Wednesday, September 1, 2021
10 a.m. & 2 p.m.
Live via Zoom and BCSGA Facebook

James R. “Fitz” Fitzgerald remains an active criminal profiler and forensic linguist with his company, James R. Fitzgerald Associates, LLC, even after retiring in 2007 with 20 years in the FBI as a Supervisory Special Agent, along with 11 years before that as a police officer/detective/sergeant on the Bensalem Twp. (PA) PD. During his extensive and varied law enforcement career he successfully investigated numerous homicides, sexual assaults, kidnappings, bank robberies, and other violent crimes, as well as matters of international notoriety to include the Unabom, Jon Benet Ramsey, Anthrax, and DC Sniper cases as a profiler and/or a forensic linguist.

Jim’s role in helping to solve the Unabom serial bomber investigation was highlighted in Discovery Channel’s scripted mini-series Manhunt: Unabomber, which aired over eight weeks beginning August 1, 2017. In it, he was portrayed by actor Sam Worthington. Jim served as the Consulting Producer on the series. It is presently available on Netflix and on DVD.

Jim was one of several renowned experts on CBS television’s four-hour documentary series The Case of: Jon Benet Ramsey, which aired in September 2016. He was also a featured expert on Oxygen Network’s The Case of: Caylee Anthony. He appeared on Reelz Channel’s Notorious, which premiered in March 2019.

Jim was one of two technical advisors for CBS-TV’s Criminal Minds, was one of two technical advisors for Fox TV’s Sleepy Hollow, was co-host and executive producer of A&E’s Killer Profile, and continues to make frequent appearances on cable news networks as well as radio shows, internet programs, podcasts, and has been featured in numerous newspaper and magazine articles over the last decade.

In 2021 Jim created, executive produced, and hosted an eight-episode limited-podcast titled The Fitz Files – Manhunt: Unabomber.

Book I in Jim’s four-part memoir series, A Journey to the Center of the Mind (JCM), relates to his youthful coming-of-age years in Philadelphia and beyond, and was published in 2014. JCM Book II, which covers his 11 years as a police officer/detective/sergeant, was published in February 2017. In JCM Book III, Jim writes of his first ten years in the FBI, from Quantico to New York City, back to Quantico as a new profiler, and ending with a detailed chapter about his role in the Unabom investigation. It was published in July 2017. The award nominated audio version of JCM Book III was released in Summer 2019.

Jim presently serves on the faculty at two U.S. universities. They are Hofstra University and the California University of Pennsylvania. He occasionally lectures at other schools and institutions both nationally and internationally.

James R. Fitzgerald is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. in Law Enforcement and Corrections. He also holds an M.S. from Villanova University in Human Organizational Science and an M.S. from Georgetown University in Linguistics.

Find more information about James Fitzgerald, Twitter - @JFitzJourney

Thursday, October 7, 2021
7 p.m.
Live via Zoom and BCSGA Facebook

Pam has worked as an Australian general practitioner since 1987, with particular interests in sexual health, women’s health, and mental health. She is an Associate Professor (adjunct) with the Centre for Maternity Newborn and Families Research Centre MHIQ, Griffith University, a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of General Practice at The University of Queensland, and founder of the non-profit Possums for Mothers and Babies Ltd.

Over the past 15 years Pam has, with various teams, developed and published the pioneering evidence-base for Neuroprotective Developmental Care, or 'the Possums programs'. Her research has been supported by an RACGP Foundation Chris Silagy Research Scholarship; two Primary Health Care Education and Research Development Fellowships; a school-based scholarship through the Children’s Nutrition Research Centre at The University of Queensland; the Queensland Centre for Mothers and Babies; and the Discipline of General Practice at The University of Queensland.

Her medical publications include a cover article in the BMJ, a lead article in Archives of Disease in Childhood, and a featured article in Breastfeeding Medicine. She was recipient of the RACGP’s Alan Chancellor Award in 2014.

Thursday, November 4, 2021
10 a.m. & 2 p.m.
Live via Zoom and BCSGA Facebook

A real life “Guardian of the Galaxy,” Dr. Moogega “Moo” Cooper holds the awesome responsibility of keeping the red planet safe from any of the Earth’s contaminants. Moo is the planetary protection lead of the famed NASA 2020 Mars mission—with its highly viewed landing on February 18, 2021. Her work with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is integral to the ongoing mission to discern whether Mars could be habitable for humans and that we don’t harm what’s already there—a job she has been working up to for most of her life.

After graduating from high school at 16, Cooper studied physics as an undergraduate, received a master's degree and went on to earn her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at 24 years old with a dissertation on spacecraft materials.

Moo is passionate about empowering organizations and others to achieve their dreams and overcome obstacles that she articulately conveys through her life story and love of her work. A role model for women in science and technology, she is also passionate about introducing more people to the wonders of the STEAM world, including by talking about her work to boys and girls from underrepresented communities and appearing on shows like Because Space and Bill Nye Saves the World.

