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Media Contact: Vanessa Willis, 704 337-2452, willisv@queens.edu.

Wes Moore to speak about leadership at Queens University of Charlotte Nov. 12
Former White House Fellow, veteran and Rhodes Scholar provides inspiration for building a better America

	Wes Moore speaks at Queens on Nov. 12.

At age 30, Moore’s personal and professional histories are already fascinating and impressively diverse. 

His story began in the Bronx where he was kicked out of school at age 12 for vandalism and shipped off to military school in Pennsylvania. He turned his life around there and went earn degrees in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

He was working as a banker in London when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 2005, and became a paratrooper and captain. He served a nine-month combat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the elite 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. There, he spearheaded the strategic plan for the Afghan Reconciliation Program that unites former Taliban and other insurgents with the new Afghan government. His plan helped convert more than 500 insurgents to the cause and the initiative continues. He earned a Bronze Star medal for his service.

Moore later spoke about his experiences in a panel of veterans who testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Hear his comments here - http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/285462-1 - at 00:30:50.)

Moore went on to become a White House Fellow, serving as special assistant to Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006 and 2007.  He later traveled with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and spoke at Mile High Stadium before 75,000 people the night Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President.

He was named one of Crains New York’s “Top 40 Young Business Leaders Under 40” this year, and one of Ebony magazine’s “Top 30 Leaders Under 30” for 2007.

His forthcoming book, “The Other Wes Moore: The Story of One Name and Two Fates” chronicles his discovery of a man who shares his name, but whose life has ended in prison. Tavis Smiley wrote the afterword to the book which will be release in May 2010.

He is now an investment professional for Citigroup, working in leadership with the Global Bank.
 
Want to go?
Wes Moore
Thursday, Nov. 12
Diversity Lecture Series at Queens University of Charlotte
6 p.m. in Sykes Auditorium
Free

Queens University of Charlotte is a private, co-ed, Presbyterian-affiliated comprehensive university with a commitment to both liberal arts and professional studies. Located in the heart of historic Charlotte, Queens serves approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students through its College of Arts and Sciences, the McColl School of Business, the Presbyterian School of Nursing, the Wayland H. Cato, Jr. School of Education, the School of Communication and Hayworth College for Adult Studies.

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