris Kearns Goodwin at Power of the Purse luncheon May 23

From the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina:

The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina’s 13^th Annual Power of the Purse® Luncheon featuring Doris Kearns Goodwin

Renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin is the featured speaker for The Community Foundation’s 13^th Annual Power of the Purse® taking place Tuesday, May 23, at the Expo Center at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Asheville.  Goodwin’s address is entitled “The First 100 Days of an Unprecedented Presidency” and it will be followed by questions from the audience. 

Goodwin is the author of six critically-acclaimed and New York Times best-selling books, including her most recent, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, winner of the Carnegie Medal. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film and television rights to the book.  Spielberg and Goodwin previously worked together on the film Lincoln, based in part on Goodwin’s award-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The book was awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History.

Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, and is the author of the best sellers Wait Till Next Year, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, and The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, which was adapted into an award-winning five-part TV miniseries.

She appears frequently on television and has served as a consultant and been interviewed extensively for documentaries on President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham and Mary Lincoln, as well as Ken Burns’ The History of Baseball and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.

Goodwin graduated magna cum laude from Colby College. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency. At the age of 24, Goodwin became a White House fellow, working directly with President Lyndon B. Johnson. Goodwin served as an assistant to President Johnson in his last year in the White House, and later assisted him in the preparation of his memoirs.

Power of the Purse® brings well-known female speakers and personalities to Western North Carolina to celebrate the power of women’s philanthropy. Past speakers have included Mae Jemison, Piper Kerman, Olympia Snowe, Dee Dee Myers, Anna Deavere Smith, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Buffett, Cokie Roberts and Anna Quindlen.

The program includes the announcement of $270,000 in grants from the Women for Women giving circle, which includes $37,650 from The Women’s Fund endowment. With the 2017 grants, Women for Women will exceed $3 million in grants since 2006 supporting nonprofits that serve disadvantaged women and girls.

Proceeds from the event benefit The Women’s Fund, a permanent endowment of The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina that supports the unmet needs of women and girls across the region.

The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina is a permanent philanthropic resource established to build charitable capital for 18 counties in Western North Carolina. The Foundation works with individuals, families and corporations to create and manage charitable funds and make grants to nonprofits or public agencies. CFWNC facilitated more than $18 million in philanthropy last year. The Foundation runs 12 competitive grant programs and more than 60 scholarship programs and helps nonprofits by managing their endowments and enabling capacity building and best practices. The mission of The Community Foundation is to inspire philanthropy and mobilize resources to enrich lives and communities in Western North Carolina.   

www.cfwnc.org or (828) 367-9908