Keynote Speakers

The 2010 CAAS Conference is thrilled to welcome our two keynote speakers:

Donna Smith

Donna Smith is perhaps best known for her appearance in Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary, SiCKO, in which Moore told her story of struggle within the nation’s broken healthcare system. Donna is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Colorado College with a degree in history. Her journalism career includes work as a stringer for NEWSWEEK magazine during her college career. She has been honored by the Associated Press Managing Editors with 15 regional awards from 2004-2006 and recognized by the Inland Press Association with top honors in 2006 for community-based journalism for a series published under her editorship of the Black Hills Pioneer in Spearfish, SD. Since 2007, she has co-chaired the Progressive Democrats of America's national "Healthcare Not Warfare" campaign, and she has so far spoken in 43 states and the District of Columbia about single-payer healthcare reform.

Donna Smith at Rally for Right to Health Care, Single Payer Right NOW! - Washington DC, June 26, 2009. Flickr photo  by NESRI.

Donna continues an active writing and speaking career, and now blogs and writes op-ed pieces about the health care crisis. She also is the founder of American Patients United, a non-profit group educating citizens about health care reform on the national level. She also works as a national single-payer health care advocate and community organizer for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. Donna and Larry now live in Washington, DC, and they have six children and 14 grandchildren.

Dr. Gerard Boychuk

Gerard Boychuk is Director of Global Governance Graduate Programs at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. He is author of National Health Insurance in the United States and Canada: Race, Territory, and the Roots of Difference. His areas of interest include global social governance, comparative public policy, and U.S. politics. At the Balsillie School of International Affairs, he teaches a course which examines the impact of globalization in generating global social problems as well as conditioning the prospects for addressing those problems through supranational cooperation.