International Festival of Arts & Ideas Photo
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
The International Festival of Arts & Ideas will present its 2012 Visionary Leadership Award to Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the organization announced on Monday.
A press release issued by the festival described Hunter-Gault as “an award-winning journalist whose life and work has brought light to a number of important issues in civil rights, social justice, public health, and education.”
The festival’s executive director, Mary Lou Aleskie, was quoted in the release as saying, Hunter-Gault’s “lifelong, personal fearlessness against injustice has brought about genuine change in the world, and her sound sense of inquiry as a journalist has informed all of our lives.”
Hunter-Gault is the author of To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance, and In My Place. She has worked for such venerable news organizations as The New Yorker, The New York Times, PBS, NPR, and CNN.
Hunter-Gault is a Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award recipient and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame.
Previous Visionary Leadership Award winners are New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson and Women for Women International founder and CEO Zainab Salbi.
Hunter-Gault will be honored on Nov. 14 at an event whose proceeds will go to The Jean M. Handley Fund for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
Learn more about Hunter-Gault and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas’ Visionary Leadership Award here.