PLP Alumni News

Delegate and Sorensen State Board member Jennifer McClellan (PLP 2001, CTP 2005) was the subject of a cover story profile in the most recent Virginia edition of Super Lawyers.

A counsel for Verizon, Jennifer was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in the 71st District in Richmond in 2005.

Click on the attached PDF to see a copy of the Super Lawyers article.

Greg Schuckman, a graduate of the Political Leaders Program Class of 1998, has been elected to the Board of the Association of Community College Trustees. The press release follows:

The  vice-chair of the Northern Virginia  Community College (NVCC) board, Greg  Schuckman, of Lorton, Virginia,  has been elected to serve as a  director-at-large on the board of the  Association of Community College  Trustees (ACCT) for a three-year  term.

ACCT is a  not-for-profit  membership association composed of more than 6,500  publicly elected and  appointed trustees serving on the 600 governing  boards of community, junior  and technical colleges in the United  States, Canada and England.  The mission  of ACCT is to promote  effective board governance through advocacy and  education. 
 
In   addition to his director role, Schuckman also serves as an adjunct  member of  the ACCT/AACC Joint Committee on Federal Relations and as a  member of the ACCT  Public Policy Committee.  As an  advocate  for higher education, Schuckman was recently elected to serve a   three-year term on the executive committee of the Council of  University  Relations and Development at the National Association of  State Universities  and Land-Grant Colleges and is a member of the  Council for the Advancement and  Support of  Education.

Schuckman  is Fairfax County’s lead  representative on the NVCC board, as appointed by the  Board of  Supervisors. “Greg  has been an outstanding member of the  Northern Virginia Community College  Board,” says Dr. Robert G.  Templin, Jr., NVCC president. “His energy,  enthusiasm and commitment  to the mission of community colleges will serve him  well in his new  position at ACCT.”

Schuckman  is currently the assistant vice  president for university relations and  director of federal relations  and research advancement for the University of  Central Florida (UCF).   Prior to  joining UCF in 2000, he was the director of  communications and corporate  relations for the Southeastern  Universities Research Association, Inc. in  Washington, D.C. and also  spent more than three years at the American  Association of Engineering  Societies (AAES) in various government relations  and public outreach  capacities.   While there, he served as the founding director   of the  AAES Engineering Alliance, a coalition  dedicated to  improving the public’s awareness, understanding and recognition  of  engineers and engineering achievements and to ensuring that the best and   brightest students from all walks of life continue to pursue  engineering  degrees.

With an  extensive background of public  service, Schuckman was a fellow at the Thomas  C. Sorensen Institute  for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia  in 1998 and  served as chair of the Alexandria Economic Opportunities  Commission  and the Alexandria Human Services Council from 1994 to 1996.  In 2002,  the U.S. Army decorated him  with the Commander’s Award for Public  Service for his service to Fort Belvoir  following the attack on the  Pentagon on September 11,  2001.

Reverend C. Douglas Smith, a graduate of the Political Leaders Program Class of 2005 and Executive Director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, appeared on the December 21 edition of Hannity and Colmes. The program was broadcast live on the Fox News Channel.

Smith discussed "A More Perfect Union," an initiative by the Virginia Interfaith Center that aims to educate Virginians about Arabs and Muslims in the hopes of dispelling dangerous ethnic and religious stereotypes.

David Redmond, a graduate of the Political Leaders Program Class of 2003, has been appointed to the Virginia Beach Planning Commission. David is a retail sales and leasing associate for Divaris Real Estate Inc. His four-year term on the 11-member Commission will begin in January. David currently serves on the City's Review and Allocation Committee for Community Organization Grants and is a member of the Hampton Roads Association for Commercial Real Estate, where he co-chairs the Legislative Committee.

In a statement released today, Governor Kaine has appointed Sorensen alumnus Alan Toxopeus, a graduate of the Political Leaders Program Class of 1997, to the P-16 Education Council. Alan is a Certified Public Accountant in Winchester and Chairman of the Virginia Community College Board.

Mary Lynn Tate, a graduate of the very first Sorensen class—Political Leaders Program Class of Spring 1994—is now working as a member of the Senator-elect Jim Webb transition team. Mary Lynn is President of the Tate Law Firm in Abingdon, Virginia .

Lou Arnatt Kadiri, the former Deputy Secretary of the Commonwealth under Governor Mark Warner, and a graduate of the Political Leaders Program Class of 2005, is the new Executive Director of the Capitol Square Civil Rights Memorial Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization that seeks to raise the necessary funds for the design and installation of a monument to the Civil Rights Movement, on the grounds of the State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia.

In 2005, Governor Mark Warner and the Virginia General Assembly established the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial Commission to select a monument for Capitol Square in honor of the struggle for full civil rights for Virginia's African-American citizens. The commission, comprised of elected and civic leaders, including Sorensen State Board member and alumna Jennifer McClellan (PLP 2001, CTP 2005), chose to pay tribute to the 1951 student protest at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. An accomplished sculptor has been selected to capture the spirit of the protest and those who participated in this important event.

Not only will this be the first monument in the Commonwealth’s history to commemorate the Civil Rights Movement on Capitol Square grounds, but this will also be the first monument that celebrates diversity and the triumph of a courageous young African-American female, Barbara Johns, who led her fellow students to protest the deplorable conditions at their school.

Their organized walkout and subsequent lawsuit became one of the cases joined with and argued before the Supreme Court as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The memorial will honor the students, the parents who supported them at great personal risk, and the civil rights lawyers who represented them. It will also acknowledge that they were successful as part of a decades-long collective non-violent movement in which the actions of countless individuals across Virginia and the country brought about sweeping legal and societal change.

It is also hoped that the subject of the memorial will give the tens of thousands of students who visit Capitol Square every school year an opportunity to learn important lessons from a pivotal time in Virginia’s history and be an inspiration for future generations.

The Foundation is planning for the memorial to be installed and dedicated in the spring of 2008.

Mike Taylor of Ringgold, Virginia has become the first person ever to graduate from three Sorensen programs. A Lieutenant with the Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Office, Mike is a graduate of the Political Leaders Program Class of 2006, the Candidate Training Program Class of 2006, and the Danville-Southside Leaders Program Class of 2005.

Congratulations Mike!

On Saturday December 9, the 34 members of the Political Leaders Program Class of 2006 celebrated their graduation from the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. Each graduate had the opportunity to share a few words with their classmates and the assembled audience of family and friends. This short video (15 minutes) includes just some of those remarks. The depth of emotion expressed by these graduates goes a long way towards answering a question our alumni are frequently asked: what's it like to go to the Sorensen Institute?
 

Vickie R. Williams, an alumna of the Political Leaders Program Class of 2005,  has been appointed as Vice President of the Hampton Military History Foundation. The primary purpose of the Foundation is to preserve and promote community awareness, recognition and appreciation of the military heritage of the City of Hampton, Virginia, the contributions of military installations to the Hampton Community, and the contributions of the Hampton residents to the government’s uniformed services.

Vickie currently serves as the State Board of Elections Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act Coordinator and is the state of Virginia’s subject expert on military and overseas absentee voting laws and procedures. Vickie has also volunteered to conduct Virginia Candidate Law training for the “Running to Win” workshop sponsored the League of Women Voters, National Women’s Political  Caucus of Virginia and Virginia NOW being held on January 5-January 7, 2007 at Old Dominion University.