Beverly Cobble Rodriguez Lectureship
About the Beverly Cobble Rodriguez Lectureship
In 2014, Beverly Cobble Rodriguez and Joe V. Rodriguez, Jr. generously endowed the Beverly Cobble Rodriguez Lectureship Fund Supporting Women’s Education and Global Leadership to allow us to host an annual lecture on women’s education and global leadership with a special emphasis on healthcare, multi-national business, and the liberal arts.
2021 Beverly Cobble Rodriguez Lecturer
Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt (pictured above)
Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt, Head of Global Diversity and Belonging at Airbnb, is an expert on building inclusive, global teams. She has served as Vanderbilt University's Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence and as the Global Chief Diversity Officer at UVA’s Darden School of Business. For 25 years, she has taught MBAs and executives leadership, team dynamics, and negotiations and conducted research on the factors that unleash, leverage and amplify the contributions made by individuals, particularly women, underrepresented individuals and numerical minorities. Through the lectureship [/max-media] she shared her insights into building diverse teams and encouraging leadership skills among them.
Past Lecturers for the Beverly Cobble Rodriguez Lectureship
2015 Jessica Posner Odede, Co-founder and COO of Shining Hope for Communities
2016 Gretchen Steidle, Founder and President of Global Grassroots
2017 Rachel Zaslow, Executive Director of Mother Health International
2018 Jensen Montambault (CLAS 1995), Executive Director, Science and Nature for People Partnership (SNAPP)
2019 Pamela Sutton Wallace, CEO, UVA Health System