UAPB to host former Atlanta mayor
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the featured speaker in the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Held in the STEM Building Conference Center, the event is free and open to the public.
“We’re honored to have distinguished public servant Keisha Lance Bottoms as the guest speaker for this year’s lecture series,” said Ann White, assistant professor, interim director of UAPB’s Department of Multimedia Communication and chair of the lecture series committee which plans
the events.
In 2022, Bottoms joined President Joe Biden’s administration as Senior Advisor to the President for Public Engagement, where she worked at the local, state, and national levels to ensure diverse perspectives, community leaders, and new voices had the opportunity to inform the work of President Biden in a transparent, inclusive, and responsible way, according to a news release.
In 2023, she returned to the White House where she was appointed a member of President Biden’s Export Council, which serves as the principal national advisory committee on international trade, while advising the President on government policies and programs that affect U.S. trade performance, promotes export expansion, and provides a forum for discussing and resolving trade-related problems among the business, industrial, agricultural, labor, and government sectors.
“The Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series program, established in 1972, continues its storied half-a-century mission of hosting influential visiting lecturers at five Arkansas universities to communicate ideas that enhance and encourage meaningful discussion, while also fostering meaningful cultural advancement and intellectual and respectful debate,” according to the release.
In 2018, Bottoms was elected the 60th Atlanta mayor and served from 2018-2022. A lifelong public servant, she is the only mayor in Atlanta’s history to have served in all three branches of government – serving as a judge and city councilmember before being sworn in as mayor, according to the release.
Leading with a progressive agenda focused on equity and affordable housing, Bottoms served as chair of the Community Development and Housing Committee and the Census Task Force for the United States Conference of Mayors.
Georgia Trend magazine named her the 2020 Georgian of the Year. Bottoms’ accomplishments include the establishment of the city’s first fully-staffed Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the appointments of an LGBTQ Affairs Coordinator and a Human Trafficking Fellow, the citywide elimination of cash bail bond, the closure of the Atlanta City Detention Center to ICE detainees, and the rollout of what’s been called the most far-reaching financial transparency platform in the city’s history – Atlanta’s Open Checkbook.
In 2020, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law awarded her the Distinguished Civil Rights Advocate Award in recognition of her equity-driven leadership to help guide and protect marginalized communities and named one of Glamour’s 2020 Women of the Year.
The former mayor was also honored as a BET 100 Entertainer and Innovator of the Year in 2020 and was named Smart Cities Dive’s 2020 Leader of the Year. She also presided as chair of the Platform Committee for the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
In 2021, President Biden appointed her as the Democratic National Committee’s Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Protection.
UAPB has had several noteworthy lecturers. Beginning with human rights activist Dick Gregory speaking at UAPB in 1985, recent past speakers included Cornel West, author and professor in 2014; and best-selling author Terry McMillan in 2019. Most speakers in the lecture series interact with students before their public lecture and mingle with the audience afterward.
Details: (870) 575-8206 or email whitea@uapb.edu.