Featured Speakers
Richard A. Baker
Dr. Richard Baker was the first Historian of the United States Senate and directed the United States Senate Historical Office from the time of its creation in 1975 through August 2009. He received masters degrees from Columbia University and Michigan State University and holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland.
During his 35-year tenure as historian, the Historical Office grew from a small staff of three historians and a secretary in the attic of the Capitol Building to a nine-person office of historians, researchers, editors, and archivists with an office in the Hart Senate Office Building. As the collector and keeper of the institution's memory, the Senate Historical Office, under Baker's leadership, quickly earned a reputation for providing professional, non-partisan service. While Historian, he wrote Senate of the United States: A Bicentennial History (1988), Thirty Minutes of Senate History (1998), a compilation of 30 minute historical talks he gave to the Senate Democratic Caucus, 200 Notable Days: Senate Stories 1787 to 2002 (2006) among other books. He now writes a weekly column on Senate history for a Washington newspaper. Most recently, Baker is the co-author (with Neil MacNeil) of The American Senate: An Insider's History, published in 2013, a groundbreaking, comprehensive history of the Senate and winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's George Pendleton Prize.
Gary Bertsch
Dr. Gary Bertsch is the director emeritus of the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia, and professor emeritus for the Department of International Affairs. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oregon in 1970. His areas of expertise include international trade, comparative politics and international relations, and weapons proliferation and nonproliferation strategies. He has co-edited several publications on the topic of international relations, including International Cooperation on Nonproliferation Export Controls (1994); Arms on the Market: Reducing the Risk of Proliferation in the Former Soviet Union (1998); and Engaging India: U.S. Strategic Relations with the World's Largest Democracy (1999).
Michelle Brattain
Dr. Michelle Brattain is chair of the history department at Georgia State University. She earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1997. She specializes in modern U.S. history, the history of ideas about race, Southern history, and labor history. She teaches undergraduate courses on the U.S .in the 1960s, the U.S. in the twentieth century, and the history of race, ethnicity and ideas about human variation. Her recent publications include “Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Race to the Postwar Public,” (2007); “Miscegenation and Competing Definitions of Race in Twentieth-Century Louisiana,” (2005); and The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South (2001). Brattain’s current project, titled What Race Was: Popular and Scientific Constructions of Race in the Postwar United States, examines the emergence of a peculiarly “modern” race concept in an era when scientific ideas about human variation were in flux and social activism led to an embrace of civil rights.
Charles E. Campbell
Charles Campbell, born in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia, grew up in Jackson, Georgia. He was Senator Richard B. Russell’s top assistant during the eventful final years of the Senator’s life when he was widely regarded as the most influential and powerful U.S. Senator. Graduating from UGA in 1965, Campbell accepted the position Administrative Assistant on Russell’s staff in Washington, DC, where he worked until the Senator’s death in January 1971. After receiving his law degree in June 1971 from Georgetown Law Center, Campbell returned to Atlanta and was a founder and trial lawyer with the firm of Hicks, Maloof & Campbell, which merged with McKenna Long & Aldridge where he continued to practice until his retirement in 2009, ranked among America’s top 100 lawyers. He is author of Senator Richard Brevard Russell, and My Career as a Trial Lawyer (Mercer, 2013). Campbell served as 4th chair and is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Christopher Carr
Chris Carr, named Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) by Governor Nathan Deal, joined the agency in November 2013. As Commissioner, he leads the state agency responsible for creating jobs and investment in Georgia through business recruitment and expansion, international trade and tourism, as well as the arts, film and music industries. Prior to joining GDEcD, Carr was Chief of Staff for Senator Johnny Isakson. Carr began his career with Georgia Pacific, moving on to practice law with Alston & Bird LLP and then serving as Vice President and General Counsel for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Carr graduated from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business and Lumpkin School of Law. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Ashton Ellett
Ashton Ellett is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history at the University of Georgia. His dissertation explores the development of the Republican Party in Georgia since World War II. Drawing upon a rich manuscript source base, a diverse body of printed materials, and numerous oral history transcripts, this project explores how a Republican Party organization long defined by persistent factionalism, penniless campaigns, and the lingering taint of Civil War destruction, Reconstruction rule, and country club elitism, eventually supplanted the Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson as the sole instrument of social, cultural, and economic conservatism in Georgia and the South. Additionally, Ellett has worked as an exhibit intern at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies where he collaborated on the exhibit Food, Power, and Politics: The National School Lunch Program. He is currently conducting research for an organizational history of the Georgia Department of Transportation as part of GDOT's centennial celebration.
Monica Gisolfi
Dr. Monica Gisolfi is an assistant professor of history at University of North Carolina-Wilmington. She earned her Ph.D. in US History at Columbia University in 2007. She specializes in the history of the American South and is particularly interested in environmental, landscape, and agricultural history, and public memory and commemoration. She teaches courses on History of the U.S. South, Environmental History, Public History, The History of the Gilded Age, and United States History. Gisolfi is currently writing a book, The Take Over: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness, 1914-2007, that examines the rise of Southern agribusiness and its environmental, human, and social costs. Her publications include “From Crop Lien to Contract Farming: The Roots of Agribusiness in the American South, 1929-1939,” originally published in Agricultural History and later anthologized in The Best American History Essays 2008, and “Leaving the Farm to Save the Farm: Poultry Farmers, Contract Farming, and the Necessity of Public Work, 1950-1970,” in Moving Workers, Moving Capital (University of Florida Press, 2008).
