by Clay Smith | Apr 18, 2012 | News Slider
Lipscomb’s “now that you ask…” series ended with dialogue from a member of the same family that the series started with earlier this semester – the Haslam family. Gov. Bill Haslam opened up the series, and on Tuesday, April 17, the series ended for the semester with his wife and Tennessee’s First Lady, Crissy Haslam. The dialogue was moderated by Tom Ingram, leader-in-residence for the Andrews Institue for Civic Leadership at Lipcomb. First Lady Haslam recounted her experiences growing up in Tennessee, being the wife of a mayor and then governor and working to affect change in the communities that she has been a part of. Mrs.Haslam, who is one of the state’s leading advocates for better education, attended an all girls school growing up. She said benefitted from the school’s format. “Yes, I enjoyed my time there because you had the opportunity to pursue whatever offices you wanted,” Haslam said. “You didn’t have that distraction of having guys there.” After high school, Haslam attended Emory University where she majored in finance and marketing. Ingram asked Haslam how her ambitions in college shifted to bring her to her current position as First Lady of Tennessee. “I had hoped to get a job in busines,s and I pictured myself working my way up in the corporate ladder,” she said. “But none of that really happened; I married Bill at 22 and couldn’t find the job I wanted after college.” After graduating from Emory and marrying Bill Haslam, the couple moved to Knoxville in 1981. The state’s First Lady says life with a politician caused her to change her ambitions. “At...
by Emily Snell | Feb 13, 2012 | News Slider
Linda Peek Schacht, executive director of Lipscomb University’s Nelson and Sue Andrews Institute for Civic Leadership, has been named the Nashville Business Journal’s 2012 Woman of Influence “Trailblazer.” As one of 30 Woman of Influence honorees, and one of three in the “Trailblazer” category, Schacht was honored at a luncheon today and will be profiled in the Friday edition of the Nashville Business Journal. She was selected as the “Trailblazer” winner over Beth DeBauche, commissioner with the Ohio Valley Conference and Lois Riggins-Ezzell, executive director of the Tennessee State Museum. Schacht is the founding executive director of the Andrews Institute for Civic Leadership (civicleadership.lipscomb.edu), established in 2010 to continue long-time Nashville businessman Nelson Andrews’ legacy of collaborative leadership through its academic programs, community engagement and research. Soon after the institute was created, Schacht oversaw the establishment of its new master’s degree in civic leadership, one of only two in the United States, now enrolling 23 students from business, nonprofits and government in its inaugural class and utilizing the institute’s state-of-the-art facility which opened June 2. An ongoing signature program of the institute is to develop informed citizens to lead the public conversation on community issues and public policy. In 2011, leaders from the 10-county Middle Tennessee region focused on transit in the first citizen leadership academy, produced in partnership with the Transit Alliance of Middle Tennessee and the regional caucus of mayors. In its short one-year history, Schacht has lead the institute to bring together state and regional business, nonprofit, and government leaders to collaborate on aging, the challenges of digital communication, transit, Nashville’s strength as a multicultural city...
