The Professor of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Professor Howard French, will headline the fourth edition of the Sterling Leadership Series (SLS). This year’s SLS, themed “Born In Blackness: Truth, Lies and X” is billed as a hybrid event and will hold on 23 November 2022.
The American journalist and academic has been an instructor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 2008. Prior to re-entering the ivory towers, Professor French was an instructor in Cote D’Ivoire in the 1980s before becoming a reporter and international correspondent for the prestigious New York Times, where he wrote extensively on West and Central Africa.
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Sterling Bank, Dapo Martins said, “The Sterling Leadership Series is a platform to bring together a diverse group of opinion leaders and global thinkers to share their views and experiences to shape perspectives on key issues, and inspire others to contribute to the reimagining of a more stable socio-political environment in Nigeria in particular, and the African continent in general.”
Speaking on the inspiration for this year’s theme; Born In Blackness: Truth, Lies And X, Martins said “As a people, we tend to focus on today as our major challenge,” noting that, “Most Gen X, Millennials and Gen Zs are out of sync with history because the few that are informed have an easy tendency to neglect the actual reasons behind today’s actions, and are conditioned to quickly forget the past. This creates a worrisome loop in which we are set to repeat history’s mistakes, time and time again.”