P. Toby Graham
Dr. Toby Graham is the University Libraries and Associate Provost at the University of Georgia. He earned a Ph.D. in History and MLIS in Library and Information Studies from the University of Alabama. His research interests include digital libraries, library management, archives and special collections. Graham is author of A Right to Read: Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama's Public Libraries (University of Alabama Press, 2002), winner of the 2004 Alabama Author Award for Non-Fiction. Leaving his position as head of special collections at the McCain Library and Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi, Grahamcame to UGA in 2003 to serve as Director of the Digital Library of Georgia. In 2008 he became Director of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library and later, Deputy University Librarian. As University Librarian, Graham is an ex officio trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Charles E. Harman
Charlie Harman serves as vice president for Government and Community Affairs at Emory University. Previously, he was chief of staff to US Senator Saxby Chambliss. He joined Senator Chambliss’s staff in January 2007. In addition, he served as co-chair of the Senate Bi-Partisan Chiefs of Staff organization. Harman served on the staff of US Senator Sam Nunn for almost 12 years and served as Nunn’s administrative assistant (in present day the title is recognized as chief of staff) from December 1987 through July 1992. Additionally, when Zell Miller was appointed to the US Senate in July 2000 following the death of US Senator Paul Coverdell, Harman was asked to establish Senator-Designate Miller’s office in Washington, D.C., which included organizing and hiring the senator’s staff. Harman served as chief of staff during Miller’s first three months of tenure. Active in state and community affairs, Harman served, in 2006, as a member of the US Magistrate’s Selection and Review Committee for the Federal Courts of the Northern District of Georgia. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Tammy L. Ingram
Dr. Tammy Ingram is an assistant professor of history at the College of Charleston. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2007. She specializes in social and political history of the modern U.S., modern South, and rural and urban history. Ingram’s first book, Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930, published by the University of North Carolina Press in March 2014, has received a Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council’s Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of an Archives. The book uses the Dixie Highway, a largely forgotten 6000-mile network of roads that looped from Lake Michigan to Miami Beach and back up again, as a lens for examining local, regional, and national politics during the Progressive Era Good Roads Movement. Ingram is currently working on a second book project tentatively titled Dixie Mafia: Sex, Race, and Organized Crime in the South, which offers a broad view of organized crime networks in the postwar U.S. but focuses on the so-called Dixie Mafia.
C. Donald Johnson
Don Johnson joined the faculty of the University of Georgia Law School in June 2004 as the director of the Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy. In this capacity, he is responsible for the management and direction of the center's mission of increasing the understanding of global legal and policy issues through teaching, conferences, research, scholarship and international outreach programs. Prior to his current role, Johnson was a partner at the law firm of Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in the law related to international trade and investment, national security and foreign policy issues. From 1993 to 1994, Johnson served as the U.S. congressman for the 10th district of Georgia. While in this position, he was a member of the House Armed Services and the Science, Space and Technology committees and focused on national security and international economic policy. Johnson also served in the Georgia State Senate from 1987 to 1992, where he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee and served as an assistant floor leader. He earned his bachelor's and law degrees from University of Georgia.
Christopher J. Manganiello
Dr. Christopher Manganiello has served as the Policy Director at Georgia River Network since January 2012. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the University of Georgia and Georgia Gwinnett College. He received his Ph. D. in United States History from the University of Georgia in 2010. His dissertation, “Dam Crazy with Wild Consequences: Artificial Lakes and Natural Rivers in the American South, 1845-1990,” won the Rachel Carson Prize by the American Society for Environmental History for Best Dissertation in Environmental History. Managaniello has published in the Journal of the History of Biology and the Journal of Southern History, and was co-editor, with Paul S. Sutter, of Environmental History and the American South: A Reader (University of Georgia Press, 2009). He is currently working on a book titled Southern Water, Southern Power: How the Politics of Cheap Energy and Water Scarcity Shaped a Region (The University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming in 2015).
Keith W. Mason
Keith Mason, as an attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP (MLA), has served as a counselor on business strategy and public policy issues to CEOs and senior executives of many Fortune 500 companies. In the world of government and politics, he served as Deputy Assistant and Deputy Director for Intergovernmental Affairs in The White House, making him President Bill Clinton's principal liaison with the nation's governors. Mason also served as Chief of Staff to Governor Zell Miller and has assisted various governors' offices across the country on a variety of issues. From 2001 to 2003, Mason served as Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Ports Authority as part of his seven-year period of Board service. Under his leadership, the Authority achieved record volume, increased support from federal, state and local stakeholders, and received international recognition as the fastest growing container port in the United States and embarked on a number of capital and service expansion initiatives. Mason holds a bachelor’s degree and law degree from the University of Georgia. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Francis (Abit) Massey
Abit Massey served as president of the Georgia Poultry Federation, a nonprofit trade association that represents the state's poultry industry, for 48 years before he moved to emeritus status of the group in 2008. He graduated from UGA with a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1949.. Massey has served as the dean of the state’s lobbyist corps. He is the former director of the Georgia Department of Commerce, now the Department of Economic Development, where he created the Tourist Division and built the first Georgia Welcome Station. He is a past chairman of the board of the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership and past president of the Georgia Society of Association Executives and the UGA Alumni Association. .
