Speaker for June 6, 2011

Ailene Voisin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., but spent her later childhood years in Las Vegas, which at least partly accounts for her long, strange trip to The Bee. She earned a B.A. in Political Science from UNLV and completed her course work for a Master's Degree before receiving a J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law. Alas, her passion for journalism prevailed over law and academia. Before joining The Bee as a sports columnist in 1997, she covered various beats (preps, colleges, Olympics, NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, tennis, volleyball) and/or wrote columns for the Las Vegas SUN, San Diego Union, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her first high-profile interview was with Muhammad Ali, and to this day, he remains a favorite.