Spring CUE 2018 Conference

This Keynote is held in Oasis 4 and is streamed live in Primrose A and B, PSCC.

All conference attendees are invited to the Kickoff Keynote Thursday morning. We will be honoring CUE members and friends through our annual CUE Awards Ceremony. Join us as we present the Making IT Happen, Advocate of the Year, and Gold Disk awards.

Special guest Jasmyn Wright will be featured at the beginning of the keynote.

Change the World By Being Yourself - Meredith Walker
If we want to lead a life we find more interesting; one based on our truest and most honest self, we will first have to dare to embrace our individuality. If we continually give in to what the world tells us to do and be, we will never discover the person we could be and never achieve something more substantial. That “something more” is within each of us. Through the telling of her own story, Meredith provides creative ways for her audience to appreciate their truest selves and embrace them as a source of strength and encouragement.

Meredith Walker is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. Walker began her television career under the mentorship of legendary journalist Linda Ellerbee at Nick News. As a producer of that show, Walker traveled the U.S. interviewing kids for the Peabody and Emmy award-winning series. This experience became the foundation of Walker’s deepening interest in the lives of young people.

Walker went on to serve as the head of the Talent Department for Saturday Night Live, where she met her best friend, Amy Poehler. The pair decided to combine talents to create their shared vision of an organization encouraging and celebrating everyday girls experiencing adolescence.
Now living in Austin, Texas, Meredith is leading the charge of what that shared vision became: Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. What started as an online “clubhouse” primarily for girls has evolved to become an inclusive, positive online community for anyone who identifies with its mission of positive self-identification and advocacy.

Walker travels near and far to promote the mission of Smart Girls. She served as the journalism envoy for the U.S. State Department Bureau of Culture and Education’s mission to the Al Za’atari and Emirates Refugee Camps and visited remote primary-care clinics on delegations to Haiti and Malawi.
In 2015 Meredith was named a “Profile In Power” finalist by the Austin Business Journal and Austin Way designated her “The Confidence Builder.” Tribeza Magazine called her “unapologetically, brilliantly herself” in naming her one of their 30 “Persons of the Year.” She was the September 2016 cover woman for Austin Woman magazine.

In 2016, Meredith was a William J. Clinton Distinguished Lecturer at the Clinton School for Public Service. She was a guest of the White House both to host the Champions of Change for Computer Science Education summit and to serve as an expert panelist for The White House Summit: Breaking Down Gender Stereotypes in Media. She returned to Washington, D.C. for the first summit of The United State of Women, where she and Amy Poehler served as co-panelists on the subject of “Revolutionizing Gender Norms.”

Meredith’s appointments include the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders Advisory Council, Common Sense Advisory Board for Gender Equality, The UN Women Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC) and the ONE Girls and Women Advisory Board. She teamed up with the Austin-American Statesman for her outdoor series POCKET ADVENTURES and has been published by POETRY and MOTTO for TIME.

Push Through with Jasmyn Wright
Jasmyn is going to inspire us, just like she does with her students! Central to all of Jasmyn's work is the belief that education, advocacy, and empowerment hold the key to eliminating barriers. She is the CEO & Founder of The Push Through Organization - a non-profit that seeks to equip and inspire people all over the world to overcome adversity. Jasmyn’s Push Through mantra went viral back in November 2016 with 3.7 million views. She’s been featured in The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed News, NPR News, The Today Show, BET, ESSENCE, etc.  Her new and shortened Push Through mantra is now featured in a GAP Kids back to school commercial. Jasmyn’s empowering mantras have been adapted into adult and elementary classroom settings around the world. @Just_Jasmyn #PushThrough wepushthrough.org