Friday Opening Session
Mayor Mark Stodola
Mark Stodola was elected as Mayor for the City of Little Rock, beginning his term in January 2007; however, Mayor Stodola is not new to Little Rock City Hall. From 1985 to 1991, Mayor Stodola served as Little Rock’s City Attorney. During his tenure as City Attorney, he initiated the re-codification of City Ordinances, which had not been done for 26 years and led a creative initiative to shut down drug houses as public nuisances.
He was elected Prosecuting Attorney for the 6th District in 1990 and was re-elected again in 1992 and 1994. During his tenure as Prosecuting Attorney, Mayor Stodola focused his energies on gang violence. He developed the first Domestic Violence Unit in the State of Arkansas and greatly expanded the Prosecutors’ Victim Assis¬tance Program. He was recognized nationally by the Department of Justice for creating an innovative juvenile diversion program and drafted several successful pieces of legislation, including the Arkansas Safe Schools Act, the Arkansas Gang Organization and Enterprise Act and the Arkansas Drug Abatement Act.
As Mayor, he has helped prioritize public safety as the City’s first and foremost obligation, resulting in substan¬tial decreases in violent crime and property crime. Since Stodola took office, the City’s homicide rate has fallen more than 34%. The Mayor led an effort to reduce copper thefts with City legislation, which has decreased the sale of to stolen scrap to recyclers. In addition, Mayor Stodola spearheaded City legislation to reduce harmful conditions at extended stay motels and has partnered with the State of Arkansas and the Chamber of Com¬merce to bring over $1 billion in new capital investment to the City and more than 1,900 new jobs during the past two years.
Mayor Stodola graduated from the University of Iowa with a double major in Political Science and Journalism, and received his law degree from the University of Arkansas, School of Law in Fayetteville. Mark is married to Jo Ellen and has three children; a daughter, Allison; and twin sons, Robert and John Mark.
Shannon Butler, City Year
As Executive Director of City Year Little Rock/North Little Rock, Shannon Butler works with her staff team and corps members to impact the lives of children and to build a stronger community. City Year is an AmeriCorps program which engages 17-24 year olds from all backgrounds to commit a year of full-time service making a real difference in the communities in which they serve. In Little Rock/North Little Rock, the corps members work in schools in the Little Rock and North Little Rock School Districts providing tutoring, mentoring and after-school programs. In addition, they partner with corporations and other community leaders to engage in a variety of service projects throughout the year. Prior to joining City Year, Shannon was the Deputy Executive Director at the William J. Clinton Foundation and Assistant Director of PresidentialScheduling at the White House.
Governor Mike Beebe
Governor Beebe was sworn in as the 45th Governor of the State of Arkansas on January 9, 2007, following more than two decades of dedicated public service, first as State Senator and then as Attorney General. He believes Arkansas’s future must be built on the foundation of more and better-paying jobs and a first-class education system. Under Governor Beebe’s leadership, Arkansas has announced more than 21,000 new jobs, even in the midst of a steep national economic downturn. He has provided the largest tax cut in Arkansas history, phasing out the sales tax on groceries, while protecting essential services and meeting the State’s mandate for a balanced budget. By the end of his four-year term as Governor, it’s projected that Beebe’s initiatives will have provided nearly $500 million in tax cuts and ongoing tax relief. In the 2009 legislative session, Governor Beebe introduced and oversaw the passage of the most comprehensive health-care package put forth by any Southern state in this decade.
Rachel Young
Rachel Young is currently an undergraduate, third year, at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She is an Environmental Studies major with a concentration in Chemistry and grew up in Minnesota, USA but lived in China for a portion of her childhood. She began in the climate movement as a freshman in college with an internship with Focus the Nation. From there she took off running with any training and campaign she could get a hold of including running the environmental club on her campus her sophomore year running national campaigns and reducing energy consumption on her campus and training at Power Shift ’09. That year she was also the campus coordinator for Lewis & Clark for the Cascade Climate Network.
From there she directed a student run summer programs with the Sierra Student Coalition (SPROG), planned and executed strategic direct action in Washington DC with Avaaz.org (DC Action Factories), and organized 16 youth delegates to represent the Pacific Northwest at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen this past December. She is now the Outreach Director for Show Me Democracy, a national campaign to engage young people and community members with the Senators to pass a climate bill, and is heading up the International Policy group of the Cascade Climate Network.
