Liz Murray completed high school and won a New York Times scholarship while homeless, and graduated from Harvard University in 2009. She has been awarded The White House Project Role Model Award, a Christopher Award, as well as the Chutzpah Award, which was given to Liz by Oprah Winfrey. Lifetime Television produced a film about Liz’s life, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. Today, she travels the world to deliver motivational speeches and workshops to inspire others. Liz is the founder and director of Manifest Trainings, a New York–based company that empowers adults to create the results they want in their own lives.
As a child, Liz Murray crammed cafeteria food in her backpack on Fridays so she could stave off starvation during the weekend. Now 29, she works with a non-profit organization called Blessings in a Backpack (www.blessingsinabackpack.org) that supplies today’s children with food for the weekend when school cafeterias are closed. Liz says, “If I’d had access to a program like Blessings in a Backpack when I was an undernourished child in New York City, I may not have gone to bed hungry all those nights. Thankfully, with this organization’s continued commitment, thousands of children across America won’t have to.”
In September-which is Hunger Action Month-Liz will use the launch of her memoir, Breaking Night, as a catalyst to promote the need to end childhood hunger. Blessings in a Backpack currently serves 38,000 children each school year. Traveling through the country on a bus tour sponsored by Meijer (www.meijer.com) and Navistar (www.navistar.com), Liz’s goal is to use her personal story to increase that number to 50,000 children by December 2010. She will visit schools that Blessings supports and speak at Meijer stores. Liz Murray lives in New York City. Her scheduled appearances:
* Monday, September 13: Grand Rapids, MI (Meijer, 3757 Plainfield Avenue NE)
* Tuesday, September 14: Detroit, MI (Meijer, 800 Brown Road, Auburn Hills)
* Wednesday, September 15: Detroit, MI (Meijer, 3175 Rochester Rd., Rochester Hills)
* Monday, September 20 Fort Wayne, IN (Meijer, 10301 SR-37 Highway)
* Tuesday, September 21 Cincinnati, OH (Meijer, 6550 Harrison Road)
* Wednesday, September 22 Chicago, IL (Meijer, 225 N. Weber Road, Bolingbrook)
* Wednesday, September 22 Chicago, IL (Meijer, 808 North Route 59, Aurora)
* Thursday, September 23 Chicago, IL (Meijer, 10138 Indianapolis Blvd., Highland, IN)
* Friday, September 24 Chicago, IL (Meijer, 1251 Golf Road, Rolling Meadows, IL)
* Monday, September 27 Lexington, KY (Meijer, 351 W. Reynolds Road)
* Tuesday, September 28 Louisville, KY (Meijer, 4100 Town Center Drive)
* Sunday, October 10, Berkeley, CA (4:30pm, Redford Center, 2150 Allston Way)
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