Michael R. McLeod
Mike McLeod began his career as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Herman Talmadge. He then served as Counsel to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry from 1971-73, and later as General Counsel and Staff Director to that same committee from 1974-78. During his first year on the committee staff, he was assigned to lead the staff of the Rural Development Subcommittee, chaired by former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The committee produced the Rural Development Act of 1972. Subsequently his work included legislation for the creation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, pesticide use and registration and forestry management. McLeod played a major role in the drafting of legislation for the 1977 Farm Bill, and he has been extensively involved in every subsequent farm bill. In 1978, he moved to the private sector and now serves as counsel to many of the nation's top food and agribusiness trade associations as a partner in the law firm McLeod, Watkinson & Miller in Washington, DC. McLeod received his A.B. degree from UGA and his law degree from American Universary.
Gregory Mixon
Dr. Gregory Mixon is an associate professor in the departments of history and African studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in 1989. His research interests include racial violence, race relations, Southern history, urban history, the Progressive Era, and black southern state militia companies, 1865-1910. His first book, The Atlanta Riot: Race, Class, and Violence in a New South City, traces the sources of the riot by examining political, social, and urban factors affecting race relations in the early 20th century. Mixon is currently working on two additional publications. His second book, tentatively titled We Called It a Band of Brothers, focuses on African American militiamen in the Southern states, specifically Georgia, between 1865 and 1910. He is also writing a political biography on Henry A. Rucker, the only African American to be appointed as a Collector of Internal Revenue in the district of Georgia, from 1897-1911.
Powell A. Moore
Powell Moore, a native of Milledgeville, Georgia, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1959. After graduation, Moore joined the United States Army and served for four years. In 1966 he became Senator Russell’s third and last press secretary. After Russell’s death Moore worked for the Nixon and Ford administrations in legislative affairs. In 1975 he established his own consulting firm, advising domestic and international clients until 1981. In that year, President Ronald Reagan appointed Moore Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs; the following year he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs. In 1998 he accepted the position of Chief of Staff for Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee. He held the position until 2001 when President George W. Bush appointed him Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, a position he held during Bush’s first administration. After two years with McKenna Long in Atlanta, he returned to government service in 2006 as United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s representative to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Moore currently works as a consultant and lives in Washington, D.C. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Jere W. Morehead
Jere Morehead became the University of Georgia's 22nd president on July 1, 2013, having previously served as UGA's senior vice president for academic affairs and provost since 2010. He holds a J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law. President Morehead's career covers a wide range of faculty and administrative roles. Prior to 2010, he served UGA in several key administrative assignments, including vice president for instruction, vice provost for academic affairs, associate provost and director of the Honors Program, and acting executive director of legal affairs.
President Morehead is the Meigs Professor of Legal Studies in the Terry College of Business, where he has held a faculty appointment since 1986. He is a co-author of several books and book chapters, including The Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business, and he has published scholarly articles on legal topics ranging from export controls to jury selection. He has served as editor-in-chief of the American Business Law Journal and previously held several other editorial board positions with the ABLJ. As UGA president, he is an ex officio trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Charles L. (Chuck) Munns
Vice Admiral (retired) Charles Munns began his naval career at the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating with distinction in 1973 with a bachelor of science degree, majoring in physics. He received a master's of science degree in Computer Science from the University of Colorado in December 1980. His personal decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), Legion of Merit (five awards), Meritorious Service Medal (two awards), Navy Commendation Medal (three awards), and the Navy Achievement Medal. Following a number of assignments on nuclear submarines, Munns' first command assignment was as Commanding Officer of USS Richard B. Russell (SSN-687) from April 1990 to October 1992. During his command, the ship was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, two Navy Unit Commendations and three consecutive Battle "E" Awards. Later, he served as Commander US Submarine Force and Commander NATO Submarines. Following Navy service, Munns was president and chief executive officer, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC. Currently, he is chairman of the Board, Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness.
W. Thomas Okie
Tom Okie is assistant professor of history education at Kennesaw State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2012, where he studied American and environmental history. His research focuses on the intersections of culture and agriculture, poverty and improvement, and land and landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He teaches classes in social science methods for pre-service middle and high school teachers, American history, and the history of food. He is currently working on a cultural and environmental history of the Georgia peach, based on his dissertation “Everything is Peaches Down in Georgia”: Culture and Agriculture in the American South, which won the 2012 Gilbert C. Fite Dissertation Award from the Agricultural History Society, the 2013 Allan Nevins Dissertation Prize from the Society of American Historians, the C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association, and the Excellence-in-Research Award from the University of Georgia Graduate School.
Hugh Peterson, Jr.
Hugh Peterson, Jr. is Chairman of the Board of VNS Corporation, which is engaged in the sale and distribution of building materials and providing construction services in Georgia and throughout the United States. He is the son of the late Congressman Hugh Peterson, Sr. and Patience Elizabeth Russell Peterson and a nephew of Senator Russell. Peterson is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Following law school, he served for three years as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army. In 1963, he joined the firm of King and Spalding in Atlanta. His 30-year practice ranged from general corporate matters to the representation of corporate clients in federal and criminal investigations. He retired as a partner. In1993 Peterson was elected President and CEO of VNS Corporation. He is a trustee of the Russell Foundation.
Pamela Roberts
Pam Roberts is an Emmy-award winning writer/producer/director for television and one of the South’s leading documentary filmmakers. Trained at the graduate School of Cinema at the University of Southern California, she has been executive producer at Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) in Atlanta since 2000. Her most recent film, Dean Rusk – At the Heartbeat of History, provided a riveting new look at the Georgia native whose stance on the Vietnam War made him one of the most controversial secretaries of state in U.S. history. The program premiered May 2014 and launched the new Georgia Greats biography series at GPB. Before coming to GPB, Roberts produced award winning programs for Turner Broadcasting including Iran Behind the Veil and the Portrait of America series. As an independent producer, she produced and directed two documentaries which aired on national PBS: Seeds of Survival, narrated by Steve Allen and The Land of Cool Sun, narrated by Dennis Weaver. Roberts is currently developing new projects for the Georgia Greats series and expanding the Dean Rusk documentary for air on national PBS.
