LeVar Burton

LeVar Burton is an actor, director, educator, and cofounder of the award-winning Skybrary app. The former host and executive producer of PBS’s Reading Rainbow, Burton is a lifelong children’s literacy advocate. He hosts his own podcast, LeVar Burton Reads, where he shares handpicked short fiction. Burton also has a new YouTube series, This Is My Story, which highlights experiences of racism in America. Recently, he launched the LeVar Burton Book Club with Fable, a new platform for book clubs and social reading with the mission to improve mental wellness.

Burton starred as Kunta Kinte in the acclaimed miniseries Roots and as Lt. Comdr. Geordi LaForge in the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series and feature films. He has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards along with twenty-seven Daytime Emmy Awards, resulting in over twenty wins. One of the longest running children’s television shows in history, Reading Rainbow won more than twenty-five Emmy Awards during its twenty-six-year run from 1983 to 2009, including ten for Outstanding Series, as well as the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award. Burton has also been nominated twice for the Spoken Word Grammy Award, winning in 1999 for narrating The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On June 11, 2019, Sacramento’s Meadowview leaders honored Burton with the official renaming and dedication of Richfield Park to LeVar Burton Park.