Chris Hughes, Facebook Co-Founder, to Give NC State Lecture

Chris Hughes, publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic and co-founder of the social media platform Facebook, will talk about how social media has transformed the communication landscape as he gives North Carolina State University’s Harrelson Lecture at 3 p.m. on Monday, April 2 in Stewart Theatre.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Live streaming of the speech will also be available here.

A native of Hickory, N.C., Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004, working first as the site’s spokesperson and later leading the product and user experience team.

He served as director of online organizing for President Barack Obama’s campaign in 2007-08. The campaign’s new-media strategy revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than $500 million by generating more than two million donations of less than $200 each. Swiftly mobilizing hundreds of thousands of supporters, this use of social networking changed the face of political campaigns.

After a stint working as an investor, Hughes moved into the social sector and founded Jumo, a tool to help people find high-quality nonprofit organizations. Last fall, Jumo merged with GOOD – a community of millions of educated, creative and socially engaged young adults – to build a robust social activism platform.

An independent investor in technology and media companies, Hughes is also a member of the UNAIDS High-Level Commission on HIV Prevention and a trustee of the Knight Foundation. He is a graduate of Harvard University.

– kulikowski –