Michele Norris Speaker Biography
Award-Winning Journalist, Bestselling Author and Leading Voice on Race, Culture & Communication
Michele Norris is one of the most trusted and recognized voices in American journalism. An award-winning journalist, bestselling author, podcast host, and compelling storyteller, Norris has spent her career helping people better understand one another through thoughtful questions, careful listening, and honest conversation. A former host of NPR’s flagship program All Things Considered, Michele Norris became the first African American woman to host the broadcast. Throughout her distinguished career, she has interviewed world leaders, U.S. presidents, Nobel laureates, artists, military leaders, influential newsmakers, and even astronauts in space. Today, she continues to bring her distinctive combination of curiosity, insight, warmth, and journalistic rigor to conversations about current events, race, culture, identity, communication, and the forces shaping American society.
Keynote Speaker Michele Norris at a Glance
- Award-winning journalist and former host of NPR’s All Things Considered
- New York Times bestselling author of Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race
- Founder of the Peabody Award-winning Race Card Project, which has collected more than 500,000 personal narratives
- Host of Your Mama’s Kitchen, exploring food, family, culture, memory, and identity
- Peabody, Emmy and duPont-Columbia Award-winning journalist and former NABJ Journalist of the Year
- Leading speaker on communication, race, culture, identity, storytelling, listening, and bridging differences
A Distinguished Career in Journalism
Michele Norris spent a decade as a host of NPR’s All Things Considered, where her relaxed but rigorous interviewing style made her one of public radio’s most familiar voices. Before joining NPR, Norris spent nearly a decade as a correspondent for ABC News in Washington. Her earlier journalism career included positions at The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. Across print, television, radio, digital media, and podcasting, Michele Norris has built her career around asking thoughtful questions and creating the conditions for people to share stories that might otherwise remain unheard.
The Race Card Project
In 2010, Michele Norris created The Race Card Project with a remarkably simple invitation: describe your thoughts, experiences, or observations about race and identity in just six words. The response became far larger than Norris initially imagined. The project has collected more than 500,000 personal narratives from all 50 states and 96 countries, creating an extraordinary archive of candid reflections on race, ethnicity, identity, belonging, opportunity, and the ways people see themselves and one another. The Race Card Project received a Peabody Award for turning a difficult subject into an opportunity for productive dialogue. For Michele Norris, the project also revealed something important: people are often more willing to discuss difficult issues than conventional wisdom suggests—provided they are given the right invitation and an environment where they feel heard.
Our Hidden Conversations
The stories collected through The Race Card Project became the foundation for Michele Norris’ New York Times bestseller, Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race. Drawing from years of six-word submissions and the fuller stories behind them, Norris explores the thoughts and experiences that people often hesitate to discuss openly. The result is not simply a book about race, but an examination of identity, family, opportunity, memory, belonging, and the complicated ways people understand one another. Our Hidden Conversations reflects Michele Norris’ approach as both a journalist and speaker: listen before assuming, remain curious when a subject becomes uncomfortable, and recognize that meaningful understanding often begins with allowing people to tell their own stories.
The Grace of Silence
Michele Norris initially set out to write a book about America’s hidden conversations about race. Instead, she discovered that some of the most important hidden conversations were within her own family. In The Grace of Silence: A Memoir, Norris explores family secrets involving race, discrimination, dignity, ambition, and the choices parents make about which stories to pass down to their children. Her investigation revealed experiences her parents had deliberately kept from their family, including the shooting of her father by a white police officer shortly after his military service during World War II. The discoveries forced Norris to reconsider how both spoken stories and silence can shape identity across generations. Through this deeply personal work, Michele Norris encourages audiences to become more curious about their own family histories and consider a powerful question: How well do we really know the people who raised us?
Your Mama’s Kitchen
Michele Norris brings the same curiosity to Your Mama’s Kitchen, using food and the kitchen table as an unexpected doorway into conversations about family, culture, identity, and memory. The premise is simple but revealing: What was the kitchen like where you grew up, and how did that environment help shape who you became? Through conversations with notable guests, Michele Norris explores the foods, rituals, people, traditions, and memories associated with the kitchens of their childhoods. These stories demonstrate how something as familiar as a meal can reveal deeper truths about heritage, relationships, aspiration, belonging, and identity.
The Power of Listening
After decades of interviewing people and collecting hundreds of thousands of personal stories, Michele Norris has developed a distinctive perspective on communication. Productive conversations do not necessarily require agreement. They require curiosity. Norris shows audiences how asking better questions, listening carefully, and remaining engaged when conversations become uncomfortable can create stronger connections. Her approach is particularly relevant for organizations whose employees, customers, and communities bring different experiences and perspectives to the table. Rather than telling people what they should think, Michele Norris encourages them to become more thoughtful about how they listen.
Bridging Differences Through Conversation
Political, cultural, and social divisions can make genuine conversation increasingly difficult. Michele Norris offers audiences a way to move beyond the assumption that disagreement must inevitably lead to disconnection. Her work demonstrates that personal stories can reveal complexity that disappears when people are reduced to demographic groups, political labels, or opposing sides of an argument. Drawing on her journalism, The Race Card Project, and decades of conversations with people from widely different backgrounds, Norris helps audiences understand how curiosity, empathy, and careful listening can create room for productive dialogue across differences. These lessons have important applications for workplaces seeking stronger communication, more inclusive cultures, better collaboration, and deeper understanding among employees and leaders.
Awards and Recognition
Michele Norris has received numerous honors for excellence in journalism and storytelling. Her work has earned Peabody, Emmy, and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards. She was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and has received recognition for her reporting on major events and issues throughout her career. The Race Card Project also received a Peabody Award, recognizing Norris’ innovative approach to creating productive dialogue around race and identity. These honors reflect a career defined not only by journalistic excellence but also by Michele Norris’ ability to illuminate complicated issues through the experiences and voices of ordinary people.
