Saint Mary's Head of School Brendan O'Shea is pleased to announce that political commentator and best-selling author Cokie Roberts has accepted the invitation to serve as Saint Mary's 2019 commencement speaker. Commencement exercises for Saint Mary's 177th academic session will be held Sunday, May 19, at 10:30 a.m., in the school's historic oak Grove in downtown Raleigh. Sixty-one young women will receive their high school diplomas.
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ABOUT COKIE ROBERTS
Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and NPR. In her more than 50 years in broadcasting, she has won countless awards, including three Emmy Awards. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and was cited by the American Women in Radio and Television as one of the 50 greatest women in the history of broadcasting. In addition to her reporting, Roberts has written six New York Times bestsellers, most dealing with the roles of women in U.S. history.
In addition to her appearances on the airwaves, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by Universal U Click. The Roberts also wrote two books together: Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families, published in 2011, and From this Day Forward, an account of their now more than 50-year marriage and other marriages in American history. The book immediately went onto The New York Times bestseller list, following Cokie Roberts's number one bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, an account of American women's roles and relationships over time.
Roberts's other history books recounting the untold and remarkable contributions of women to the country's founding and its preservation: Founding Mothers, published in 2004, Ladies of Liberty in 2008, and Capital Dames in 2015, about women and Washington in the Civil War—all also rated as New York Times bestsellers, along with her children's book Founding Mothers, illustrated by Caldecott Award winner Diane Goode. The children's version of Ladies of Liberty, also illustrated by Goode, was published in 2016.
Cokie Roberts holds more than 30 honorary degrees and serves on the boards of several non-profit institutions. President Bush appointed her to his Commission on Service and Civic Participation. In 2008 the Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend," one of the very few Americans to have attained that honor. She is the mother of two and grandmother of six, including Regan Roberts '19, a member of Saint Mary's graduating Class of 2019.
Roberts headlined the Election 2004: Imagine That event at Saint Mary's that won the Southeastern U.S. District III grand award and global gold and silver awards in the special events categories from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in 2004, followed up by her leading role in the Beyond Imagination: Election 2008 event at Saint Mary's in 2008.
ABOUT SAINT MARY'S SCHOOL
Founded in 1842, Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, N.C., is an independent, Episcopal, college-preparatory, boarding and day school, dedicated to academic excellence and personal achievement for young women in grades 9-12.