KSU To Host Rhodes Scholar On Wednesday

KSU To Host Rhodes Scholar On Wednesday

Posted on September 22, 2014

Kentucky State University President Raymond M. Burse will convene a convocation at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24, in Little Bradford Theater with Rhodes Scholar Rhiana Gunn-Wright. The public is invited to attend.

A native of Chicago, Gunn-Wright has worked for the Office of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, and is currently studying at Oxford University, England.

She is working on a master’s degree in comparative social policy. Previously, she worked as the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Gunn-Wright graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 2011 with majors in African American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies. While at Yale, her research interests in race, gender and public policy culminated in her senior thesis, “Breaking the Brood Mare: Representation, Welfare Policy and Teen Pregnancy in New Haven,” an examination of the relationship between popular images of poor black women and government efforts to reform welfare and manage teen pregnancy. The essay earned several awards, including the William Pickens Prize, the Steere Prize in Women’s Studies and the Lily Rosen Prize in Women’s Health.

Gunn-Wright has continued to engage with similar issues in her time outside the academy, working as an intern in the policy department of the Office of the First Lady during the summer of 2013 and as a health outreach volunteer with sex workers in Washington, D.C.

She will graduate from Oxford University in 2015. She plans to return to her native Chicago to begin consulting work and to attend law school.

Follow this link for a video about Gunn-Wright: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/rhiana-gunn-wright-rhodes_n_2220348.html