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.