April 8, 2024 - Beloit, 威斯康辛州 — 十大菠菜台子 students have chosen Tennessee State Rep. 贾斯汀J. 皮尔逊和奥西纳R. Gilliam ’17 to address them at commencement on May 12. Gilliam, a 十大菠菜台子 Trustee since 2021, is also engaged to Pearson and serves as his Chief of Staff. She was a leading force behind Pearson’s two primary and general election victories.

Senior class officers develop a list of potential speakers based on attributes they believe are important to the class, and then select those they would like the President’s Office to approach.

A community organizer, Pearson was elected to the Tennessee General Assembly in January 2023. Less than three months later, following a tragic mass shooting in Nashville, he was expelled along with two other legislators for protesting gun violence on the House floor. Local authorities in Memphis and Nashville reinstated Pearson several days later, and when Pearson ran for the office again in August, he won with 94 percent of the vote.

Born and raised in Memphis and valedictorian of his high school class, Pearson graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 2017 with degrees in government and legal studies and education studies. After working in Boston as special assistant to the CEO of Year Up, a national workforce development non-profit, he returned to Memphis during the pandemic. 在那里, he co-founded Memphis Community Against the Pipeline, now known as Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP), a coalition of residents and community organizations that defeated a multibillion-dollar crude oil pipeline project that would have poisoned Memphis’s drinking water and stolen land from South Memphis residents.

Pearson’s advocacy and leadership inspired The Sierra Club to recognize him as the 2023 National Changemaker of the Year and The Root magazine to declare him as one of the 100 Most Influential Black Americans in 2022.

Gilliam, 洛杉矶人, leads Pearson’s campaign and District 86’s community outreach initiatives, and helps shape legislation that focuses on reducing poverty, 消除枪支暴力, and enhancing community safety. Before serving as Pearson’s Chief of Staff, Gilliam was a Senior Project Manager at the Center for Justice Innovation, where she provided technical assistance to jurisdictions to help system leaders develop and launch alternatives to incarceration programs.

During her undergraduate and graduate coursework, Gilliam engaged in rigorous research and extensive social justice service, 赢得了许多荣誉. In 2016, Gilliam was one of only 30 scholars selected out of 200 applicants to the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs’s Junior Summer Institute, where she completed graduate-level coursework and drafted policy memorandums and a comprehensive report on Medicaid expansions in the state of Florida.

在伯洛伊特学院, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and Russian, 吉列姆姓罗纳德·E. McNair Undergraduate Research Scholar and explored the unique concept of race in 18th and 19th century Russia and designed and implemented an independent research project entitled “Black Russians? Gannibal, 普希金, and the Other in Russian Perceptions of Race,” that was published in The Birch Undergraduate Research Journal at Columbia University. In addition to her academic pursuits, Gilliam founded and coordinated DreamGirls, a support group that created a safe space for Black women at Beloit.

Gilliam earned a master’s in public policy and later received the 2023 Bruin Excellence in Civic Engagement Award from the prestigious UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Gilliam will attend the University of Memphis School of Law this fall.

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关于伯洛伊特学院

十大菠菜台子 is a private liberal arts college in Beloit, 威斯康辛州, recognized for its longstanding commitment to curricular innovation, 以及亲身实践, 主动学习, and international education programs. The 十大菠菜台子 community is diverse and noted for its passionate engagement with ideas and the world; its students are from nearly every state as well as 44 nations. 十大菠菜台子 offers 50+ majors, 30岁的未成年人, dual-degree and pre-professional programs, 100个留学项目, and several domestic study programs. For more information, visit www.贝洛伊特.edu.