About the Session
Award-winning author and journalist A’Lelia Bundles will discuss her experience researching the amazing women in her family, the joys and challenges of genealogical research, and the importance of making family history research open and accessible to all.
About the Presenter
A’Lelia Bundles is the author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother and the inspiration for Self Made, the fictional Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer. The Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, the first major biography of her great-grandmother, will be published in summer 2024 by Scribner. Bundles is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives and brand historian for MADAM by Madam C. J. Walker, a line of hair care products developed in partnership with Unilever’s Sundial Brands and Walmart. She serves on several nonprofit boards, including the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute; the March on Washington Film Festival; Indiana Landmarks; the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation; and the Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Initiative. A former network television executive and Emmy Award-winning producer at ABC News and NBC News, she is chair emerita of the National Archives Foundation and a vice chair emerita of Columbia University.