Julia Sewell, Emcee & Spoken Word Performer
Julia Sewell is a 21-year-old native of Minneapolis. She is a Senior at Augsburg College in Minnesota, studying psychology. She is an actress, a model, a motivational speaker, and a published poet. Her service work began at age 10. By age 14, she was selected to be part of the inaugural group in the Youth Leaders International Program, which gathered the top leaders from across the globe and brought them together to create strategies for leadership within the local and national context.
Julia attended the National Youth Leadership Training and became involved with the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC), presenting at various conferences, including the Ryan White Conference for HIV/AIDS. Julia remains active in community work in Minneapolis, including the Youth Performance Company youth artists’ board, Umoja Academy, People of Pluralism, Soul Food, and Chicago Cares. She was a member of the State Farm’s Youth Advisory Board in 2007-2008, where she helped to give out $5 million worth of awards to service-learning projects across the country. She currently serves on the America’s Promise Alliance Youth Partnership Team, the IMPACT Conference Planning Committee, and the Youth Noise Leadership Team.
Julia recently started her own not-for-profit organization, E.M.P.I.R.E. in an effort to continue to serve her world as a speaker and performer, but also to offer other young people, around the country, with this opportunity. Julia is passionate about helping people find their arts, hone them and to use them to motivate change in their communities. Check out E.M.P.I.R.E.’s website at http://www.empireproductions.org/
James Kelly, Emcee
Jimmy Kelly is a 7th grade science teacher in his first year with Teach for America in St. Louis, MO. He graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY in May, 2009, where he founded and led a community service group that made over $100,000 in contributions to local food pantries, and where he was student body president in his senior year.
Saturday Speaker
David Beckmann
David Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S. advocates for hungry people. He has been president of Bread for the World since 1991, leading large-scale and successful campaigning to strengthen U.S. political commitment to overcoming hunger and poverty. Before that, he served at the World Bank for 15 years, overseeing large projects and driving innovations to make the Bank more effective in reducing poverty.
Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. Bread for the World members write personal letters and emails and hold meetings with their members of Congress. Working through churches, campuses, and other organizations, Bread members engage more people in advocacy. It is one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to building the political will to end hunger.
Bread for the World has an impressive record of achievement under Beckmann’s leadership. The U.S. government has doubled funding for effective programs that help developing countries in Africa and other poor parts of the world, and this would not have happened without the persistent advocacy of Bread for the World members. Bread has also helped to strengthen U.S. nutrition programs, assisting millions of the families in this country who struggle to feed their children. Recently, Bread for the World initiated a campaign to press Congress to reform U.S. foreign assistance to make it more effective in reducing hunger and poverty.
Beckmann is also president of Bread for the World Institute, which provides policy analysis on hunger and strategies to end it. He founded and serves as president of the Alliance to End Hunger, which engages diverse U.S. institutions – Muslim, Jewish and secular groups, corporations and universities – in building political will to end hunger. Beckmann has recently appeared on Bill Moyer’s Journal, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, NPR’s Morning Edition, and The Diane Rehm Show.
Beckmann earned degrees from Yale, Christ Seminary, and the London School of Economics, and five universities have awarded him honorary doctorates. He is a clergyman as well as an economist. He has written many books and articles, including Transforming the Politics of Hunger and Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God’s World. Beckmann speaks Spanish. He has lived in Bangladesh and Ghana, overseen projects in Bolivia and Ecuador, and visited more than 70 countries.
Learn more about Bread for the World at www.bread.org
Sunday Closing Session
Ivan Noisette
Ivanley Noisette is a graduate of Villanova University where he earned a Bachelors of Arts degree in Political Science. Noisette is a native of Philadelphia, PA. He currently attends the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. Ivan has helped form “Hope for Haiti,” an organization of Little Rock-area students and aid groups working to raise awareness and funds for the quake-torn country.
Rob “Biko” Baker
Robert “Biko” Baker is a nationally recognized hip-hop organizer, journalist, activist, and scholar who currently serves as the executive director of the League of Young Voters. In his home community of Milwaukee, he has organized hip-hop town hall meetings and mobilized young people to participate in civic life. Baker has served as the deputy publicity coordinator and young voter organizer for the Brown and Black Presidential Forum. He was also the lead organizer for Slam Bush, a nationwide voter mobilization project using rap and poetry. In 2006, Baker developed the League of Young Voters training program, which prepares the next generation of activists to make long-term commitments to local organizing, and is currently serving as the executive director. Baker is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles, a frequent contributor to The Source, and serves on WireTap’s editorial board.
To learn more about the League of Young Voters, visit www.theleague.com
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.