Richard Rusk
Rich Rusk is a writer and activist in Athens, Georgia. He was born Washington, DC and lived in that city during the time that his father, Dean Rusk, served as Secretary of State under President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. After high school, Rusk served in the U.S. Marines Corps Reserve for six years , the last four of which he attended Cornell University, graduating with a degree in Political Science in 1970. He did postgraduate work in Massachusetts and Alaska to obtain elementary and secondary schools teaching certificates. Living in Alaska for fourteen years, he taught classes in Eskimo schools for four years, started a weekly newspaper, began a contracting business and built houses for five years. He moved to Athens in 1984 to fulfill a long held dream – sort things out with his father and assist him in writing a memoir that he had said he would never write. Rusk diligently recorded interview sessions with his father as they spent the next five years talking and writing. The result was As I Saw It, published by W. W. Norton, 1990. For the last two decades, Rusk has stayed active in political and grassroots advocacy groups. He was a founder and longtime secretary of the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee, formed to commemorate two African American couples killed by racial violence in 1946 in Walton County and a founder of the Georgia Climate Change Coalition, an Oconee River Chapter Trout Unlimited climate change committee, a Trout Unlimited National Leadership Council work group on climate change and a 350.Org “local group.”
Jason C. Sokol
Dr. Jason Sokol is an assistant professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2006. He specializes in twentieth-century American politics, race, and civil rightsHe is the recipient of fellowships from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University, and has taught courses at all of those universities. He received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence. Sokol is the author of There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) and of All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn (Basic Books, 2014). He has published articles and reviews in a variety of journals including The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Journal of Southern History, Wilson Quarterly, and Social History. His writings have also appeared in popular publications such as The Boston Globe, The American Prospect, The Nation, Slate, and The Root.
Michael Thurmond
Michael Thurmond is currently serving as Superintendent of the DeKalb County School System, the third largest school system in Georgia. He is on leave from his law firm, Butler, Wooten & Fryhofer, a nationally known civil trial practice firm. Thurmond graduated with honors from Paine College with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religion and later earned a juris doctorate from the University of South Carolina's School of Law. In 1986, he became the first African-American elected to the Georgia General Assembly from Clarke County since Reconstruction. In 1997, Thurmond became a distinguished lecturer at the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government. The following year, he was elected Georgia Labor Commissioner, an office he held for three terms. Thurmond's latest book, Freedom: Georgia's Antislavery Heritage, 1733-1865, was awarded the Georgia Historical Society's Lilla Hawes Award and the Georgia Center for the Book listed Freedom as one of The 25 Books All Georgians Should Read.
Norman L. Underwood
Norman Underwood was born in Red Bud, Gordon County, Georgia in 1941. Active in 4-H, he received the Homelite Chainsaw Company Scholarship, which allowed him to attend George Washington University for two years and intern for Senator Richard B. Russell. He returned to University of Georgia and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1964 and a law degree in 1966. Upon graduation, he was hired by Troutman Sanders, LLP, becoming a partner in the firm in 1973. He managed George Busbee’s campaign for governor and left his law practice to become Busbee’s executive secretary in 1975. He was appointed as a judge to the Georgia Court of Appeals in 1979. He practiced law from 1967 until he was appointed Executive Secretary to Gov. George Busbee in 1975, where he served until appointed to the Georgia Court of Appeals in 1979. At the end of that year, he resigned to run for the U. S. Senate and later for Governor.In 1991, Governor Zell Miller appointed Underwood chairman of the Judicial Selection Commission, where he served for eight years, and encouraged greater numbers of minority and women attorneys to apply for judicial positions. At the end of his term, the state’s judicial system had dramatically increased its racial and gender diversity. In recognition of that achievement, the State Bar of Georgia honored him with the Distinguished Service Award in 1995. At the Emory (University) Public Interest Committee’s 2012 Annual Inspiration Awards, Underwood was honored for a Lifetime Commitment to Public Service .Since 2009, he has been Senior Counsel at Troutman Sanders. Underwood is the 6th chair and a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Sheryl B. Vogt
Sheryl Vogt is director of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia Libraries, a position she has held since 1981. She received a bachelor’s and two masters’ degrees from UGA (1968, 1969, 1973). Responsible for the administration and development of the Russell Library, she has fostered a program that documents the broadest range of modern political and policy research subject matter and engages in a variety of public programming and strategic partnerships. She is a Fellow of both the Society of American Archivists and the Society of Georgia Archivists, and a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists. She holds appointments to the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress and the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board, and was the 2004 recipient of Scone Foundation’s international Archivist of the Year Award. She is immediate past president of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.
Larry Walker
Larry Walker, a native of Perry, Georgia , holds both a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from the University of Georgia. He has practiced law in Perry, since 1965. In 1972 he was elected to the Georgia General Assembly, taking the seat formerly occupied by Sam Nunn, and served continuously until 2005. In 1983 he assumed the duties of Administration Floor Leader for Governor Joe Frank Harris, and in 1986 he was elected Majority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, serving in this capacity for sixteen years. He served for four years (1999-2002) as Chairman of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, a nationwide organization of state legislative leaders. Walker served on the Georgia Department of Transportation Board from January 2007 through June 2009, representing Georgia’s eighth congressional district. He was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue to the University System of Georgia Board of Regents in 2009. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Dr. Richard Baker was the first Historian of the United States Senate and directed the United States Senate Historical Office from the time of its creation in 1975 through August 2009. He received masters degrees from Columbia University and Michigan State University and holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland.