Moo is a recipient of several awards, including the NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal, the Charles Elachi Award for Exceptional Early Career Achievement, and JPL Voyager Awards for Technical Leadership.

Thursday, February 24, 2022
10 a.m.
Live via Zoom and BCSGA Facebook

Justin Hansford is a Howard University School of Law Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. Professor Hansford was previously a Democracy Project Fellow at Harvard University, a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and an Associate Professor of Law at Saint Louis University. He has a B.A. from Howard University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a founder of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives. Professor Hansford also has earned a Fulbright Scholar award to study the legal career of Nelson Mandela, and served as a clerk for Judge Damon J. Keith on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Professor Hansford is a leading scholar and activist in the areas of critical race theory, human rights, and law and social movements. He is a co-author of the forthcoming Seventh Edition of Race, Racism and American Law, the celebrated legal textbook that was the first casebook published specifically for teaching race-related law courses. His interdisciplinary scholarship has appeared in academic journals at various universities, including Harvard, Georgetown, Fordham, and the University of California at Hastings. He also is a member of the Stanford Medicine Commission on Justice and Equity.

In the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Hansford worked to empower the Ferguson community through community-based legal advocacy. He co-authored the Ferguson to Geneva human rights shadow report and accompanied the Ferguson protesters and Mike Brown’s family to Geneva, Switzerland, to testify at the United Nations. He has served as a policy advisor for proposed post-Ferguson reforms at the local, state, and federal level, testifying before the Ferguson Commission, the Missouri Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Thursday, March 24, 2022
10 a.m. & 2 p.m.
Live via Zoom and BCSGA Facebook

Erika L. Sánchez is a novelist, poet, feminist, and cheerleader for young women everywhere. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Young Adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf, 2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the acclaimed debut poetry collection, Lessons in Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017), which the Washington Post called “a fierce, assertive debut.” Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Poets.org, Vinyl Poetry, Guernica, diode, Boston Review, the Paris Review, Gulf Coast, POETRY Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. Her poetry has also been featured on “Latino USA” on NPR and published in Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking 2015). She has published nonfiction with Al Jazeera, ESPN.com, the Guardian, NBC News, Rolling Stone, Salon, and Cosmopolitan for Latinas, where she was the sex and love advice columnist. Sánchez has been the recipient of a Princeton Arts Fellowship 2017-2019, a CantoMundo Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. She was recently appointed the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Chair in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at DePaul University.

In an interview with Latino Book Review, Sánchez was asked about releasing a book of prose and poetry in the same year, and how the writing process for each genre differed: “I’d been working on my poems since college, so the book was over a decade of work. The novel took about 5 years, from start to publication. The writing process for poetry and prose is significantly different for me. Poetry requires a lot of silence and contemplation. It can take me years to finish one poem. I’m incredibly meticulous. The novel was different in that I wrote some of it in a frenzy. There was a time I wrote obsessively for several weeks. It took over my life. But I suppose I still write prose like a poet because I printed out my first draft and rewrote the whole thing. I pay a lot of attention to diction, rhythm, and image, which is why a finished product takes forever.”

The daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants, Sánchez grew up in the working class town of Cicero, IL. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago, then went onto Madrid, Spain on a Fulbright Scholarship. After her scholarship, she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where she received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Chicago.

TBD

Rob Reiner first came to fame as a two-time Emmy Award winning actor on the landmark television series All In the Family. He went on to become an acclaimed director of some of the most popular and influential motion pictures. His work ranges from the satire This Is Spinal Tap to dramas like Stand By Me, Misery, A Few Good Men, and Ghosts of Mississippi to romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally, to the enduring uncharacteristic The American President, to The Princess Bride. His now 20 films also include The Bucket List, Flipped, LBJ starring Woody Harrelson and most recently Shock and Awe, about the run up to the war in Iraq, also starring Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, James Marsden, and Reiner himself.

In his speaking events, Reiner discusses the enduring legacy of his work, from the revived cultural relevance of All in the Family to the perpetual popularity of many of his films. An outspoken political activist and co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, Reiner is a frequent speaker at rallies and live events, addressing topical issues, including domestic violence, healthcare, education, substance abuse, and our current political division.

Reiner is also a dedicated political activist. In California in 1998 he passed a tobacco tax initiative to fund early childhood development. And for seven years he chaired California’s First Five Commission to oversee the implementation of the initiative. In 2003 he led the effort to save Ahmanson Ranch from an environmentally harmful development in the Santa Monica Mountains. He and his wife, Michele helped form The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which filed a federal lawsuit to overturn California’s Prop 8. Their victory at the Supreme Court paved the way for marriage equality nationwide.

Recently he’s been outspoken through Twitter, Mini Doc videos and appearances on news broadcasts about Donald Trump’s toxic presidency and the fight to protect our democracy.