2009 Women's Leadership Summit

Dara Torres
Since her first international race at the age of 14, Dara Torres has proven that she is far from your average athlete. As a student at the University of Florida, she earned the maximum possible number of 28 NCAA All-American swimming awards. As the first US swimmer to compete in four Olympic Games, Dara set three World records and won nine Olympic medals, including four gold. In the Sydney Olympic Games alone, after a seven-year break from competitive swimming, Dara won gold in the 400m freestyle and 400m MR and bronze in the 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, and the 100m butterfly. After the 2000 Olympics, Dara retired again to start a family, but dove right back into swimming in the 2006 Masters Nationals where she broke a world record, just three weeks after her daughter’s birth. And in August 2007 Dara won another National title and broke her own 7 year old American Record in the 50 Freestyle.

Outside of swimming, Dara has made a name for herself as a TV commentator and a print model and was the first athlete to appear in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 1994. She was a feature correspondent for Good Morning America, worked on-air for ESPN, TNT and Fox News Channel including stints on NHL Cool Shots and Fox Sports Sunday.

Six-time Olympic coach Michael Lohberg described Torres's drive as "just amazing", "To make a run at the Olympics for a 40-year-old mother seems totally out of the question .... But Dara is not measured by normal standards. She is truly an exception, defying several laws of life." (Swimnews.com)

Torres has successfully made her comeback to competitive swimming by making her 5th Olympic squad. She won a total of 3 silver medals at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

Kathryn Miree
Kathryn W. Miree is the president and primary consultant for Kathryn W. Miree & Associates, Inc., now in its 11th year of operation. Ms. Miree provides a full range of planned giving, endowment, and foundation management services designed to help charities build long-term financial stability through planned gifts and endowment. Ms. Miree received a B.A. from Emory University and a J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law. She spent 15 years in various positions in the Trust Division of a large southeastern bank rising to the position of Senior Vice President and manager of the Personal Trust Department. She then joined a regional brokerage firm to establish its trust company and serve as its initial President and CEO. In these positions she worked extensively with not-for-profit organizations and their donors in the management of private foundations, community foundations, charitable trusts, pooled income funds, gift annuities and endowments. Ms. Miree is a past president of the national Committee on Planned Giving, past president of the Alabama Planned Giving council, past president of the Estate Planning Council of Birmingham, and past president of the Alabama Bankers Association Trust Division. She is a member of the Alabama Bar Association and Birmingham Bar Association. Ms. Miree is also an active member of her community serving as a volunteer on a number of community boards. She is a past chair of United Way of Central Alabama, a past chair of The Altamont School and past president of the Independent Presbyterian Church Foundation.

Michele Norris
Michele Norris, an award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience, hosts NPR's newsmagazine All Things Considered, public radio's longest-running national program, with Robert Siegel and Melissa Block. Norris began hosting on December 9, 2002.

Before coming to NPR, Norris was a correspondent for ABC News, a post she held from 1993 - 2002. As a contributing correspondent for the Closer Look segments on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Norris reported extensively on education, inner city issues, the nation's drug problem, and poverty. Norris has also reported for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. Her Washington Post series about a six-year-old who lived in a crack house was reprinted in the book Ourselves Among Others, along with essays by Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Annie Dillard and Gabriel García Márquez.

A four-time Pulitzer Prize entrant, Norris has received numerous awards for her work, including the National Association of Black Journalists' 2006 Salute to Excellence Award, for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina; the University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award; and the 1990 Livingston Award. In 2007, she was honored with Ebony Magazine's eighth Annual Outstanding Women in Marketing & Communications Award. Norris also earned both an Emmy Award and Peabody Award for her contribution to ABC News' coverage of 9/11. She is on the judging committee for both the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Livingston Awards. Norris is also a frequent guest on The Chris Matthews Show on NBC News.

Norris attended the University of Wisconsin, where she majored in electrical engineering, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she studied journalism. She lives in Washington, D.C., and is married to Broderick Johnson. She has two young children and a step son who attends college in California.