Baltimore’s own; a columnist for Salon; published in the New York Times and Rolling Stone; and best-selling author of The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America and The Cook Up:  A Crack Rock Memoir about his former life as a drug dealer; and founder of the BMORE Writer’s Project.

Read Watkins’s extended biography below and visit his website here.

Edward Murrow Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs; former Middle East Editor of Newsweek; a regular contributor to The Times, Vanity Fair, Granta, The New York Times; TED Talk speaker, and author of numerous books including her most recent, The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria.

Read di Giovanni’s extended biography below and visit her website here.

Civil rights advocate; former professor of psychology and education at the Tuskegee Institute and subsequently the  former Dean of Students at the Tuskegee Institute; recent recipient of an honorary degree from St. Olaf College; and currently the chairman of the Africa United States Partnership Fund (AUSPF).

Read Phillips’s extended biography below and visit his AUSPF website here.

FOR NEW AND RENEWING MEMBERS:
All prices include annual membership dues ($50)

FOR EXISTING MEMBERS:
Pricing does not include annual membership dues

To receive the discounted group rate of $179, be sure to book your reservation before October 19, 2017.  The links below and the dedicated reservation line are designed specifically for CCHA, so no code is required when using these to get the discounted rate.

Conference attendees should make reservations at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel by using either the link provided HERE or by calling the dedicated group reservation line at 1-877-212-5752. Reservations made by other means may not receive the discounted rate.

A Salon columnist; MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore; ME from Johns Hopkins; University of Baltimore Professor; published in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, best-selling author of The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America and The Cook Up:  A Crack Rock Memoir; founder of the BMORE Writer’s Project— D. Watkins has impressive credentials. But they came with a heavy cost. Watkins had to overcome the culture of Baltimore’s mean streets and his past as a drug dealer. “I saw bullets rip through the faces of adolescents. I saw mothers abandon their kids. I saw fathers go out for milk to never return. I saw kids turn into killers. Cops steal and grandparents raise infants around here.”

As of September 2017, Janine di Giovanni will be the Edward Murrow Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs in New York researching Syrian minorities. She is the former Middle East editor of Newsweek and a recent Pakis Scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she focused on Track 2 Diplomacy, International Law and International Security as well as war crimes

In 2016, she was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award for her distinguished work in war zones focusing on tracking war criminals over the past 25 years, most recently, Syria.

Currently working in Syria and Iraq, she is focusing on ISIS and other insurgency groups in the Middle East, but her overall thesis is on talking to non-state actors to reduce conflict and providing political representation post-war to minorities.

 Her most recent book, “The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria” has been called “searing and necessary” by the New York Times and has so far won three awards a well as being named one of the best human rights books in 2016.  It has been translated into 18 languages so far, and has won three awards in 2016.  It is shortlisted for the Helen Bernstein Award at the New York Public Library for Excellence in Journalism.

  A skilled analyst, communicator and strategist, she is also non-resident International Security Fellow at the New America Foundation and an Associate Fellow at The Geneva Centre for Security Policy, where she moderates their geopolitical debate series. She is a former Ochberg Fellow at Columbia School of Journalism, given in recognition of her work with victims of trauma. She is a frequent moderator of high-level panels, an analyst on foreign policy at conferences and has worked for the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, the UN, Harvard’s Kennedy School; Princeton, the LSE, and many other institutions.  In 2014, she also worked for the Center for Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery at Central European University with a focus on transitional justice in Aleppo.

 Her TED talk on conflict resolution and transitional justice, filmed at the USIP, has reached more than 950,000 viewers. She is a former adviser on the Syria conflict to the UNHCR, and has advised senior officials on policy for the EU, NATO and others. She was a delegate to William Hague’s conference on addressing sexual violence during conflict and has published extensively on the subject.

As a journalist, she has reported war, conflict and its aftermath for more than 25 years in the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa.  She has witnessed the siege of Sarajevo, the fall of Grozny and the destruction of Srebrenica and Rwanda in 1994 as well as more than a dozen active conflicts where she was a front-line witness.  Her documentation of war crimes has resulted in seven books and her work has been used to cite criminals in later Tribunals.

 She has won nine awards and “The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria”) and has been the subject of two long-format documentaries, including 7 Days in Syria.

Di Giovanni is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She lives in Paris and holds American, British and French nationalities.

She has worked extensively in the following war and conflict zones and during humanitarian crisis: Palestine/Israel; Bosnia; Serbia; Kosovo; Montenegro; Albania; East Timor; Zimbabwe; Somalia; Ivory Coast; Nigeria; Liberia; Sierra Leone; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Rwanda; South Africa; Egypt; Syria; Libya; Tunisia; Lebanon; Iraq; Iran; Afghanistan; Pakistan; India; Bahrain; UAE; Algeria; Turkey Greece; Vietnam and other countries.

Life-long humanitarian; civil rights advocate; former professor of psychology and education at the Tuskegee Institute; former Dean of Students at the Tuskegee Institute; leader in creating community-based entrepreneurial opportunities for those in need; recent recipient of an honorary degree from St. Olaf College; current chairman of the Africa United States Partnership fund where he oversees a non-profit focused on “actively engaging youth, women, and families in generating products and services that produce sustainable and profitable results”; Percival Bertrand “Bert” Phillips is a truly altruistic and influential individual. “I know that all men and women in every part of this world are my brothers and my sisters and I need to reach out to them in love and peace.”