UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Slates 'Conversation' With Vicente Fox

MD Anderson News Release October 21, 2010

Inaugural San Antonio Luncheon to Benefit Blanton-Davis Ovarian Cancer Research Program

MD Anderson News Release 10/21/10

Former President of Mexico Vicente Fox and retired CNN News Group chairman Tom Johnson take the stage Oct. 29 at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio for A Conversation With a Living Legend®. The inaugural luncheon fundraiser in San Antonio, featuring an exclusive onstage interview of Fox by Johnson, benefits the Blanton-Davis Ovarian Cancer Research Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Over the past two decades, A Conversation With a Living Legend® has raised more than $11 million for MD Anderson patient care and research initiatives. The tradition continues as Paula and Clyde Johnson III and Kim and Clyde Johnson IV chair this year's event. Honorary chairs are Peggy and Lowry Mays and Charline and Red McCombs.

Deborah Knapp, co-anchor for the KENS 5 Eyewitness News, will serve as mistress of ceremonies.

Fox served as president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006. The first candidate from an opposition party to be elected president since 1920, he garnered 42 percent of the vote, marking the first time that the then-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party had lost a presidential election. He studied business administration at the Universidad Iberoamericana and received a Top Management Diploma at Harvard Business School in Boston, Mass. He rose in the Coca-Cola Company from a route supervisor to the president for Mexico and Latin America. Since leaving office, President Fox has been involved in public speaking and in the development of Centro Fox, a center for the advancement and study of democracy.

Johnson, of Atlanta, has a BA from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Harvard University. He began his career as an intern on The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph and later worked as a White House fellow, deputy White House press secretary and executive assistant to former President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1971, Johnson was named executive vice president of Texas Broadcasting Corporation. He became editor of the Dallas Times Herald in 1973 and two years later rose to publisher and chief executive officer. Johnson was named Los Angeles Times president in 1977 and publisher in 1980. He became president of CNN in 1990. Johnson retired in 2001 as chairman and chief executive officer of CNN News Group.

Fox is the second former foreign head of state to be honored at A Conversation With a Living Legend. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the Living Legend for the 1994 luncheon in Dallas. Other past Living Legends include Carol Burnett, Rudolph W. Giuliani, James A. Baker III, Colin Powell, Barbara Bush, George H. W. Bush, Nolan Ryan, Lance Armstrong, Norman Schwarzkopf, Sissy Spacek, Cal Ripken Jr., T. Boone Pickens, Mary Matalin and James Carville, Sherry Lansing and Hank Aaron. Most recently, the Houston A Conversation With a Living Legend turned the spotlight on golf great Jack Nicklaus and his interviewer, CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz.

Approximately 600 attendees are expected for the luncheon, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Grand Hyatt's Texas Ballroom on the fourth floor. For information, call 866-262-9029. 10/21/10