Wednesday, February 15

Keynote Address by Iyanla Vanzant
As seen on The Oprah Winfrey Show™

Iyanla Vanzant is the premier African American speaker, author, and teacher on the subjects of spirituality, personal development, and loving relationships.     

Vanzant is the author of 15 books, including five New York Times Best Sellers. Vanzant has touched the minds and heart of readers selling over 8 million copies in 23 languages. Her latest title, Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through, recountsthe last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons she learnedfrom the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter’s 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.

Iyanla appears as a recurring guest on nationally syndicated programs, including The View, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, The Michael Baisden Show, and most recently on The Oprah Winfrey Show™, as well as national radio programs. 

Vanzant has made a major contribution to bridging the divide between men and women; black and white; youth and the elders; Christians and non-traditional believers of all faiths. She offers something for everyone that makes day-to-day living a little easier to understand and navigate.  Her motto, “You’ve got to do the work, the real hard work, on yourself, from the inside out,” has inspired her audience to make positive changes in their lives for over two decades.

From her peaceful presence and disposition, you would imagine that life has been easy for Iyanla Vanzant. It has not. A difficult and dysfunctional upbringing resulted in her being raped at the tender age of nine; a teenage mother by age 16; a long-time welfare recipient; a partner in an abusive relationship and the survivor of two suicide attempts. These are the same experiences that led her to Medgar Evers College (City University of New York) at the age of 30, where she earned a B.S. Degree in Public Administration and Early Childhood Education, graduating Summa Cum Laude.  From there, she went on to earn a law degree from City University Law School at Queens College, which propelled her into the number one ranked Public Defenders office in the country, the Philadelphia Public Defender. 

Her transition into talk radio was a fluke. After leaving the Defenders Office, she was invited to be a guest on a local radio talk show in Philadelphia. The subject: From Welfare to Work: What’s The Plan for Women. Who better to discuss how to move from public assistance to personal independence? The guest spot unfolded into a weekly show and the penning of her first book, Tapping The Power Within: A Path To Self-Empowerment For Black Women, where Vanzant first shared her propensity for all things spiritual. Iyanla describes the next ten years of her life as a whirlwind catapulting her to national prominence and recognition. According to Vanzant, “My life was moving so fast, I had to run to keep up with it.”

Adding to her prominence as a speaker and best-selling author, Vanzant is also the founder and Executive Director of the Inner Visions Institute For Spiritual Development which conducts workshops and classes around the country, throughout Africa and the United Kingdom, sharing her brand of practical spiritual and personal growth skills which is a blend of ancient African wisdom and New Thought Christianity.