Watkinson School will present ‘HBO Live II: An Evening with Richard Plepler, the Chairman and CEO of HBO,’ facilitated by Colin McEnroe at the Hoffman Auditorium located in the Bruyette Athenaeum at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford.

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Watkinson School presents HBO Live II: An Evening with Richard Plepler, the Chairman and CEO of HBO on Wednesday, Nov. 14.  

Plepler, a Watkinson School alum from the class of 1976, is Chairman and CEO of Home Box Office, Inc., responsible for the overall management of the world’s most successful pay TV service, which provides the two television networks – HBO and Cinemax – to more than 142 million subscribers worldwide. Plepler’s recent accolades include being named to the 2015 Time Magazine list of the 100 most influential people in the world, receiving the Directorate Award at the 2015 International Emmy Awards and the Variety Vanguard Award for contribution to the TV business in 2017.

This special night is the third installment of the Jack Chatfield Speaker Series. Chatfield, a longtime leader of the Hartford educational community, is a former Watkinson School faculty member (1970-1978) who became a tenured professor at Trinity College (1987-2012) after teaching at Watkinson. Chatfield passed away in 2014.

Watkinson’s Head of School Teri Schrader states, “Watkinson School seeks to honor Jack Chatfield’s inspiring teaching legacy with the Jack Chatfield Speaker Series. Extending Jack’s commitment to community, social justice, and fostering understanding of complex world issues, we hope these talks will serve as a call to action in the form of civic dialogue. Our goal is that each evening unites the greater Hartford area around some of the most topical and provocative issues of our day, engaging participants in the kind of civil discourse Jack brought into his American history classes every day for nearly 50 years.”

The evening will be facilitated by NPR’s Colin McEnroe, a committed friend of Watkinson School and a long-time friend of Jack and Barbara Chatfield. Watkinson has partnered with McEnroe for the last seven years on a series of community forums called “Freshly Squeezed with Colin McEnroe.”

Plepler was named head of HBO in January 2013. Under his leadership, HBO’s original productions continue to raise the bar with some of the most innovative, honored and critically respected programming on television. Now in its final season, “Game of Thrones” is a global juggernaut, watched by nearly 18 million viewers per episode in the U.S. alone. Plepler’s complete bio is here.

“HBO Live” with Mr. Plepler begins at 7 p.m. at the Hoffman Auditorium located in the Bruyette Athenaeum at the University of Saint Joseph, 1678 Asylum Ave., West Hartford, CT. Tickets are free, seating is very limited and general admission. Reserve tickets by emailing [email protected] or call 860-570-8160.

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