Learning and development

Michelle Obama to Join Us at Talent Connect 2019

Note: This post originally appeared on the LinkedIn Talent Solutions blog.

We are excited to announce that Michelle Obama will be joining us for a fireside chat on the main stage at Talent Connect this fall in Dallas. LinkedIn’s 10th annual conference for talent and HR professionals will be held from September 25 to 27. The event will feature three days of engaging speakers, breakthrough insights, and industry best practices, and it will culminate with a conversation with Mrs. Obama in which she’ll reflect on her remarkable life story as well as her passion for bringing together talented people.

Mrs. Obama has been a lawyer, nonprofit executive, university administrator, and undisputed owner of the New York Times best-seller list with her memoir, Becoming, which sat at No. 1 for months on end. And, of course, she was the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

In all her roles, Mrs. Obama has focused on building cohorts and coalitions of talented people who represent a broad range of viewpoints. Early in her career, for example, Mrs. Obama was a junior associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin where she was “parsing abstract intellectual property issues for big corporations,” according to Becoming. But she was also doing campus recruiting for the firm and pioneered tactics to find talented law students from underrepresented groups.

Many years later, her chief White House initiatives — tackling childhood obesity, promoting education, supporting members of the military service and their families — were all built by connecting dynamic people and building communities of advocates, experts, and interested parties.

For Mrs. Obama, connections are an important thread in life. When James Corden, the host of The Late Late Show and Carpool Karaoke, asked her what she would miss about the White House, it was not the ability to order a grilled cheese from the kitchen at 3 a.m. “I’m going to miss the people,” she said.

Join us in Dallas for “Conversation with Michelle Obama” and learn more about the journey that has taken her from Chicago’s South Shore to Washington, D.C., with hundreds of stops across the country and around the world along the way.

Her conversation is sure to be a highlight of the 2019 Talent Connect at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center from September 25 to 27.

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