"Reimagining the World Together: Why Friendship Matters for Our Future" is a fall webinar series that examines the problems of the present and the possibilities for the future through moderated conversations between pairs of friends.

The free series is open to the public and for Duke students is also available as a course. Co-sponsored by the Fuqua/Coach Center on Leadership and Ethics, the fall 2020 webinar series is part of The Purpose Project at Duke, a new initiative funded by The Duke Endowment and hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics in collaboration with Duke Divinity School and the Office of Undergraduate Education.

As part of The Purpose Project, all Duke undergraduates, graduate, and professional students will explore purpose as a defining feature of their Duke educational experience and participate in a broad multidimensional series of robust and complementary courses and programs.

The dates and speakers in the "Reimagining the World Together: Why Friendship Matters for Our Future" fall webinar series include:

September 10, 5:15 p.m.: Paul Farmer and Todd McCormack

Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world’s poorest people. He founded Partners in Health to achieve this end. Todd McCormack was one of the founding board members of Partners in Health, and is also a senior corporate vice president at IMG Media, the largest independent producer and distributor of sports programming in the world. Join Farmer and McCormack for a conversation of how their friendship has shaped their lives, work, and purpose.

September 17, 5:30 p.m.: Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods

Dr. Brian Hare is a core member of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience, a professor in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Vanessa Woods is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, “Puppy Kindergarten,” and an award winning writer and journalist. Woods received the Australasian Science award for journalism in 2004. Hare and Woods’ first book together, The Genius of Dogs, was a New York Times bestseller.

September 24, 5:15 p.m.: Shane Battier and Ravi Gupta

Shane Battier is vice president, Basketball Development & Analytics, of the Miami Heat, using his distinguished 13-year NBA career and heralded collegiate basketball career at Duke University to help guide the Heat’s basketball development strategy. Ravi Gupta is a partner at Sequoia Capital, where he focuses on consumer, mobile/Internet, and fintech investments. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2019, Ravi was COO and CFO of Instacart.

October 1 (noon): Kathleen Cravero and Mike Merson

Michael H. Merson is the Wolfgang Joklik Professor of Global Health and Professor of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine. He was the founding director of the Duke Global Health Institute from 2006-2017, served as vice president and vice provost for Global Affairs from 2011 -2018 at Duke University and is currently the founding director of Sing Health Duke-NUS Global Health Institute. Before joining CUNY, Dr. Kathleen Cravero spent 25 years working for the United Nations, serving in five different United Nations agencies and living in four different countries. She also held senior UN positions in Geneva and New York including: assistant secretary general for Conflict Prevention and Recovery (UNDP), deputy executive director for UNAIDS, resident and humanitarian coordinator in Burundi, and UNICEF representative in Uganda.

October 8, 5:15 p.m.:  Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow

Ann Friedman is an American magazine editor, journalist, podcaster, and pie chart artist. She writes about gender, politics, and social issues. Previously, she was deputy editor for The American Prospect, executive editor at the Los Angeles-based GOOD magazine, and a co-founder of the employee-driven, crowd-sourced spin-off Tomorrow magazine. Aminatou Sow is a United States-based businesswoman, digital strategist, writer, podcast host, and co-founder of Tech LadyMafia. She and Friedman cohost the podcast Call Your Girlfriend and recently published a book together, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close.

October 15, 5:15 p.m.: Bree Newsome Bass and Gina Newsome Duncan

Bree Newsome Bass is an artist, activist, and public speaker. She is an organizer in the modern Civil Rights movement and has helped develop several non-profit and grassroots organizations. In 2015, she attracted national attention when she scaled a flagpole at South Carolina’s capitol building to remove the Confederate battle flag in protest of systemic racism following the racially-motivated murders at Emanuel AME in Charleston. Dr. Gina Newsome Duncan is an assistant professor of Psychiatry and Health Behavior. She is a regular blogger on the American Psychiatric Associations Healthy Minds website at www.apahealthyminds.blogspot.com. While at Harvard, she started a community-based participatory research project called Abundant Life Through Applied Resilience (ALTAR), which is a church-based mental health promotion program, and she is continuing that work at Georgia Health Sciences University.

November 5, 5:15 p.m.: Anthony Arnove and Sonia Shah

Sonia Shah is an investigative journalist and author of The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. Anthony Arnove produced the Academy Award–nominated documentary Dirty Wars, based on Jeremy Scahill’s book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and wrote, directed, and produced The People Speak with Howard Zinn. He is the editor of several books, including Voices of a People’s History of the United States (which he coedited with Zinn); The Essential Chomsky; Howard Zinn Speaks; and Iraq Under Siege.

Register for each webinar separately.