Michele Norris Keynote Speaker
As a keynote speaker, Michele Norris combines extraordinary storytelling, journalistic insight, warmth, curiosity, and an unusual ability to make complex and difficult subjects accessible. Michele Norris speaks about communication, race and identity, culture, storytelling, family, current events, listening, and bridging differences. Rather than delivering lectures that tell audiences what to believe, she invites people into thoughtful conversations that encourage curiosity and a deeper understanding of perspectives different from their own. Norris is also an accomplished interviewer, moderator, and fireside-chat participant. Her decades of experience asking questions and guiding conversations make her particularly effective for programs involving senior executives, thought leaders, authors, public officials, and other prominent guests.
Her presentations are particularly well suited for corporate conferences, leadership meetings, association events, universities, communications programs, cultural events, employee programs, and organizations seeking to strengthen understanding and communication across differences.
Creating Conversations That Matter
Michele Norris helps audiences understand that some of our most difficult conversations can become our most valuable when we approach them with curiosity, honesty, and a genuine willingness to listen. Michele Norris can be booked for keynote presentations, moderated conversations, fireside chats, corporate meetings, association conferences, universities, and special events through Speakers.com. Contact Speakers.com to learn more about Michele Norris’ speaking fee, availability, and customized presentation options.
Michele Norris Speaking Topics
Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race
For years, Michele Norris has invited people to share their experiences with race and identity in just six words through her groundbreaking Race Card Project. The response has been extraordinary: hundreds of thousands of deeply personal stories revealing what Americans think, feel, fear, remember, and often leave unsaid. Drawing from her New York Times bestseller Our Hidden Conversations, Norris brings these stories to life and examines what they reveal about identity, belonging, family, opportunity, and the ways Americans understand one another. Rather than telling audiences what to think, she creates space for curiosity, listening, and honest reflection. Through powerful storytelling and insights collected across years of conversations, Michele Norris demonstrates how understanding the experiences of others can help people navigate difficult subjects, challenge assumptions, and build stronger connections across differences.
The Race Card Project: Six Words That Open a Conversation
Race can be one of the most difficult subjects to discuss openly. Michele Norris found a remarkably simple way to begin: ask people to express their thoughts, experiences, or questions about race in just six words. The resulting Race Card Project grew into an international archive of more than half a million personal narratives and earned a Peabody Award. In this compelling presentation, Norris shares some of the project's most revealing stories and what she has learned from years of listening to people speak candidly about race, ethnicity, identity, and belonging. Michele Norris shows audiences that productive conversations do not require everyone to agree. They require curiosity, careful listening, honesty, and a willingness to remain engaged when discussions become uncomfortable.
Bridging the Divide: The Power of Listening and Difficult Conversations
At a time when political, cultural, and social divisions can make genuine conversation increasingly difficult, Michele Norris offers a different path forward. Drawing on decades as a journalist and hundreds of thousands of stories gathered through The Race Card Project, Norris explores what happens when people stop preparing their next argument and begin genuinely listening to one another. She examines how curiosity can help people understand perspectives they may not share and why creating space for difficult conversations can strengthen organizations and communities. This presentation gives audiences an insightful and hopeful approach to communication across differences—not by avoiding disagreement, but by learning how to remain curious and connected when disagreement occurs.
The Grace of Silence: Family, Memory and the Stories We Don't Tell
While researching a book about America’s conversations on race, Michele Norris discovered that some of the most important stories she needed to understand were hidden within her own family. Drawing from The Grace of Silence, Norris explores the secrets, memories, and experiences that families carry across generations. Her discoveries—including experiences her own parents had deliberately kept from their children—revealed how silence can shape identity just as powerfully as the stories families choose to tell. Through a deeply personal and universally relevant presentation, Norris encourages audiences to examine their own family histories, ask better questions, listen closely, and consider how the stories we inherit—and those we never hear—help shape who we become.
Your Mama’s Kitchen: Food, Family, Culture and the Stories That Shape Us
Some of our most powerful memories begin in the kitchen. Inspired by her acclaimed podcast Your Mama’s Kitchen, Michele Norris uses food as an unexpected doorway into conversations about family, identity, culture, memory, and belonging. Through stories gathered from an extraordinary range of guests, Norris reveals how kitchens can become places where traditions are passed down, identities take shape, and family histories are preserved. Warm, engaging, and highly personal, this presentation demonstrates Michele Norris’ remarkable ability to use everyday experiences to uncover the deeper stories that connect us.
A Conversation with Michele Norris
Michele Norris is an accomplished interviewer, moderator, and conversationalist whose career has been built around asking thoughtful questions and listening closely to the answers. In a moderated conversation, fireside chat, or interactive audience program, Norris can explore current events, journalism, race and identity, culture, communication, family, leadership, or the challenges of navigating a divided society. Her relaxed but rigorous conversational style creates an environment where complex subjects become accessible and audiences feel invited into the discussion.
Michele Norris Books
Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity
Purchase BookMichele Norris Videos
Michele Norris Speaker Testimonials
“Michele did an amazing job last night. She was so lively, conversational, inspiring, and uplifting. And she really connected with the audience by telling authentic stories from real people. The audience simply LOVED her—and you know what? We did too! I must confess, she’s one of my all-time favorite speakers that we’ve had at Newsmakers.”
- Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation |
“We cannot thank Michele enough for the outstanding ways she connected with us and to ideas about Black media histories and present insights. It uplifted all of us who got to witness and participate in the events.”
- University of Minnesota |
“It was a transformative 90 minutes and our various chatrooms were on fire with positive conversation.”
- T. Rowe Price |
