The founder of the Black List will spend the academic year engaging with Bowdoin students and community; his first visit includes a conversation with acclaimed writer and producer David Simon.
The yearlong fellowship brings accomplished leaders to Bowdoin to engage deeply with students and the broader College community, connecting what students learn in the classroom with questions of leadership, professional purpose, and their ability to effect change in the world.
"Herman Dreer spent his life—as an educator, as a civil rights leader, as a hand in what became Black History Month—making sure that the country saw the people it had overlooked,” said Leonard. “I've spent mine on a smaller piece of the same problem: building systems that find talent and value it on its merits, wherever it comes from. To be the inaugural fellow in his name is a profound honor."
Leonard will make his first visit to campus September 28–30, 2026, highlighted by a public conversation Sept. 28 with journalist, author, and television writer and producer David Simon, creator of The Wire and co-creator of Treme, The Deuce, and other acclaimed series. That event is sponsored by the Kenneth V. Santagata Memorial Lectureship in conjunction with the Viewpoint Exchange lecture series.
Leonard is the founder and CEO of the Black List, a platform that has transformed the way emerging screenwriters are discovered and how their work reaches the film and television industry. What began in 2005 as Leonard’s annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays has developed into an influential organization devoted to identifying and supporting exceptional writing and expanding the pathways by which writers can enter the entertainment industry.
That work makes Leonard particularly suited to a fellowship centered on leadership, opportunity, and the possibilities that can emerge when established institutions reconsider who has access to them.
The Herman S. Dreer Leadership Fellowship was established in 2023 through a gift from former American Express CEO Kenneth I. Chenault ’73 and Kathryn C. Chenault. It honors Herman S. Dreer, a member of the Bowdoin Class of 1910 whose extraordinary life as a scholar, educator, author, minister, and civil rights leader followed an undergraduate experience marked by both remarkable achievement and profound racial isolation.
Dreer was the second Black graduate of Bowdoin. A gifted student and public speaker, he completed his Bowdoin education in three years and graduated second in his class. Yet his academic distinction did not translate into social acceptance among his classmates.
Chenault examined Dreer’s experience at Bowdoin in his own undergraduate honors thesis, The Blackman at Bowdoin. He later described Dreer as having a lifelong commitment to advancing opportunities for Black Americans through education, faith, civic engagement, and political action.
“I stand on the shoulders of people like Herman Dreer who, despite being denied the opportunities they deserved, paved the way and valiantly forged ahead,” Chenault said when the fellowship was established. “Kathy and I are privileged to honor Herman Dreer and give him the long overdue recognition that he so justly deserves. The Herman S. Dreer Leadership Fellowship will ensure that Herman's legacy lives on to inspire future generations of trailblazers.”
The fellowship is intended to bring leaders to campus who will do more than deliver a lecture. Fellows become part of the life of the College over an academic year, meeting with students, visiting classes, talking with faculty and staff, and offering students opportunities for mentoring and candid conversations about careers and leadership.
Leonard will visit Bowdoin twice during the 2026–2027 academic year and participate in an additional virtual engagement between visits. During his time on campus, he will meet with students in classrooms and smaller gatherings as well as participate in events open to the broader community.
His September 28 conversation with Simon offers an apt beginning. Before becoming one of television’s most celebrated writers and producers, Simon spent thirteen years as a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. His work in journalism, nonfiction, and television has consistently examined American institutions and the lives of people often overlooked by them. The Wire, set in Baltimore, used the conventions of television drama to explore policing, education, politics, journalism, labor, and the drug trade. Simon has described the series as drawing heavily from journalism and from the experiences of the city and people he knew.
Bringing Leonard and Simon together also creates an opportunity to consider some of the questions at the heart of the Dreer Fellowship: Who gets to tell stories? Who gets access to institutions and industries? How can individuals change systems from within? And what responsibilities come with having the influence to open doors for others?
Those questions have particular resonance with the legacy of the man for whom the fellowship is named—and with Leonard's own work to broaden the range of voices whose stories reach audiences.
For Bowdoin students, the fellowship is intended to make such questions personal as well as intellectual: to help them imagine possibilities for their own lives and careers, learn directly from people who have shaped their fields, and consider how they might use their own talents and positions to create opportunities for others.