During his 35-year tenure as historian, the Historical Office grew from a small staff of three historians and a secretary in the attic of the Capitol Building to a nine-person office of historians, researchers, editors, and archivists with an office in the Hart Senate Office Building. As the collector and keeper of the institution's memory, the Senate Historical Office, under Baker's leadership, quickly earned a reputation for providing professional, non-partisan service. While Historian, he wrote Senate of the United States: A Bicentennial History (1988), Thirty Minutes of Senate History (1998), a compilation of 30 minute historical talks he gave to the Senate Democratic Caucus, 200 Notable Days: Senate Stories 1787 to 2002 (2006) among other books. He now writes a weekly column on Senate history for a Washington newspaper. Most recently, Baker is the co-author (with Neil MacNeil) of The American Senate: An Insider's History, published in 2013, a groundbreaking, comprehensive history of the Senate and winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's George Pendleton Prize.
Gary Bertsch
Dr. Gary Bertsch is the director emeritus of the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia, and professor emeritus for the Department of International Affairs. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oregon in 1970. His areas of expertise include international trade, comparative politics and international relations, and weapons proliferation and nonproliferation strategies. He has co-edited several publications on the topic of international relations, including International Cooperation on Nonproliferation Export Controls (1994); Arms on the Market: Reducing the Risk of Proliferation in the Former Soviet Union (1998); and Engaging India: U.S. Strategic Relations with the World's Largest Democracy (1999).
Michelle Brattain
Dr. Michelle Brattain is chair of the history department at Georgia State University. She earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1997. She specializes in modern U.S. history, the history of ideas about race, Southern history, and labor history. She teaches undergraduate courses on the U.S .in the 1960s, the U.S. in the twentieth century, and the history of race, ethnicity and ideas about human variation. Her recent publications include “Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Race to the Postwar Public,” (2007); “Miscegenation and Competing Definitions of Race in Twentieth-Century Louisiana,” (2005); and The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South (2001). Brattain’s current project, titled What Race Was: Popular and Scientific Constructions of Race in the Postwar United States, examines the emergence of a peculiarly “modern” race concept in an era when scientific ideas about human variation were in flux and social activism led to an embrace of civil rights.
Charles E. Campbell
Charles Campbell, born in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia, grew up in Jackson, Georgia. He was Senator Richard B. Russell’s top assistant during the eventful final years of the Senator’s life when he was widely regarded as the most influential and powerful U.S. Senator. Graduating from UGA in 1965, Campbell accepted the position Administrative Assistant on Russell’s staff in Washington, DC, where he worked until the Senator’s death in January 1971. After receiving his law degree in June 1971 from Georgetown Law Center, Campbell returned to Atlanta and was a founder and trial lawyer with the firm of Hicks, Maloof & Campbell, which merged with McKenna Long & Aldridge where he continued to practice until his retirement in 2009, ranked among America’s top 100 lawyers. He is author of Senator Richard Brevard Russell, and My Career as a Trial Lawyer (Mercer, 2013). Campbell served as 4th chair and is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Christopher Carr
Chris Carr, named Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) by Governor Nathan Deal, joined the agency in November 2013. As Commissioner, he leads the state agency responsible for creating jobs and investment in Georgia through business recruitment and expansion, international trade and tourism, as well as the arts, film and music industries. Prior to joining GDEcD, Carr was Chief of Staff for Senator Johnny Isakson. Carr began his career with Georgia Pacific, moving on to practice law with Alston & Bird LLP and then serving as Vice President and General Counsel for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Carr graduated from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business and Lumpkin School of Law. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Ashton Ellett
Ashton Ellett is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history at the University of Georgia. His dissertation explores the development of the Republican Party in Georgia since World War II. Drawing upon a rich manuscript source base, a diverse body of printed materials, and numerous oral history transcripts, this project explores how a Republican Party organization long defined by persistent factionalism, penniless campaigns, and the lingering taint of Civil War destruction, Reconstruction rule, and country club elitism, eventually supplanted the Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson as the sole instrument of social, cultural, and economic conservatism in Georgia and the South. Additionally, Ellett has worked as an exhibit intern at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies where he collaborated on the exhibit Food, Power, and Politics: The National School Lunch Program. He is currently conducting research for an organizational history of the Georgia Department of Transportation as part of GDOT's centennial celebration.
Monica Gisolfi
Dr. Monica Gisolfi is an assistant professor of history at University of North Carolina-Wilmington. She earned her Ph.D. in US History at Columbia University in 2007. She specializes in the history of the American South and is particularly interested in environmental, landscape, and agricultural history, and public memory and commemoration. She teaches courses on History of the U.S. South, Environmental History, Public History, The History of the Gilded Age, and United States History. Gisolfi is currently writing a book, The Take Over: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness, 1914-2007, that examines the rise of Southern agribusiness and its environmental, human, and social costs. Her publications include “From Crop Lien to Contract Farming: The Roots of Agribusiness in the American South, 1929-1939,” originally published in Agricultural History and later anthologized in The Best American History Essays 2008, and “Leaving the Farm to Save the Farm: Poultry Farmers, Contract Farming, and the Necessity of Public Work, 1950-1970,” in Moving Workers, Moving Capital (University of Florida Press, 2008).
