Plenty of Marin households will spend an evening this fall crossing the bridge for a night out, hunting for parking near a San Francisco theater, paying to sit in a room they'll never see again after the show ends. Meanwhere, on a quiet stretch of Acacia Avenue that most Dominican neighbors pass on the way to somewhere else, a building most of them already know by sight is doing the same job for less trouble and, on some nights, a better lineup.
That building is Angelico Concert Hall, the auditorium at 20 Olive Avenue on the Dominican University of California campus. It has been hosting the university's Leadership Lecture Series, a partnership between Dominican's Institute for Leadership Studies and the independent bookstore Book Passage, for years now. Most of the neighborhood treats it as scenery, a fixture on the campus loop they walk past without a second look. The fall 2026 calendar suggests it deserves one.
Three Dates Already on the Books
The series has three confirmed fall dates so far, each already carrying a title and, in one case, a familiar face doing the interviewing.
| Date | Speaker | Book | In Conversation With |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 9, 2026 | Angela Duckworth | "Situated" | Steve Kerr |
| October 13, 2026 | Yotam Ottolenghi | "Simple Too" | — |
| October 25, 2026 | Eric Idle | "Idle in Provence" | Dave Eggers |
That's a psychologist known for her research on grit, a chef whose cookbooks sit on more Marin kitchen counters than most people would admit, and a founding member of Monty Python, all inside the same three-month stretch, at the same address most Dominican residents drive past without a second thought.
Steve Kerr's name on the September date is not a one-off booking. He interviewed U.S. Senator Chris Murphy at the same hall back in June 2026, which means the Warriors coach has become something like a house interviewer for this series. That kind of recurring detail only shows up if you're actually tracking the calendar season over season, not just catching a single flyer taped to a coffee shop window.
The Room Behind the Name
Angelico Hall is named for Fra Angelico, the nickname of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a nod to the university's Dominican roots. The building opened in the early 1920s and seats more than 800, which puts it in the same conversation as some of the larger performance spaces in the county, not a lecture hall pressed into service. One venue description sums up its role on campus simply:
"home to Dominican University events including recitals, concert series and the Leadership Lecture Series"
What that description leaves out is how often the series has quietly punched above its zip code. This is not a rotating cast of local authors doing a reading. It's a stage that has, across past seasons, hosted people whose names usually come attached to a much bigger city and a much higher ticket price.
A Guest List That Doesn't Look Like a College Auditorium
Past speakers in the series include:
- Dr. Anthony Fauci
- Al Gore
- Madeleine Albright
- Isabel Allende
- David Brooks
- Tom Brokaw
- Jane Fonda
- Daniel Goleman
- Paul Hawken
- Diane Keaton
- Caroline Kennedy
- Ted Koppel
- Suze Orman
- Leon Panetta
- Gavin Newsom
- Jacques Pépin
- Carlos Santana
- Patti Smith
- Gloria Steinem
- Arianna Huffington
- Bernie Sanders
- Sally Field
- Melinda Gates
Spring 2026 alone brought Jon Meacham, Michael Pollan, U.S. Senator Cory Booker, and Kate Bowler in conversation with Anne Lamott. Read that roster next to the fall lineup and a pattern shows itself. This isn't a series that got lucky with a booking or two. It's a program that has been building a track record long enough that a fall calendar with Duckworth, Ottolenghi, and Idle reads as consistent with the last several years, not an outlier.
What a Seat Actually Costs
Tickets for the Leadership Lecture Series run through Dominican University's own box office, reachable directly at [email protected] or (415) 485-3228. That's worth knowing because secondary ticket marketplaces are already listing seats for this fall's dates well above what a typical campus lecture would command, with an average resale price of $169 as of early September 2026. For an event happening in a college auditorium rather than a downtown arena, that's an unusual amount of resale demand weeks out from the first date, and it says something about how far this series has traveled past its original audience of students and alumni.
The practical version of the info matters more for a Dominican neighbor than the ticket economics do. Doors typically open well before the scheduled start, parking sits close to the hall with an overflow lot at Meadowlands Hall when the main lot fills, and the walk from most of the neighborhood's streets is short enough that driving barely saves time.
The Short Walk Version
The bigger point isn't that a famous chef or a Warriors coach is showing up on campus this fall. It's that a Dominican resident gets to treat all of that as a short walk instead of a planned outing. No bridge toll, no circling downtown San Francisco for parking, no calculating whether the babysitter's hourly rate makes the whole evening worth it. The show is close enough that leaving ten minutes before curtain still works.
That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a listing sheet or a market report, but it's the texture that actually makes living somewhere different from just owning property there. Dominican's version of a big night out has been sitting on the same campus loop the whole time, and this fall's calendar is as good a reason as any to finally walk over and see for yourself.
If you're curious about what else makes this stretch of San Rafael tick day to day, from the campus calendar to the quieter corners of the neighborhood, Garrett Burdick knows Dominican block by block. Let's Connect.
