Keynote Speaker
Keynote Speaker:
Frances Moore Lappé
“The Wellsprings of Wisdom conference was a unique and moving experience. I have been speaking publicly for 34 years and never before have I experienced the power of a multi-class, multi-racial, multi-age gathering of women, all called to be authentic and supportive of each other. The organizers created a charged yet safe environment so that participants could take risks and open all their senses to learning. I only wish there were more such opportunities for our divided culture. What a healing and empowering opportunity for all! Certainly for me.”
-Frances Moore Lappé
"Some of the 20th century's most vibrant activist thinkers have been American women-Margaret Mead, Jeanette Rankin, Barbara Ward, Dorothy Day-who took it upon themselves to pump life into basic truths. Frances Moore Lappé is among them."
-Washington Post
Frances Moore Lappé's 1971 three-million-copy bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, awakened a whole generation to the human-made causes of hunger and the significance of our everyday choices in creating the world we want.
In 2004 , Tarcher/Penguin released her new book, You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear, co-authored with Jeffrey Perkins. The authors put forth the radical notion that fear can be a source of energy and strength that we can use to create the lives we want and the world we want. And they offer many stories and practical tools to show us how.
In 2002, Lappé released the 30th anniversary sequel to Diet, written with her daughter, Anna Lappé: Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, calls this book "passionate and wise....just the book we need now." Jane Goodall describes Hope's Edge as "absolutely one of the most important books as we move further into the twenty-first century."
In it, the two Lappés' pick up where the original Diet leaves off. Together, they set out on a round-the-world journey to explore the greatest challenges we face at the new millennium. Traveling to Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, they sought answers to the most urgent question of our time-wheather we can go beyond today's consumerism and the isolation of me-first capitalism to find paths we each can walk that will heal our lives and the planet.
In 1990, Lappé co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a ten-year initiative that helped make visible and therefore accelerate the spread of democratic innovations in which regular citizens contribute to problem solving in all dimensions of public life.
Lappé's books have been used in a broad array of courses in hundreds of colleges and universities and in more than 50 countries. They have been translated into over a dozen languages.