Former Atlanta Mayor and White House Senior Advisor Keisha Lance Bottoms in Fireside Chat for Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 in the STEM Building Conference Center

Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta Mayor (2018-2022) and Senior Advisor to President Joseph Biden for Public Engagement (2022-2023), will be the featured speaker in a Fireside Chat as part of the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 11 a.m. in the STEM Building Conference Center on the campus of UAPB. 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 Dr. Ann White, assistant professor, interim director of UAPB’s Department of Multimedia Communication and chair of the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series committee that plans featured speakers. “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.”  

In 2018, Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected as the 60th Mayor of Atlanta and served as mayor from 2018 to 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. Leading with a progressive agenda focused on equity and affordable housing, former Mayor 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. Among Mayor Bottoms’ notable accomplishments to date 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 the most far-reaching financial transparency platform in the City’s history – Atlanta’s Open Checkbook.

In 2020, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) 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. Former Mayor Bottoms 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 Joe Biden appointed her as the Democratic National Committee’s Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Protection.  In 2022, she joined the Biden 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. In 2023, she returned to the White House in a new role, being appointed as 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.

Beginning with human rights activist Dick Gregory speaking at UAPB in 1985, recent past speakers include Dr. Cornel West, prominent intellectual, author and professor in 2014, and best-selling author Terry McMillan in 2019. To view a full list of past lecturers, click here.

For more information about the event, call (870)575-8206 or email whitea@uapb.edu.