Plenary Speakers & Guests
Keynotes
 Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Francis S. Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. Collins served as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 2008. The Human Genome Project culminated with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book, in April 2003. Collins is also known for his consistent emphasis on the importance of ethical and legal issues in genetics, and played a major role in the passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. Collins has a longstanding interest in the interface between science and faith, and has written about this in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006). His new book on personalized medicine, The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine (HarperCollins) will be published in 2010. Collins received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University, and a M.D. with honors from the University of North Carolina. Before coming to NIH, Collins spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007.
 Wendy Kopp
Wendy Kopp is the chief executive officer and founder of Teach For America (TFA), the national corps of recent college graduates who commit to teach for at least two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in pursuit of educational excellence and equity. TFA’s mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation’s most promising future leaders in the effort.
Kopp proposed the creation of TFA in her undergraduate senior thesis in 1989 and has continued to sustain and grow the organization since. In the 2009-2010 school year some 7,300 corps members will teach in our country’s neediest communities, reaching more than 450,000 students. They join the nearly 17,000 TFA alumni who—still in their 20s and 30s, continue to assume significant leadership roles in education and social reform.
Under Kopp’s leadership, TFA is in the midst of an effort to grow to scale while maximizing the impact of corps members and alumni as a force for short-term and long-term change. Kopp also serves as the chief executive of Teach For All, which is supporting the development of TFA’s model in other countries.
Kopp is the author of One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way. She holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University. She resides in New York City with her husband Richard Barth and their four children.
 John M. Perkins
John M. Perkins is a sharecropper’s son who grew up in New Hebron, Mississippi amidst dire poverty. Fleeing to California at age 17 after his older brother’s murder at the hands of a town marshal. After converting to Christianity in 1960 he returned to Mendenhall, Mississippi to share the gospel of Christ. While in Mississippi, his outspoken nature and support and leadership in civil rights demonstrations resulted in repeated harassment, beatings and imprisonment. In Mendenhall, Perkins and his wife, Vera Mae, founded Voice of Calvary Ministries. This Christian community development ministry started a church, health center, leadership development program, thrift store, low-income housing development, and training center. In 1982, the Perkins family returned to California and lived in the city of Pasadena where Perkins and his wife founded Harambee Christian Family Center in Northwest Pasadena, a neighborhood that had one of the highest daytime crime rates in California. In 1983, while yet in California, Perkins and his wife, along with a few friends and other major supporters, established the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development, Inc for the sole purpose of supporting their mission of advancing the principles of Christian community development and racial reconciliation throughout the world. In 1989, Perkins along-side other Christian leaders formed the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) held its first annual conference in Chicago in 1989. CCDA has grown from 37 founding members to 6,800 individuals and 600 churches, ministries, institutions and businesses in more than 100 cities and townships across the country.
 Richard Stearns
Richard Stearns is president of the U.S. offices of World Vision International. Rich’s life demonstrates not only passion and commitment but also humility, spontaneity, and a genuine desire to serve. As he works energetically to engage Americans in World Vision’s global mission, his insight and sense of humor inspire them to help transform our world. Stearns chronicles his journey from corporate CEO to advocate for those affected by poverty and injustice in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, published by Thomas Nelson in March 2009. The book challenges readers to view the gospel as more than a private transaction between God and individual Christians.
Guests
 Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu led a formidable crusade in support of justice and racial conciliation in South Africa. Tutu was elected Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, an office he held until his retirement in 1996. In 1996, he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set-up to probe gross human rights violations during apartheid. Following the presentation of the Commission’s report to then president Mandela in October 1998, Tutu has been a visiting professor at Emory University, Atlanta, the Episcopal Divinity School, Boston and the University of North Florida, Jacksonville.
 Robin Meade
Robin Meade is the anchor of HLN’s morning show, Morning Express with Robin Meade. Among other stories, Meade anchored the network’s coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and in July of 2008, she scored the exclusive first interview with freed American hostages – at their request – after their release from Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) captors. In June of 2009, Meade performed a tandem skydive with President George Herbert Walker Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, to commemorate Pres. Bush’s 85th birthday. She is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta.
Meade's first book, Morning Sunshine! How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It, Too, was released in September 2009 and instantly became a New York Times bestseller.
Meade also serves as co-host with Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Turner Private Network’s AccentHealth, a program offered in physician waiting rooms focused on consumer-related health stories.
In October 2005, Meade was inducted into the Ohio Broadcasters Hall of Fame. In December 2004, Meade co-hosted the Midwest Emmys with MSNBC’s Lester Holt. She was recognized in 2002 by Lycos as one of the top 20 most popular television news personalities in the broadcast news industry. Meade won a regional Emmy Award for her efforts covering the 1995 collision between a school bus and a train in Fox River Grove, Ill., that killed seven and injured more than 24 teenagers.
Meade attended Malone College and Ashland University where she majored in radio/television production, programming and performance and minored in political science.
Devotional Leaders
 Lauren F. Winner
Dr. Lauren F. Winner writes and lectures widely on Christian practice, the history of Christianity in America, and Jewish-Christian relations at Duke Divinity School. She is the author of three books, Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. She has appeared on PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Books and Culture, and Christianity Today. Winner has degrees from Duke, Columbia, and Cambridge universities, and holds a Ph.D. in history. The former book editor for Beliefnet, Lauren teaches at Duke Divinity School, and lives in Durham, North Carolina. Lauren travels extensively to lecture and teach, and during the academic year of 2007-2008, she is a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. (While there, she's revising her dissertation, which examines household religious practice in eighteenth-century Virginia, for publication.) When she’s home, you can usually find her curled up, on her couch or screen porch, with a good novel.
 Tim Elmore
Dr. Tim Elmore is the Founder and President of Growing Leaders, a non-profit organization created to develop emerging leaders and connect generations. Through Growing Leaders, he and his team are equipping middle school, high school and college students on hundreds of campuses across the US and overseas to think and act like authentic, servant leaders.
Dr. Elmore has authored more than twenty books, including the bestselling Habitudes: Images that Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes, Life Giving Mentors and Nurturing the Leader Within Your Child. He has appeared on ABC’s Family Channel, “Focus on the Family” and other national radio broadcasts casting vision for developing next generation leaders.
Worship
 Christy Nockels
Christy Nockels grew up in Oklahoma as the daughter of a pastor and a piano teacher. Nockles met her husband Nathan in 1993 at the Christian Artists Seminar in Estes Park, Colorado. They married in 1995 and the two began serving as worship leaders in their local church in Oklahoma City. Louie Giglio invited Christy and Nathan to attend the very first Passion Conference in Austin, Texas in 1997. The couple signed a recording contract as Watermark and moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1998. Watermark recorded five albums with Rocketown Records. Christy now has more time at home with their children, and more availability to focus on leading worship and even teaching for various women’s events. Christy and Nathan have continued to serve at Passion Conferences and in 2008, they moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to be a founding family of Passion City. |
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