Frugal Bookstore is a community bookstore located in Roxbury with a passion of promoting literacy within our children, teens and adults.

This event was initially scheduled on April 4th and has been postponed due to inclement weather.

In the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, corporate America doubled down on its public intentions to be more inclusive and equitable. Yet despite the pledges it has been difficult to see which system changes have made a real difference. Then came the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action—and its potential implications for corporations and their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices. With DEI programs seemingly under attack and their efficacy in question, are businesses still willing to make the case for diversity—and what can we do to encourage them?

Malia C. Lazu is an award-winning, tenured strategist in diversity and inclusion and a lecturer in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is former EVP and Regional President of Berkshire Bank and the creator of several accelerators designed to support minority-owned businesses in the Boston area, as well as the consultancy the Lazu Group. She's the author of From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (MIT Press, February 2024).

Malia Lazu will be in conversation with GBH Chief Inclusion and Equity Officer, Yemisi Oloruntola-Coates.

Her book will be available to purchase, thanks to Frugal Bookstore, with a 15% discount.

Independent book stores around Boston are seeing increased sales and popular in-person events.

GBH News Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel sits down with Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and several dozen other novels, for a late-morning edition coffee talk.

Come to the GBH studio at the Boston Public Library to hear Maguire talk and bring your questions for an audience Q&A.

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

Limited seating is available on a first come, first serve basis. If you require a seat, we encourage you to arrive before the start time of this event.

Location: The GBH Studio at the Boston Public Library is located at 700 Boylston St. at the corner of Exeter Street inside the Newsfeed Café.

Parking: Limited metered parking is available in the area. We recommend taking public transportation when possible. MBTA’s Copley stop on the Green Line and Back Bay stop on the Orange Line are located nearby. Visit http://mbta.com/ to plan your trip on public transportation.

Concessions: Food and drink is available for purchase at the Newsfeed Café. Outside food is not permitted.

Covid Safety: Please review the BPL’s Event COVID-19 Safety information here.

By RSVPing for this event, you agree to receive timely news and updates on events, films, and special offers from GBH.

Photo provided by Gregory Maguire

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Do you need any additional accommodations that we should be made aware of to participate in this event? If so, please contact us a minimum of one week in advanced of the event. We will do our best to accommodate your request. Reach us during regular business hours M-F, 9am-5pm at 617-300-3300 or via email: info@wgbh.org.


If you have questions or can no longer attend, please contact Audience and Member Services Department. Audience and Member Services can be reached during regular business hours M-F, 9am-5pm at phone: 617-300-3300 or via email: info@wgbh.org

Reginald Dwayne Betts holds a J.D. from Yale and a MacArthur Grant. Since 2020, his organization Freedom Reads has helped bring books into prisons. He joins The Culture Show to talk about that work.

Learn the simple and positive way to embrace your agency, lead change, and fly free—in the business of life and the life of business with acclaimed CEO, TED Speaker, and Entrepreneurship Professor James Rhee as he shares the inspirational true story of finding success through kindness (plus a little math).

In kindergarten, Rhee received a toy red helicopter in gratitude for a simple act of kindness—sharing his lunch. The toy was lost to time, but decades later as an unlikely, first-time CEO, the lesson from that memory helped him salvage and transform Ashley Stewart, a company on the edge of liquidation.

During those years, Rhee experienced great loss—the death of his parents—and great joy as his team at Ashley Stewart, an iconic company predominantly employing and serving Black women, became some of his dearest friends. In the process, he composed a simple, but powerful operational and financial model for life and leadership that inspired leaders around the world.

In, red helicopter, Rhee shares a story of personal and professional success and presents a comforting, yet bold solution to the dissatisfaction and worry we all feel in a chaotic and sometimes terrifying world.

James Rhee, will be in conversation with Cliff Hakim, author of the book and pioneer of the concept by the same name We Are All Self-Employed (Berrett-Koehler, 2003, 2nd edition). Cliff has guided executives, managers, specialists, and entrepreneurs using this concept through transition: to know themselves better, to explore their options, and to honor their passion by reaching for new meaningful goals.

James Rhee is an acclaimed impact investor, founder, CEO, goodwill strategist, thought leader, and educator, who empowers people, brands, and organizations by marrying capital with purpose. He bridges the emotional with the mathematical, and gives permission for us to be human.

GBH is proud to present award-winning author Téa Obreht for April’s virtual Beyond the Page event! Obreht is the international bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife (2011) and Inland (2020), as well as an accomplished short story writer whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among many others.

Obreht answers audience questions about her writing and creative processes, and give insights on the publishing industry. She will also be sharing more about her latest novel, The Morningside.

The Morningside expands on her short story published by New York Times Magazine for a COVID-19-related anthology. The novel follows 11-year-old Silvia and her mother as they flee their war-torn home and arrive in Island City, a near-future city ravaged by coastal flooding. With her past shrouded in mystery, Silvia embarks on an adventure to find out more about herself, the interesting characters in her new apartment building, and the magical, yet impoverished city around her.

Join us on an genealogical quest – an author’s exploration of her family and its history, brought to life in Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker. Don’t miss Rachel Webster’s presentation and conversation with historian Kendra Field about her experience connecting with relatives across lines of color, culture, and time.

In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative. Acting as a storyteller, Webster draws on oral history and conversations with her DNA cousins to imagine the lives of their shared ancestors across eleven generations, among them Banneker’s grandparents, an interracial couple who broke the law to marry.

The monthly panel series will offer Boston's comic lovers a place to gather and celebrate the genre.

Mark Daley always knew the goal was reunification — but he was still devastated when the young boys in his care returned to their birth family. He writes about the experience in his new memoir, Safe.