Shiza Shahid, a social entrepreneur and co-founder of the Malala Fund with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, will deliver the Wyatt Lecture at Bellarmine University on Nov. 15, 2023.
The lecture, titled “The Extraordinary Impact We Can Create,” will begin at 7 p.m. in Frazier Hall and will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The event is free and open to the public.
Shahid, who has been an activist since her teenage years in Islamabad, Pakistan, will speak about her own journey to create scalable social change and how ordinary people can make extraordinary waves.
As a teen, she spent time volunteering with a nonprofit that brought medical care and supplies into a women’s prison in Pakistan, and she volunteered at a relief camp following a devastating earthquake in 2005 in which she lost her best friend.
She got her first exposure to startups, entrepreneurship and technology at Stanford University, which she attended on a full scholarship.
In 2013, Shahid co-founded the Malala Fund (http://www.malala.org) with Malala Yousafzai, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight for the right of every child to receive an education. Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban
in 2012 for speaking out against its terrorist regime; she and her family relocated to the United Kingdom.
Shahid served as founding CEO of the non-profit Malala Fund, which works to provide educational opportunities for girls and women in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
She is now the co-founder and co-CEO of Our Place, a line of cookware designed to fit the needs of the multiethnic American kitchen. Shahid also invests in mission-driven startups and female and diverse entrepreneurs through her fund NOW Ventures,
which she founded in partnership with AngelList, the largest venture capital platform in the world.
She was named one of Time Magazine’s 30 under 30 people changing the world, Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs, and one of Elle Magazine’s Top Women in Tech.
The Wyatt Lecture Series: The
Wyatt Lecture Series at Bellarmine University was
created and endowed in 1990 by former Louisville Mayor and Lt. Gov. Wilson W. Wyatt and his wife, Anne D. Wyatt. Wilson Wyatt founded the prominent Louisville law firm of Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs and served a term as chair of the Bellarmine Board
of Trustees. Anne Wyatt was active in public affairs at the local, state, and national levels.
The Wyatt Lecture Series is intended to bring to campus individuals of national or international prominence who have distinguished themselves in government or public service or who have been important observers and analysts of public affairs and government.
During their visit to Bellarmine, Wyatt Lecturers deliver a public address and preside over smaller gatherings for faculty and students.
Previous Wyatt Lecturers include author and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists James B. Reston, David Broder and Bob Woodward; Sir Edward Heath, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; television news journalist
Andrea Mitchell; PBS NewsHour’s Ray Suárez and Jim Lehrer; and Rebecca Skloot, author of New York Times bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.