Next year at the forum: Sports figures Jim Nantz, Bill Curry among speakers

As is customary, the speakers for the Jim Blanchard Leadership Forum in 2016 were unveiled at the end of this year’s event Tuesday — all but a few, that is.

“We work about 18 months out on this,” said Ed Helton, managing director of The Leadership Institute and the Cunningham Center at Columbus State University, which organizes the event. “We have some invitations that are still out we haven’t quite finalized yet. We’ll be announcing those throughout the year.”

The 11th annual forum is scheduled Sept. 12-13, 2016, which marks a move for the first time from its late August slot. The event, held at the Columbus Convention and Trade Center, seats about 1,000 people, with 10 speakers expected to be on hand.

Here are those announced Tuesday:

• Jim Nantz, CBS Sports announcer and analyst, perhaps best known for covering The Masters golf tournament every April

• Bill Curry, former football coach at Georgia Tech, Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia State

• Marcus Luttrell, former U.S. Navy Seal and author whose book spawned the movie, “The Lone Survivor,” starring Mark Wahlberg

• Bonnie St. John, the first African-American to earn medals in the 1984 Winter Paralympic ski-racing competition in Innsbruck, Austria

• Ajaypal Singh Banga, chief executive officer of MasterCard

• Henry Cloud, a self-help book author

• Tommy Spaulding, author and president of Spaulding Companies LLC. Also is former president and CEO of non-profit organization Up With People

To register, visit online at www.jblf.org.

This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 8:36 PM with the headline "Next year at the forum: Sports figures Jim Nantz, Bill Curry among speakers."