Our Best Bet: How Investing in Children Can Save the World

Carolyn S. Miles, president and chief executive officer for Save the Children, presents Our Best Bet: How Investing in Children Can Change the World on Tuesday, October 8, 2013, at 8 p.m. in the Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Carolyn S. Miles has been president and CEO of Save the Children since 2011, and is the first woman to hold this post. As the organization’s leader, Miles has focused on hunger, learning outcomes, and preventing child mortality as signature issues. Before joining Save the Children in 1998, Miles worked in the private sector in the United States and in Hong Kong, and as an entrepreneur in Asia. Save the Children is an independent organization that serves children in need in the United States and around the world. Save the Children currently serves more than 125 million children in the United States and 120 other countries.

Miles is the invited speaker for the 2013 Wilson Lecture. The lecture, which is sponsored by the College’s Office of the President, is considered the College's premier intellectual event. H. Kim Bottomly, president of Wellesley College, has called the annual lecture “the centerpiece of the academic year at Wellesley.” Each year, the College brings speakers to campus whose contributions in their fields of expertise have major implications across a broad spectrum.

The Wilson Lecture is named for Carolyn Ann Wilson, Wellesley College Class of 1910, an alumna who wrote for the Chicago Tribune and who was one of only a few female journalists to cover World War I from the battlefield. She endowed the lecture in 1962 hoping that it would continue to engage the Wellesley community in the most significant issues of the day for years to come. Year after year, Wellesley welcomes leading scholars and activists who bring the latest news from the front—whatever or wherever it might be. Past speakers have included Elie Wiesel, Cornel West, Lester Thurow, Lani Guinier, Oliver Sacks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Toni Morrison, Ambassador Anne Patterson, Chinua Achebe, and Paul Farmer, among others.

Miles’ visit to campus coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Wellesley College Child Study Center. There will be additional opportunities to celebrate this milestone anniversary with events and lectures throughout the 2013-2014 academic year.

A live stream of the talk will be available at Wellesley Live.