P. Toby Graham
Dr. Toby Graham is the University Libraries and Associate Provost at the University of Georgia. He earned a Ph.D. in History and MLIS in Library and Information Studies from the University of Alabama. His research interests include digital libraries, library management, archives and special collections. Graham is author of A Right to Read: Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama's Public Libraries (University of Alabama Press, 2002), winner of the 2004 Alabama Author Award for Non-Fiction. Leaving his position as head of special collections at the McCain Library and Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi, Grahamcame to UGA in 2003 to serve as Director of the Digital Library of Georgia. In 2008 he became Director of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library and later, Deputy University Librarian. As University Librarian, Graham is an ex officio trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Charles E. Harman
Charlie Harman serves as vice president for Government and Community Affairs at Emory University. Previously, he was chief of staff to US Senator Saxby Chambliss. He joined Senator Chambliss’s staff in January 2007. In addition, he served as co-chair of the Senate Bi-Partisan Chiefs of Staff organization. Harman served on the staff of US Senator Sam Nunn for almost 12 years and served as Nunn’s administrative assistant (in present day the title is recognized as chief of staff) from December 1987 through July 1992. Additionally, when Zell Miller was appointed to the US Senate in July 2000 following the death of US Senator Paul Coverdell, Harman was asked to establish Senator-Designate Miller’s office in Washington, D.C., which included organizing and hiring the senator’s staff. Harman served as chief of staff during Miller’s first three months of tenure. Active in state and community affairs, Harman served, in 2006, as a member of the US Magistrate’s Selection and Review Committee for the Federal Courts of the Northern District of Georgia. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Tammy L. Ingram
Dr. Tammy Ingram is an assistant professor of history at the College of Charleston. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2007. She specializes in social and political history of the modern U.S., modern South, and rural and urban history. Ingram’s first book, Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930, published by the University of North Carolina Press in March 2014, has received a Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council’s Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of an Archives. The book uses the Dixie Highway, a largely forgotten 6000-mile network of roads that looped from Lake Michigan to Miami Beach and back up again, as a lens for examining local, regional, and national politics during the Progressive Era Good Roads Movement. Ingram is currently working on a second book project tentatively titled Dixie Mafia: Sex, Race, and Organized Crime in the South, which offers a broad view of organized crime networks in the postwar U.S. but focuses on the so-called Dixie Mafia.
C. Donald Johnson
Don Johnson joined the faculty of the University of Georgia Law School in June 2004 as the director of the Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy. In this capacity, he is responsible for the management and direction of the center's mission of increasing the understanding of global legal and policy issues through teaching, conferences, research, scholarship and international outreach programs. Prior to his current role, Johnson was a partner at the law firm of Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in the law related to international trade and investment, national security and foreign policy issues. From 1993 to 1994, Johnson served as the U.S. congressman for the 10th district of Georgia. While in this position, he was a member of the House Armed Services and the Science, Space and Technology committees and focused on national security and international economic policy. Johnson also served in the Georgia State Senate from 1987 to 1992, where he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee and served as an assistant floor leader. He earned his bachelor's and law degrees from University of Georgia.
Christopher J. Manganiello
Dr. Christopher Manganiello has served as the Policy Director at Georgia River Network since January 2012. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the University of Georgia and Georgia Gwinnett College. He received his Ph. D. in United States History from the University of Georgia in 2010. His dissertation, “Dam Crazy with Wild Consequences: Artificial Lakes and Natural Rivers in the American South, 1845-1990,” won the Rachel Carson Prize by the American Society for Environmental History for Best Dissertation in Environmental History. Managaniello has published in the Journal of the History of Biology and the Journal of Southern History, and was co-editor, with Paul S. Sutter, of Environmental History and the American South: A Reader (University of Georgia Press, 2009). He is currently working on a book titled Southern Water, Southern Power: How the Politics of Cheap Energy and Water Scarcity Shaped a Region (The University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming in 2015).
Keith W. Mason
Keith Mason, as an attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP (MLA), has served as a counselor on business strategy and public policy issues to CEOs and senior executives of many Fortune 500 companies. In the world of government and politics, he served as Deputy Assistant and Deputy Director for Intergovernmental Affairs in The White House, making him President Bill Clinton's principal liaison with the nation's governors. Mason also served as Chief of Staff to Governor Zell Miller and has assisted various governors' offices across the country on a variety of issues. From 2001 to 2003, Mason served as Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Ports Authority as part of his seven-year period of Board service. Under his leadership, the Authority achieved record volume, increased support from federal, state and local stakeholders, and received international recognition as the fastest growing container port in the United States and embarked on a number of capital and service expansion initiatives. Mason holds a bachelor’s degree and law degree from the University of Georgia. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Francis (Abit) Massey
Abit Massey served as president of the Georgia Poultry Federation, a nonprofit trade association that represents the state's poultry industry, for 48 years before he moved to emeritus status of the group in 2008. He graduated from UGA with a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1949.. Massey has served as the dean of the state’s lobbyist corps. He is the former director of the Georgia Department of Commerce, now the Department of Economic Development, where he created the Tourist Division and built the first Georgia Welcome Station. He is a past chairman of the board of the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership and past president of the Georgia Society of Association Executives and the UGA Alumni Association. .
Michael R. McLeod
Mike McLeod began his career as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Herman Talmadge. He then served as Counsel to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry from 1971-73, and later as General Counsel and Staff Director to that same committee from 1974-78. During his first year on the committee staff, he was assigned to lead the staff of the Rural Development Subcommittee, chaired by former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The committee produced the Rural Development Act of 1972. Subsequently his work included legislation for the creation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, pesticide use and registration and forestry management. McLeod played a major role in the drafting of legislation for the 1977 Farm Bill, and he has been extensively involved in every subsequent farm bill. In 1978, he moved to the private sector and now serves as counsel to many of the nation's top food and agribusiness trade associations as a partner in the law firm McLeod, Watkinson & Miller in Washington, DC. McLeod received his A.B. degree from UGA and his law degree from American Universary.
