How to Write to Change the World: A Workshop for Social Entrepreneurs Featuring Catherine Orenstein

The Op-ed pages of major newspapers are read by diplomats, businesspeople, scholars, and those in the highest levels of government. They can sway public opinion and change the world.   Op-eds also attract the attention of television producers, book agents, and policy makers. A single op-ed can make you part of a national debate.    

This seminar is designed to help you hone the ideas and causes that you care about, and write about them to make a difference. You'll learn how to generate winning ideas, how to craft a powerful argument, how to use news hooks, how to address or preempt your potential critics, how to pitch an idea, how to build consensus, and how to frame an issue to make your point and persuade your readers.  We will explore ways to write more broadly, to think bigger, and to make a bigger impact on the world.  Participants will leave with a draft op-ed in hand.

The OpEd Project seeks to share the tools of powerful argument, and also to inspire and cultivate a sense of thought leadership by encouraging participants to see their potential impact on the world. This seminar is not just about writing op-eds, it's about empowering you to find your voice and make a difference-not only on the op-ed pages, but everywhere.  

*Lunch and a light breakfast will be served.

CATHERINE ORENSTEIN has contributed to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald. Her opinion pieces on women, power, popular culture, and human rights have been nationally syndicated and appear in anthologies. She has lectured at Harvard and appeared on ABC TV World News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, CNN and NPR All Things Considered.  A graduate of Harvard (BA) and Columbia (MA) universities, she is the author of Lititytle Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, which explores stories told about women over 500 years.

Orenstein has lived and worked around the world and particularly in Haiti, where she traveled as a folklore student and journalist in the 1990s, during a time of political upheaval.  As a result of that experience, she has reported extensively on Haiti; organized fact-finding delegations for journalists, scholars and lawmakers; and consulted with the United Nations human rights mission.  In 1996 she worked with a team of human rights lawyers to assist victims of military and paramilitary violence in seeking justice.  She investigated tortures, rapes, political assassinations and massacres; interviewed hundreds of victims, witnesses and alleged criminals; and coordinated lawyers' and victims' efforts to build cases against their persecutors. She has written about some of these cases and their aftermaths in Haiti and the United States.  She is a fellow at the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, and winner of a 2008 Echoing Green fellowship for The OpEd Project.