Keynote lineup for RootsTech 2016

Keynote addresses for RootsTech 2016 have been announced for Thursday through Saturday, February 4th through the 6th. There is still time to get tickets. Here is the present line up of Keynote Speakers. Josh and Naomi Davis (Taza) have only very recently been announced. I have not been familiar with the LoveTaza.com website before. It will certainly be interesting to hear from all these folks.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Steve Rockwood

Stephen T. Rockwood is the managing director for the Family History Department and President/CEO of FamilySearch International. Prior to joining FamilySearch, Rockwood specialized in creating unique service offerings for worldwide customers of such brands as MasterCard International, AT&T, Disney, Office Depot, and Citibank among others. He also started two companies that were later acquired by larger companies. Most recently Steve served as director of the international division at FamilySearch.

Steve received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University and later his MBA from the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO.

He has served in a number of Church callings including full-time missionary in the Argentina Cordoba Mission, elders quorum president, bishop’s counselor, stake mission president’s counselor, bishop, stake young men president, stake president’s counselor, seminary teacher, and high counselor.

Steve was born in Rock Springs, Wyoming on March 2, 1963. He married Jill Ansley Forbes in August 1985. They are the parents of four children. Steve and his wife, Jill, reside outside of Denver, Colorado.

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Paula Madison

Paula Williams Madison is Chairman and CEO of Madison Media Management LLC, a Los Angeles based media consultancy company with global reach.

In 2011, Madison retired from NBCUniversal, where she had been Executive Vice President of Diversity as well as a Vice President of the General Electric Company (GE), then the parent company of NBCU. During her 22 years with NBCU, she held a number of successful leadership roles, including President and General Manager of NBC4 Los Angeles, Los Angeles Regional General Manager for NBCU’s Telemundo TV stations, and Vice President and News Director of NBC4 New York.

Madison is the executive producer and subject of Finding Samuel Lowe: From Harlem to China, a compelling documentary that chronicles her journey to her maternal grandfather’s homeland in China and the reconnection of her family with his 300 descendants. HarperCollins published a memoir on the journey, Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem in April 2015.

Honored for corporate leadership and community outreach, Madison was named one of the “75 Most Powerful African Americans in Corporate America” by Black Enterprise magazine in 2005 and included in the Hollywood Reporter’s “Power 100.” She’s also been honored by Asian organizations, having been recognized in 2014 as one of the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business and was recently honored by the East West Players and AARP with their Visionary Award.

In August 2013, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Madison to the Los Angeles Police Commission, where she served as vice president until 2015. Madison is a Board Member of the Greater Los Angeles United Way, the California Science Center Foundation, Vice Chair of National Medical Fellowships, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, Cardinal Spellman High School, Chair of The Nell Williams Family Foundation, as well as a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

A native of Harlem, Madison and her husband Roosevelt reside in Los Angeles.

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Bruce Feiler

Bruce Feiler is one of America’s most popular voices on contemporary life. He writes the “This Life" column for the Sunday New York Times and is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers, including Abraham and The Council of Dads. He is the writer and host of the PBS series Walking the Bibleand Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler. His most recent book, The Secrets of Happy Families, is a bold playbook for families today. It collects best practices for busy parents from some of the country’s most creative minds, including tops designers in Silicon Valley, elite peace negotiators, and the Green Berets. Featured on World News, Nightline, GMA, the Today Show, and TED, and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Parade, the book was a Top 5 New York Times bestseller.

Since 2001, Bruce has been one of the country’s preeminent thinkers, writers, and speakers about the role of religion in contemporary life. Walking the Bible describes his perilous, 10,000-mile journey retracing the five books of Moses through the desert. The book was hailed as an “instant classic” by the Washington Postand “thoughtful, informed, and perceptive” by the New York Times. The book spent more than a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list, has been translated into 15 languages, and is the subject of a children’s book.

Abraham recounts his personal search for the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. “Exquisitely written,” wrote the Boston Globe, “100 percent engaging.” The book was featured on the cover of TIME magazine, debuted in the top 5 of the New York Times bestseller list, and inspired thousands of grassroots interfaith discussions around the world. Bruce Feiler has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times magazine, and Gourmet, where he won three James Beard Awards. He is also a frequent contributor to NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. A former circus clown, he has been the subject of Jay Leno jokes and a JEOPARDY! question, and his face appears on a postage stamp in the Grenadines.

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Bruce lives in Brooklyn with wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their identical twin daughters.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Josh and Naomi Davis (Taza)

Naomi Davis, known by millions of viewers online as “Taza,” started her blog Love Taza in 2007 shortly after marrying her husband, Josh, in New York City while finishing her BFA at the Juilliard School. The blog was her digital diary, and the easiest way to share photos of newlywed life in NYC with her family out west. Fast forward to 2015, and Love Taza is more than just an online diary. The blog has become a digital destination viewed by millions around the world that come to find a feeling of inspiration and wanderlust and a guide for finding the joy in their everyday experiences. Naomi shares bits and pieces of her life in NYC with her husband and three small children, all while celebrating family, travel, food, and most importantly, an appreciations for life’s simple joys. With the help of her husband, Josh, the two have transformed her blog into a global business with a massively engaged audience where Naomi is able to share her love of family life and motherhood, as she and her husband raise their three young children in NYC.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author. She is the author of six critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling books, including her most recent, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (November 2013).

Spielberg and Goodwin previously worked together on Lincoln, based in part on Goodwin’s award-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The film Lincoln grossed $275 million at the box office and earned 12 Academy Award nominations, including an Academy Award for actor Daniel Day-Lewis for his portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln.

Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II and is the author of the best sellers Wait Till Next Year, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, and The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga, the last of which was adapted into an award-winning five-part TV miniseries.

Goodwin is well known for her appearances and commentary on television, where she is seen frequently on NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN, The Charlie Rose Show, and Meet the Press. Other appearances include The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and many more. Goodwin has served as a consultant and has been interviewed extensively for PBS and the History Channel’s documentaries on Lyndon B. Johnson, the Kennedy family, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham and Mary Lincoln, and Ken Burns’sThe Civil War and his documentary on the history of baseball.

Goodwin earned a PhD in government from Harvard University, where she taught class on government, including a course on the American presidency. She served as an assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson in his last year in the White House and later assisted President Johnson in the preparation of his memoirs. Goodwin is the winner of the Charles Frankel Prize (given by the National Endowment for the Humanities), the Sarah Josepha Hale medal, and the Lincoln Prize.

Goodwin resides in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, the writer, presidential adviser, speechwriter, and playwright Richard N. Goodwin. She was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room and is a devoted fan of the World Series-winning team.