Gregory Mixon
Dr. Gregory Mixon is an associate professor in the departments of history and African studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in 1989. His research interests include racial violence, race relations, Southern history, urban history, the Progressive Era, and black southern state militia companies, 1865-1910. His first book, The Atlanta Riot: Race, Class, and Violence in a New South City, traces the sources of the riot by examining political, social, and urban factors affecting race relations in the early 20th century. Mixon is currently working on two additional publications. His second book, tentatively titled We Called It a Band of Brothers, focuses on African American militiamen in the Southern states, specifically Georgia, between 1865 and 1910. He is also writing a political biography on Henry A. Rucker, the only African American to be appointed as a Collector of Internal Revenue in the district of Georgia, from 1897-1911.
Powell A. Moore
Powell Moore, a native of Milledgeville, Georgia, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1959. After graduation, Moore joined the United States Army and served for four years. In 1966 he became Senator Russell’s third and last press secretary. After Russell’s death Moore worked for the Nixon and Ford administrations in legislative affairs. In 1975 he established his own consulting firm, advising domestic and international clients until 1981. In that year, President Ronald Reagan appointed Moore Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs; the following year he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs. In 1998 he accepted the position of Chief of Staff for Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee. He held the position until 2001 when President George W. Bush appointed him Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, a position he held during Bush’s first administration. After two years with McKenna Long in Atlanta, he returned to government service in 2006 as United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s representative to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Moore currently works as a consultant and lives in Washington, D.C. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Jere W. Morehead
Jere Morehead became the University of Georgia's 22nd president on July 1, 2013, having previously served as UGA's senior vice president for academic affairs and provost since 2010. He holds a J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law. President Morehead's career covers a wide range of faculty and administrative roles. Prior to 2010, he served UGA in several key administrative assignments, including vice president for instruction, vice provost for academic affairs, associate provost and director of the Honors Program, and acting executive director of legal affairs.
President Morehead is the Meigs Professor of Legal Studies in the Terry College of Business, where he has held a faculty appointment since 1986. He is a co-author of several books and book chapters, including The Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business, and he has published scholarly articles on legal topics ranging from export controls to jury selection. He has served as editor-in-chief of the American Business Law Journal and previously held several other editorial board positions with the ABLJ. As UGA president, he is an ex officio trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Charles L. (Chuck) Munns
Vice Admiral (retired) Charles Munns began his naval career at the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating with distinction in 1973 with a bachelor of science degree, majoring in physics. He received a master's of science degree in Computer Science from the University of Colorado in December 1980. His personal decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), Legion of Merit (five awards), Meritorious Service Medal (two awards), Navy Commendation Medal (three awards), and the Navy Achievement Medal. Following a number of assignments on nuclear submarines, Munns' first command assignment was as Commanding Officer of USS Richard B. Russell (SSN-687) from April 1990 to October 1992. During his command, the ship was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, two Navy Unit Commendations and three consecutive Battle "E" Awards. Later, he served as Commander US Submarine Force and Commander NATO Submarines. Following Navy service, Munns was president and chief executive officer, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC. Currently, he is chairman of the Board, Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness.
W. Thomas Okie
Tom Okie is assistant professor of history education at Kennesaw State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2012, where he studied American and environmental history. His research focuses on the intersections of culture and agriculture, poverty and improvement, and land and landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He teaches classes in social science methods for pre-service middle and high school teachers, American history, and the history of food. He is currently working on a cultural and environmental history of the Georgia peach, based on his dissertation “Everything is Peaches Down in Georgia”: Culture and Agriculture in the American South, which won the 2012 Gilbert C. Fite Dissertation Award from the Agricultural History Society, the 2013 Allan Nevins Dissertation Prize from the Society of American Historians, the C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association, and the Excellence-in-Research Award from the University of Georgia Graduate School.
Hugh Peterson, Jr.
Hugh Peterson, Jr. is Chairman of the Board of VNS Corporation, which is engaged in the sale and distribution of building materials and providing construction services in Georgia and throughout the United States. He is the son of the late Congressman Hugh Peterson, Sr. and Patience Elizabeth Russell Peterson and a nephew of Senator Russell. Peterson is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Following law school, he served for three years as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army. In 1963, he joined the firm of King and Spalding in Atlanta. His 30-year practice ranged from general corporate matters to the representation of corporate clients in federal and criminal investigations. He retired as a partner. In1993 Peterson was elected President and CEO of VNS Corporation. He is a trustee of the Russell Foundation.
Pamela Roberts
Pam Roberts is an Emmy-award winning writer/producer/director for television and one of the South’s leading documentary filmmakers. Trained at the graduate School of Cinema at the University of Southern California, she has been executive producer at Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) in Atlanta since 2000. Her most recent film, Dean Rusk – At the Heartbeat of History, provided a riveting new look at the Georgia native whose stance on the Vietnam War made him one of the most controversial secretaries of state in U.S. history. The program premiered May 2014 and launched the new Georgia Greats biography series at GPB. Before coming to GPB, Roberts produced award winning programs for Turner Broadcasting including Iran Behind the Veil and the Portrait of America series. As an independent producer, she produced and directed two documentaries which aired on national PBS: Seeds of Survival, narrated by Steve Allen and The Land of Cool Sun, narrated by Dennis Weaver. Roberts is currently developing new projects for the Georgia Greats series and expanding the Dean Rusk documentary for air on national PBS.
