Marjorie Cohen, Senior Associate for Education with the National League of Cities, will be the featured speaker at the quarterly meeting of Memphis Talent Dividend at 9 a.m., Thursday, May 16, at the Leadership Memphis Gallery, 363 South Main.

Cohen is one of the nation’s leading education policy advisors for municipalities. Her work focuses on the importance of early childhood education as well as post-secondary education policy issues. She currently is involved in a national initiative on post-secondary success for low-income adults.

“Marjorie Cohen will be able to tell us how the National League of Cities is pushing its education agenda and how we can adopt much of what they’re doing here on a local level,” said Fred Turverey, director of Memphis Talent Dividend. “She also will share with us innovative and effective efforts that other cities are using to push college achievement and how our work in Memphis serves as an example for other cities. “

Also speaking will be Jose Cabrales and Margarita Benitez, representatives from Excelencia in Education, a policy group that advises municipal and institutional advocates of public policy that supports higher educational achievement , especially for Latino students and including college attainment.

Memphis Talent Dividend is a collaborative effort of more than 100 stakeholders in the eight-county Memphis metro area working together to increase the number of college graduates living in the area.

Leadership Memphis is a non-profit, community leadership development organization dedicated to helping Memphis fulfill its potential by advancing diversity, connectivity and inclusion, and leveraging the power of collaborative action. The organization has trained and graduated more than 2,000 leaders from its signature programs: Executive, FastTrack and Grassroots. Its Action Initiatives are Memphis Talent Dividend/Graduate Memphis, Imagine Memphis and SUCCESS High Schools.