Ms. Sonya Anderson This is Me

Education

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1. 1. www.nlns.org

   www.nlns.org/Locations_Chicago - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/22/2008   Last Visited: 8/19/2008

   Sonya Anderson, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation
   ...
   Dr. Sonya Anderson, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation

2. 2. www.oprahsschool.com

   www.oprahsschool.com/atom.xml - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/23/2008   Last Visited: 7/18/2008

   When Sonya Anderson attended Yale University in the late 1980s, it took a generous gift from an elderly woman in her community, a relative stranger, to help pay the bills.Ms. Anderson is now the Director of Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.Ms, Anderson says about the woman, "This extraordinary woman, living a very ordinary life, was my savior, my dream come true."
   
   Ms. Anderson was the Keynote Speaker at a fund-raiser for Chicago's South Suburban Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, an African-American community service group with branches nationwide.Anderson spoke to a crowd of 350 mostly African-American women gathered at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago on Sunday afternoon.Anderson drew on her experience, as well as her involvement with Winfrey's South African school, to urge the audience to do everything possible to help poor children get educated.The group raised about $75,000 in scholarship money Sunday for college-bound south suburban students, organizers said.
   
   Responding to recent complaints that the Leadership Academy for Girls is "too strict" Anderson said the criticism is "not necessarily founded on genuine information.""At the same time, we have these girls in our care," Anderson said."It's their home for the vast majority of the year.

3. 3. www.starnewspapers.com

   www.starnewspapers.com/chicago - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/7/2007   Last Visited: 6/7/2007

   "A Celebration of Women in Leadership & Education" featured Sonya Anderson, education director of the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, as the keynote speaker and TV journalist Darlene Hill, of Chicago, as the mistress of ceremonies.
   ...
   A graduate of Yale and Harvard universities, Anderson spent her first two years as an educator in rural Mississippi with the Mississippi Teacher Corps.
   
   Anderson also served as program associate with the Ford Foundation in New York City and as senior associate at Creative Associates International in Washington, D.C.
   
   She joined the Oprah Winfrey Foundation in July 2005 as education program director.
   
   Anderson oversaw the development of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa and manages a number of other domestic and international projects for the foundation.
   
   Officials said Anderson's "intimate and inspirational address ... captured the hearts and attention of the audience with her personal testimony of how the leadership examples set by her mother and grandmother were the catalyst to her current success."
   
   She said at the foundation of her upbringing was a focus on the pursuit of education and the wise application of said knowledge.
   
   With her rich roots in the Mississippi Delta, officials said Anderson is a shining example of the impact and benefit of a combination of strong family ties, proper focus on continuing education and the importance of being community- and civic- minded.
   
   She highlighted the importance of the black matriarch, and how it is incumbent upon black women of today to further embellish this role into leadership opportunities in the home, community, workplace and the world.
   
   With her plethora of professional and personal experiences in the education and leadership arena, officials said Anderson personifies the goals and missions of Jack and Jill of America.