Keynote Speaker

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and business executive Sheryl WuDunn will be the keynote speaker for the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence 2023 Academic Awards Banquet on Saturday, May 20.

Sheryl WuDunn

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author and business executive Sheryl WuDunn will help honor Oklahoma’s outstanding public school students and educators when she delivers the keynote address at the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence Academic Awards Banquet on Saturday, May 20, at the Cox Business Convention Center in Tulsa.

WuDunn’s address can also be viewed during the Academic Awards Banquet broadcast at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 27, or 10 a.m. Sunday, May 28, on OETA Public Television.

WuDunn, the first Asian-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, is the co-founder of FullSky Partners, a consulting firm focusing on double-bottom line ventures in new media, technology and healthcare that provide a sustainable social impact. She previously served as vice president in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and was one of the few people to work at The New York Times both as an executive and as a journalist.

With her husband, journalist Nicholas Kristof, WuDunn is the co-author of “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope,” a 2020 best-selling book that explores the great challenges and opportunities of America’s working class. In addition, the couple in 2014 co-authored “A Path Appears: Transforming Lives and Creating Opportunity,” which was turned into a three-part PBS documentary. Their 2009 book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and later a multiplatform digital effort that included a popular documentary series on PBS in 2012.

WuDunn has co-authored bestselling books about Asia: “Thunder from the East” and “China Wakes.” She won the Pulitzer Prize with her husband for covering China, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Newsweek magazine recognized WuDunn as one of 150 Women Who Shake the World, and she was featured as one of the “leading women who make America” in the  PBS documentary “The Makers.”

WuDunn earned her Master of Public Administration degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and her Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. She graduated from Cornell University, where she is an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees. WuDunn has taught classes at Yale and Harvard universities, and she lectures widely on economic, political and social topics. She has been featured on many television and radio programs, including “Meet the Press,” “The Colbert Report,” “NPR” and “Fox Business News.”