OVER THE PAST 20 years, Contra Costa County residents have gathered at the Lesher Center for the Arts to attend the renowned Newsmakers: Lesher Speaker Series, an annual series of events that celebrates journalists, politicians, and conversationalists from across the nation.
Starting later this month, 10 speakers will appear through October to discuss global issues and current events.
“The intention for the speaker series is to showcase powerful ideas, encourage civic engagement, public discourse, and also entertain,” said Devorah Levine, the Lesher Foundation’s executive director. “So, it really cuts across politics, popular culture, entertainment, science, issues of the day.”
The Newsmakers events have impacted countless residents across the region, as the speaker series has been incredibly successful for the past two decades.
“A lot of the speakers are really entertaining, and they inspire new ways of thinking about things,” Levine said. “I think that the audience of the Lesher Speaker Series and the people who come are intellectually curious. They really are always seeking out new information.”
To celebrate the Speaker Series’ 20th anniversary, the Lesher Foundation is bringing back speakers from past years who have been particularly impactful and memorable for longtime attendees. Returning speakers include Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, who originally was a speaker for the series in 2008.
“This year, just to mark the anniversary, we looked back at some speakers that were particularly engaging, and we sort of went back and looked at who had come to the Lesher Center in the last 20 years,” Levine said. “So, we’re bringing back some of the best, and these folks will have new insights, new things to share.”
Delayed by LA fires
The series was originally supposed to kick off in Walnut Creek on Jan. 8 with Henry Winkler and Marlee Matlin, but that engagement was postponed after the actors were evacuated from their homes because of the Los Angeles fires. Their event is rescheduled for March 18.
Because their speaker event was rescheduled, Fox now opens the series on Feb. 24. Other speakers who will be visiting in the subsequent months include Donna Brazile and George Will (March 31), Martin Luther King III (April 23), and journalist Lisa Ling (July 10).
“A lot of the folks who have been coming to the speaker series have been coming for a really long time, so the audience has changed over the years, but there are a lot of folks who’ve subscribed from the beginning,” Levine said. “I think (bringing back speakers) is an opportunity for them to reflect back on all the years that they’ve been coming and all the different types of experiences they’ve had.”
With each speaker, the Lesher Foundation supports a local nonprofit partner by producing a video interview with members of the nonprofit and showing it to audiences. Organizers partner with KTVU Fox 2 to produce a video that is then aired to help the nonprofit raise more awareness about their cause.
“We also show the video at the speaker event, so everyone who’s attending gets familiar with the nonprofit,” Levine said. “If the speaker has a particular focus, we may be able to identify a nonprofit that sort of aligns with their interests.”
The nonprofit partner for the Vicente Fox event is Fresh Approach, an organization focusing on nutrition and agriculture that strives to increase food access in underprivileged areas.
Susan Haley, the Lesher Foundation’s senior program officer and director of operations, said her favorite experiences with the speaker series over the years include meeting biographer and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and getting to speak with journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story for the Washington Post in 1972.
Haley recalls Woodward and Bernstein speaking together, which they hadn’t done in years, after visiting Mark Felt, the former deputy director of the FBI who served as the reporters’ anonymous source known as “Deep Throat” during the Watergate scandal. Felt lived in Santa Rosa for years, and his name had just become public near the end of his life.
“Woodward and Bernstein flew out early, rented a car and drove to Santa Rosa so that Bernstein could meet (Felt) for the first time ever,” Haley said. “They talked to the audience about meeting Felt.”
Haley said another unique memory from the speaker series was meeting Columbus Zoo and Aquarium director Jack Hanna and wildlife conservationist Jeff Corwin, and getting to see many animals, including a large porcupine.
Nilofar Gardezi, the Lesher Foundation’s program officer and grants manager, recalled a fond memory from the speaker series was meeting a childhood hero, actor LeVar Burton.
“Not only do I love him from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ but through his earlier show ‘Reading Rainbow,’” Gardezi said. “He helped me understand that stories could allow me to escape into other worlds … and it showed me that it was important to hold space for and really listen to other people’s perspectives and opinions. Having him as a Newsmakers speaker was thrilling. He was able to hold that same magical space of deep listening and of curiosity for us all that evening.”
Memorable moments
Levine said a memorable experience was bringing in former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and connecting him with local change-makers. One of the programs Tubbs is well known for is creating a pilot project to support folks who are living in poverty in Stockton.
“There were a lot of leaders in our county working on this topic to create this program that he had called guaranteed income,” Levine said. “They’ve been working on this for a few years in the county, both in Contra Costa and Alameda, so we brought them all together and had a special dinner with Michael Tubbs so that he could just talk with them.”
Another memorable speaker for Levine was Nikole Hannah-Jones, who discussed journalism and “The 1619 Project,” which addresses slavery’s connection to the founding of the United States.
Daniel Sweetnam, a social studies teacher at California High School in San Ramon, said he has attended the speaker series as a season pass holder. Sweetnam has seen many speakers, including Don Lemon, Kate Biberdorf, and Abby Wambach.
“It’s an interesting perspective that you don’t usually get to see, and one of the people was this woman who was the first female NFL referee (Sarah Thomas),” Sweetnam said. “I don’t really know how you become an NFL referee, and I got to see it from her perspective as a woman doing it when no other woman had. It’s cool (because) you learn new stuff about topics that you don’t usually know a lot about, and you get an insider’s perspective that you might not usually get.”
On April 8, 2015, Thomas was one of nine new game officials added to the NFL officiating roster for the 2015 season, becoming the first full-time female official in NFL history. She was a featured Lesher speaker in 2023.
Sweetnam said the series has helped him understand a wide array of perspectives.
“If you look at the lineups you get a lot of different political and social perspectives,” Sweetnam said. “For example, you’ll see Republicans up there along with Democrats. I think the goal is to find common ground, or just understand someone else’s point of view a little better.”
Keerthi Eraniyan is a 10th grader at California High School in San Ramon. Contra Costa Youth Journalism coverage of the Newsmakers series was made possible by support from the Lesher Foundation and the Bay City News Foundation. Stories are produced independently by the CCYJ news team. This story originally appeared in CCSpin.