PORT ANGELES — Leigh Morgan, chief operating officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will be the guest speaker at the Port Angeles Education Foundation’s 25th annual Celebrate Education dinner and fundraiser Friday.
The fundraiser will be at the Red Lion Hotel, 221 N. Lincoln St. Social hour begins at 5:30 p.m., with dinner to follow at 6:30 p.m.
Dinner tickets are available at www.portangeleseducationfoundation.org for $75 each and include social hour appetizers and a five-course dinner.
Foundation members will sponsor a Pass the Hat activity with a goal of raising funds to support teacher grant programs.
The Distinguished Service Person of the Year award also will be announced during the evening.
“Leigh graduated from Port Angeles High School, where she played basketball, including in the 1985-86 state championship game,” said Theresa Rauch, an organizer of the event.
Morgan will speak on the topic of how a sports star from Port Angeles transitions to leadership roles in education, corporate and philanthropy sectors of the world stage.
Morgan earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a master’s in organization development from The American University in Washington, D.C.
She has served as associate chancellor at the University of California San Francisco, vice president of Genentech and assistant director of the Carolina Justice Policy Center, and she helped establish the AmeriCorps National Service program while working in the North Carolina governor’s office.
The Port Angeles Education Foundation aims to remove individual barriers to education, support school and teacher grants, and provides student enrichment sponsorships and scholarship programs.
Through its student needs fund, the foundation assists low-income students.
The foundation awarded 29 grants to educators in the Port Angeles School District for the 2015-16 school year totaling $30,992.