Liz Walker to serve as keynote speaker at UMD’s Drum Major Awards breakfast

Award-winning television journalist Liz Walker will be this year’s keynote speaker for the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast and Drum Major Awards breakfast on Jan. 29 at 8:30 a.m. at the Woodland Commons on the UMass Dartmouth campus.

The breakfast will also include the presentation of the Drum Major Awards to area winners who have honored Dr. King’s call to citizens to be “drum majors for justice.” Ms. Walker, who spent 20 years anchoring WBZ television, is now a documentary film producer, an entrepreneur and a humanitarian working in the war-torn country of Sudan. A 2005 graduate of Harvard Divinity School and an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, she has chosen to combine her communication skills with her passion for serving the world.

In the summer of 2001, she traveled to Sudan on a fact-finding mission on the controversial slave trade. She was so outraged by the human rights atrocities in Sudan and co-founded My Sister’s Keeper, a grass roots initiative that advocates for women and children who are trying to rebuild their country and their lives. She returns to Sudan often, including the region of Darfur, the scene of the 21st century’s first genocide. My Sister’s Keeper has most recently completed the construction of a Girls’ School for more than 500 girls in southern Sudan.

Ms. Walker is the recipient of two Emmys, an Edward R. Murrow Award and special recognition from the prestigious Gabriel Awards for her on-air and documentary work. She currently sits on the Board of Trustees for Andover Newton Theological School, the Regional Advisory Board of the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Tufts Health Foundation and the Board of Overseers for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

She is also on the ministerial staff of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica. Plain, where she works with young people. She is the founder and principal of The Walker. Group LLC, Communications Specialists, focused on corporate public engagement, non-profit capacity building and video production.