BIO Speakers at the Lecture Series of the Americas

Nicholas Negroponte | Jeffrey M. Puryear | George Soros | Huguette Labelle

Born in Rockland, Ontario, Canada, Huguette Labelle holds a Doctor of Philosophy, Education, degree from the University of Ottawa, and has received honorary degrees from Brock University, the University of Saskatchewan, Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, York University, Mount Saint Vincent University, the University of Windsor, University of Manitoba, Saint Paul University, St Francis Xavier University, Moncton University and l’Université de Montréal. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada. She has received the Vanier Medal of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada, the McGill University Management Achievement Award and l’Ordre de la Pléiade.

George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management, LLC. He was born in Budapest in 1930. He survived the Nazi occupation and fled communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics. He then settled in the United States, where he accumulated a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. Mr. Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend Cape Town University in apartheid South Africa. He has established a network of philanthropic organizations active in more than 50 countries around the world. These organizations are dedicated to promoting the values of democracy and an open society. The foundation network spends about $400 million annually. Mr. Soros is the author of nine books, including most recently The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror. His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world.

Jeffrey M. Puryear is vice president for social policy at the Dialogue. He directs the Dialogue's education program - the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL). He previously served as head of the Ford Foundation's regional office for the Andes and the Southern Cone, and as a research scholar at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in comparative education from the University of Chicago. Puryear has authored numerous articles on inter-American affairs. His book on intellectuals and democracy in Chile was published in 1994 by the Johns Hopkins University Press

Nicholas Negroponte is founder and chairman of the “One Laptop per Child” non-profit association. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966. Conceived in 1980, the Media Laboratory opened its doors in 1985. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages. In the private sector, Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.