America’s New Working Class Topic of IBC Keynote Speaker Series Wednesday

The first installment of the International Bank of Commerce 2016-2017 Keynote Speaker Series at Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. in the TAMIU Student Center Ballroom.

 Admission is free and open to the public.

There will also be a reception at 6:30 p.m.

The lecture series is presented by the TAMIU A. R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade and sponsored by IBC Bank.

Featured speaker, Tamara Draut, is author of “Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America,” and vice president of policy and research for Demos, a policy organization focused around issues of equality and the economy and champions of debt-free, public higher education.

“Sleeping Giant” is the first major examination of the new working class—female, racially diverse and employed by the fast food, retail, healthcare and other service industries—and the role it will play in our economic and political future. Blending moving individual narratives, historical background and sophisticated analysis, Draut argues that this newly energized class is far along in the process of changing America for the better.

 A member of the executive team at Demos, Draut is responsible for developing and advancing the organization’s goals through research, idea generation and policy development. She joined Demos in 2001 and has developed their groundbreaking work on household indebtedness, middle-class insecurity and the economic challenges facing young people.

Her writings and her research have been covered by several newspapers and magazines and she is a frequent television commentator on shows such as the “Colbert Report” and the “Today Show.”

Her “Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead,” was published by Doubleday in 2006.

For more information, contact Amy Palacios, associate director, Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade, at 326.2820 or amy@tamiu.edu or visit offices in Western Hemispheric Trade Center, room 221.

Additional information is available at  https://www.facebook.com/tamiucswht.