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Events Home > Leadership Foundations With Lauren Ashley Smith ’06 

Our next webinar in the Leadership Foundations series is a livestreamed fireside chat featuring Lauren Ashley Smith ’06, an Emmy-nominated TV and film writer, producer and radio host. She will be in conversation with Amy Farrell, a professor of American Studies and women's, gender & sexuality studies and Dickinson’s James Hope Caldwell Memorial Chair.  

Leadership Foundations With Lauren Ashley Smith ’06 

Wednesday, Feb. 4 
3–4 p.m. Eastern time  

This engaging conversation will explore leadership from the margins. Smith will share how she has navigated complex environments, changing roles and a multifaceted and ever-changing industry as a person with historically marginalized identities.  

Through real-world insights and reflection, this session will offer a dynamic look at how leadership is practiced and navigated across contexts.  

Register by Tuesday, Feb. 3. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants prior to the event.  

 

Lauren Ashley Smith is an Emmy-nominated TV and film writer, producer and radio host. Currently, she is in an overall deal with CBS Studios to develop scripted TV comedies. Previously, Lauren was the head writer and co-executive producer of the first two seasons of HBO's critically acclaimed A Black Lady Sketch Show, for which she received a Television Critics Association award and three Emmy nominations. Prior to that, Lauren was the head writer of the The Rundown with Robin Thede on BET. She is the first Black woman to be the head writer of an American sketch television show and only the second Black woman to be the head writer of a late-night show. Lauren’s other credits include Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on Bravo, VH1’s Best Week Ever and an upcoming feature film produced by Oprah Winfrey. When she is not writing, Lauren co-hosts Smith Sisters Live, a daily pop-culture radio show on SiriusXM's Radio Andy, which won the 2022 Gracie Award for Best Nationally Syndicated Talk Show. Originally from St. Louis, Mo., Lauren currently lives in Los Angeles with her wife, Brooke Helburn. 

Amy Farrell is the James Hope Caldwell Memorial Chair; a professor of American studies and women's, gender & sexuality studies at Dickinson; and the author of Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (New York University Press, 2011) and  Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA (A Ferris and Ferris Book/University of North Carolina Press). She has also edited The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies (Routledge, 2023). Farrell is an experienced media commentator, sharing her research on national . She has served as an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow (2019-20) and a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (2021-22). In 2023 Farrell was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Grant.