Goodwin Returns to Speak at Breakfast

Doris Kearns Goodwin, world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, speaks at the 18th annual Westmont President’s Breakfast on Friday, March 10, from 7-9 am in the Grand Ballroom of Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. Tickets cost $125 per person and go on sale Friday, February 10, at 9 am at westmont.edu/breakfast. Seating is limited, and tickets are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Goodwin has written seven critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling books, including her most recent, Leadership in Turbulent Times, which examines the lives and leadership skills of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, and she has written bestsellers Wait Till Next Year, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, and The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, adapted into an award-winning, five-part TV miniseries.

Her book The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism is a dynamic history of the tumultuous first decade of the Progressive era. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios acquired the film rights to the book. Spielberg and Goodwin worked together on Lincoln, based in part on Goodwin’s award-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which illuminates Lincoln’s political genius.

Since 2020, Goodwin has served as executive producer for the History Channel’s miniseries events Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Goodwin, who spoke at the President’s Breakfast in 2015, is the first luminary invited to return to speak at the event. Past speakers include the late Gen. Colin Powell, the late David McCullough, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, Walter Isaacson, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Gen. Stan McChrystal, Gen. Michael Hayden, Peggy Noonan, Daniel Kahneman, Nancy Koehn, and Michael Lewis.

The Westmont Foundation, local businesses, and individuals sponsor the President’s Breakfast to promote discussion of significant issues. This year’s Lead Sponsor is Bank of the West. Gold Sponsor’s include Davies, the Eiler Family, David and Anna Grotenhuis, In Memory of Jim Haslem, HUB International Insurance Services Inc., La Arcada, Matt Construction, Lindsay and Laurie Parton, Reicker Pfau, Tim and Ashley Snider, and Warren and Mary Lynn Staley. For event sponsorship opportunities, contact Steve Baker, Westmont Associate Vice President for Advancement, at (805) 565-7156.