The 2022 AFA Annual Meeting will host three general sessions featuring keynote speakers, a panel awards presentations, our Presidential Address, and so much more! General Sessions are designed to provide information pertinent to success in fraternity/sorority work delivered by experts in their respective areas. These experts will guide you through their experiences and give you perspective for how to elevate the standard of your work. Because General Sessions are made to bring all conference attendees together, you’ll also have an opportunity to network with other attendees and learn about the happenings of the Association.
Opening General Session featuring April Ryan, White House Correspondent
Wednesday, November 30 | | 7:00 PM
In Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem, author April Ryan celebrates Black women’s resilience and strength, championing those who have transformed their pain into progress despite economic, political, and social challenges. The book celebrates America’s founding Black mothers as ‘sheroes,’ as well as today’s Black women leaders like voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Vice President Kamala Harris, to name a few. April Ryan also pays tribute to mothers, nurses, teachers, activists, and community leaders, noting that all Black women make the extraordinary ordinary.
About April
April Ryan is the longest-serving Black female White House Correspondent. Over the last 25 years, she has covered numerous historical events throughout five presidential administrations. She’s the only Black woman reporter covering urban issues from the White House—a position she has held since the Clinton era.
A graduate of HBCU Morgan State University and member of Delta Sigma Theta, April Ryan is a CNN Political Analyst, DC Bureau Chief for TheGrio, author, speaker, and mother. She is a NAACP Image Awards Nominee for the Social Justice Impact Award (2015) and was named “Journalist of the Year” (2017) by the National Association of Black Journalists. Her hometown is Baltimore, MD.
Future of Fraternity and Sorority Life Panel
Friday, December 2 | 3:45 PM
The Future of Fraternity and Sorority Life Panel brings the thoughts and experiences of higher education and industry leaders to address strategies that assist in making fraternity/sorority work innovative and relevant. This year, we’re excited to host leaders from higher education institutions to discuss how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are transforming the experiences of college students through their rich history, effective practices in developing a culture of community, and strategies to retain, graduate, and serve students.
Our panel will feature:
- Dr. Dwaun Warmack, President of Claflin University
- Dr. Elwood Robinson, Chancellor of Winston-Salem State University
- Dr. Javaune Adams-Gaston, President of Norfolk State University
Closing General Session featuring Anne Helen Petersen, former senior writer at BuzzFeed News
Saturday, December 3 | 3:30 PM
The future of work isn’t completely remote, or completely in-person, or whatever difficult, exhausting situation you endured during the pandemic. The future of work is flexible: in location, but also in the blocks of time we dedicate to the job. That flexibility has the potential to make the workforce more inclusive than ever: to people with child and eldercare responsibilities, for people outside of major urban areas, to women and disabled workers and people who, forever whatever reason, do their best work when not tethered to an office desk for a set number of hours every day. Building on hundreds of interviews with “knowledge” workers, managers, and CEOs from different sectors, this talk will focus on rethinking the building blocks for a resilient, productive, and engaged workforce.
About Anne Helen
Anne Helen Petersen is former senior writer at BuzzFeed News, and now writes her newsletter, Culture Study, as a full-time venture on Substack. She is the author of four books, including Scandals of Classic Hollywood; Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman; and Can’t
Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, based on the viral article of the same name. Her most recent book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, co-authored by Charlie Warzel, was published in December 2021. She received her Ph.D. in media studies from the University of Texas and she lives in Washington State.