Richard Rusk
Rich Rusk is a writer and activist in Athens, Georgia. He was born Washington, DC and lived in that city during the time that his father, Dean Rusk, served as Secretary of State under President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. After high school, Rusk served in the U.S. Marines Corps Reserve for six years , the last four of which he attended Cornell University, graduating with a degree in Political Science in 1970. He did postgraduate work in Massachusetts and Alaska to obtain elementary and secondary schools teaching certificates. Living in Alaska for fourteen years, he taught classes in Eskimo schools for four years, started a weekly newspaper, began a contracting business and built houses for five years. He moved to Athens in 1984 to fulfill a long held dream – sort things out with his father and assist him in writing a memoir that he had said he would never write. Rusk diligently recorded interview sessions with his father as they spent the next five years talking and writing. The result was As I Saw It, published by W. W. Norton, 1990. For the last two decades, Rusk has stayed active in political and grassroots advocacy groups. He was a founder and longtime secretary of the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee, formed to commemorate two African American couples killed by racial violence in 1946 in Walton County and a founder of the Georgia Climate Change Coalition, an Oconee River Chapter Trout Unlimited climate change committee, a Trout Unlimited National Leadership Council work group on climate change and a 350.Org “local group.”
Jason C. Sokol
Dr. Jason Sokol is an assistant professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2006. He specializes in twentieth-century American politics, race, and civil rightsHe is the recipient of fellowships from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University, and has taught courses at all of those universities. He received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence. Sokol is the author of There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) and of All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn (Basic Books, 2014). He has published articles and reviews in a variety of journals including The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Journal of Southern History, Wilson Quarterly, and Social History. His writings have also appeared in popular publications such as The Boston Globe, The American Prospect, The Nation, Slate, and The Root.
Michael Thurmond
Michael Thurmond is currently serving as Superintendent of the DeKalb County School System, the third largest school system in Georgia. He is on leave from his law firm, Butler, Wooten & Fryhofer, a nationally known civil trial practice firm. Thurmond graduated with honors from Paine College with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religion and later earned a juris doctorate from the University of South Carolina's School of Law. In 1986, he became the first African-American elected to the Georgia General Assembly from Clarke County since Reconstruction. In 1997, Thurmond became a distinguished lecturer at the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government. The following year, he was elected Georgia Labor Commissioner, an office he held for three terms. Thurmond's latest book, Freedom: Georgia's Antislavery Heritage, 1733-1865, was awarded the Georgia Historical Society's Lilla Hawes Award and the Georgia Center for the Book listed Freedom as one of The 25 Books All Georgians Should Read.
Norman L. Underwood
Norman Underwood was born in Red Bud, Gordon County, Georgia in 1941. Active in 4-H, he received the Homelite Chainsaw Company Scholarship, which allowed him to attend George Washington University for two years and intern for Senator Richard B. Russell. He returned to University of Georgia and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1964 and a law degree in 1966. Upon graduation, he was hired by Troutman Sanders, LLP, becoming a partner in the firm in 1973. He managed George Busbee’s campaign for governor and left his law practice to become Busbee’s executive secretary in 1975. He was appointed as a judge to the Georgia Court of Appeals in 1979. He practiced law from 1967 until he was appointed Executive Secretary to Gov. George Busbee in 1975, where he served until appointed to the Georgia Court of Appeals in 1979. At the end of that year, he resigned to run for the U. S. Senate and later for Governor.In 1991, Governor Zell Miller appointed Underwood chairman of the Judicial Selection Commission, where he served for eight years, and encouraged greater numbers of minority and women attorneys to apply for judicial positions. At the end of his term, the state’s judicial system had dramatically increased its racial and gender diversity. In recognition of that achievement, the State Bar of Georgia honored him with the Distinguished Service Award in 1995. At the Emory (University) Public Interest Committee’s 2012 Annual Inspiration Awards, Underwood was honored for a Lifetime Commitment to Public Service .Since 2009, he has been Senior Counsel at Troutman Sanders. Underwood is the 6th chair and a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.
Sheryl B. Vogt
Sheryl Vogt is director of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia Libraries, a position she has held since 1981. She received a bachelor’s and two masters’ degrees from UGA (1968, 1969, 1973). Responsible for the administration and development of the Russell Library, she has fostered a program that documents the broadest range of modern political and policy research subject matter and engages in a variety of public programming and strategic partnerships. She is a Fellow of both the Society of American Archivists and the Society of Georgia Archivists, and a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists. She holds appointments to the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress and the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board, and was the 2004 recipient of Scone Foundation’s international Archivist of the Year Award. She is immediate past president of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.
Larry Walker
Larry Walker, a native of Perry, Georgia , holds both a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from the University of Georgia. He has practiced law in Perry, since 1965. In 1972 he was elected to the Georgia General Assembly, taking the seat formerly occupied by Sam Nunn, and served continuously until 2005. In 1983 he assumed the duties of Administration Floor Leader for Governor Joe Frank Harris, and in 1986 he was elected Majority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, serving in this capacity for sixteen years. He served for four years (1999-2002) as Chairman of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, a nationwide organization of state legislative leaders. Walker served on the Georgia Department of Transportation Board from January 2007 through June 2009, representing Georgia’s eighth congressional district. He was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue to the University System of Georgia Board of Regents in 2009. He is a trustee of the Richard B. Russell Foundation.