Topeka Collegiate held a Diversity Summit Tuesday. The featured speaker for the evening was Sesame Street’s Sonia Monzano who played “Maria” from 1971 to 1995 when she retired from the show. She has performed on the New York stage, in the critically acclaimed theater pieces The Vagina Monologues and The Exonerated. She has written for the children’s series Little Bill, and has written a parenting column for the Sesame Workshop web site called “Talking Outloud”. She was nominated twice for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Performer in a Children’s Series. Manzano won 15 Emmy Awards and in 2004, she was inducted into the Bronx Hall of Fame. She received the Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award in 2016. The Tuesday evening Diversity summit was sponsored by YWCA of Northeast Kansas, Security Benefit, Cortez Transportation, Azura Credit Union and others.
