Events

Jeff Williams has served as the Mayor of Arlington, Texas since 2015. He came into office with a strategic plan to create jobs and build tourism in order to keep taxes low and provide better city services to strengthen our neighborhoods. This formula has been a huge success. Under his leadership, Arlington has risen to the top of North Texas cities in job creation and tourism. Our city has had more roads and potholes repaired than any other time in Arlington’s history. And we are on the cutting edge in transportation, economic development, and innovation.  Jeff has been a champion for education and worked with the University of Texas at Arlington to try to retain talent and create small business opportunities for UTA students. 

Jeff’s efforts have not gone unnoticed across our nation – He was selected by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to serve as the Chairman of the prestigious U.S. Metro Economies committee for his incredible results and experience in economic development. He was also selected as 1 of 20 Mayors to participate in the Harvard Bloomberg Leadership program as well as the Yale School of Management for CEO’s and Mayors. Mayor Williams was also selected as a featured speaker at the World Transportation Conference this past year.

As our former Mayor Richard Greene often shares, Jeff may be the most qualified person to ever hold the Office of Mayor because of not only his community involvement over the past 30 years, but with also being a business owner and engineer. Jeff is the President and CEO of Graham Associates, a civil engineering and surveying firm based here in Arlington. He has been the Civil Engineer on many landmark projects including some in Arlington such as AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Park, Parks Mall, IH-30 Three Bridges, and River Legacy Living Science Center. Jeff has been recognized as a Distinguished Engineer by his alma mater Texas Tech University and is a member of the Civil Engineering Honor Fraternity at both Texas Tech and University of Texas at Arlington. 

Mayor Williams has a gift of empowering citizens, fostering partnerships, and encouraging us to all Dream Big!  His leadership has continued to propel Arlington to be a pre-eminent community in the U.S. to live, work and play. Arlington is experiencing remarkable results of Mayor Williams’ vision and leadership.

The Rotary Club of Arlington is grateful for Jeff Williams, both the Mayor of Arlington and a member of the Club. The Rotary Club of Arlington considers hosting excellent guest speakers like Jeff Williams. For further information, contact Kurt Bartley, President Elect.

Jim Baker joined the University of Texas at Arlington as Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Feb. 1, 2012, the same day the university and department opened the $78 million, 7,000-seat College Park Center.

Entering the 2020-21 season – in 8+ seasons of Baker leading the department – UTA has won 22 conference championships and made 12 NCAA Tournament appearances.

While the 2019-20 season was cut short due to the worldwide Coronavirus Pandemic, UTA’s student-athletes still produced numerous individual and team accolades, but none more impressive than their collective 3.4 GPA in the spring. Each of UTA’s 15 teams had better than a 3.0 GPA. It marked the 13th-straight semester UTA student-athletes produced better than a 3.0 GPA.

Under Baker, UTA Athletics has consistently made community service a focal point as the Mavericks won the Community Service Initiative Award for the fourth-straight year in 2019.

The Mavs won the Community Impact Award for the second-straight time in 2019 as well due largely to their Operation Global Impact project as part of ‘Team Uganda.’ The trip to Uganda was part of the larger Operation Global Impact series which in the summer of 2019 resulted in UTA being named one of three Division-I finalists nationally by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) for the 2019 Community Service Award presented by the Fiesta Bowl.

In 2018-19, UTA added three more Sun Belt Championships under Baker’s tenure – men’s cross country, women’s basketball and men’s indoor track & field. Highlighting the athletic success for the year was the softball team winning the National Invitation Softball Championship (NISC) for the first time, and the women’s basketball team earning its first postseason WNIT win.

The 2017-18 season had many noteworthy accomplishments on and off the field of competition. UTA student-athletes graduated at the 2nd-highest rate among all Division-I public institutions in the state of Texas, according to the NCAA Graduation Success Rate.

In 2016-17, UTA student-athletes continued to excel in the classroom. Priscilla Glenn received national grants and accolades for her research within the College of Science, and Hervey was named the Sun Belt Conference Male Student-Athlete of the Year.

Championships continued to pile up in 2015-16 as men’s tennis and men’s cross country won Sun Belt trophies. The Mavericks finished 4th in the Sun Belt’s Vic Bubas Cup.

The 2014-15 season was highlighted by a league championship in women’s cross country and an incredible 29 individual conference crowns in men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field – with men’s outdoor track and field finishing the year ranked No. 25 in the nation. UTA placed 3rd in the Bubas Cup – just two points out of 1st. Academically, student-athletes posted a spring and cumulative GPA of 3.055 – at the time the highest in the department’s history.

Jim married the former Nicole Lavoy on New Year's 2019. He and his late wife, Nancy Ann Baker, shared 32 years of marriage. They have two sons, Nate and Jordan – who is married to Tiko.

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The Rotary Club of Arlington is grateful for Jim Baker, both his leadership and presentation. The Rotary Club of Arlington considers hosting excellent guest speakers like Jim. For further information, contact Kurt Bartley, President Elect.

With a growing downtown workforce of more than 8,000 people, along with 10,000 residents now living downtown – Downtown Arlington is becoming a different kind of place today, filled with new mid-level apartments, townhomes, restaurants, live music, offices and revamped streets. And it’s still growing.

It’s not random. Early strategic public investments in infrastructure helped set the table to attract private investment, and the creation of the Levitt Pavilion and Founders Plaza served as the first catalyst project for Downtown Arlington. A second major catalyst project was the University's $78 million investment in 2012 in the College Park Center development, bringing a 6,500 square foot Special Event Center, as part of a mixed use public-private partnership to provide more retail, entertainment, sports and parking infrastructure to our shared downtown district. 

The City of Arlington in 2018 adopted a new Downtown Master Plan to guide development in the Downtown and surrounding areas of the city. The Master Plan accounts for a wide range of existing and future uses to create a vibrant destination for residents and visitors. The Master Plan establishes a vision for Downtown Arlington as an area with a strong sense of place that is responsive to the history and future needs of the area. Additionally, the plan connects Downtown to the adjacent University of Texas at Arlington campus, as well as growing entertainment, employment, and commercial centers within Arlington – an amenity and attraction both to residents and to visitors. 

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Alison V. Hall (Birch) is an Assistant Professor and Fellow of the Goolsby-Alcon Endowed Chair in the College of Business at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Prior to joining the faculty at UTA, she was the Glover Business Leadership Assistant Professor at Agnes Scott College. She earned her Ph.D. in Business Administration from the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane. Alison has taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her courses have included: Leading and Motivating in a Culturally Diverse World, Leadership and Teams, Team Management, Managing the Enterprise, Diversity in Organizations, and Leadership in Organizations, among others.

Her primary research interests are stigma-based bias, diversity management, and leadership. Thematically, her research considers how surface-level diversity markers (e.g., race, gender, class, etc.) interact with the social world to act as barriers to, or facilitators of, individuals’ experiences and advancement in both the workplace and society. She is especially interested in the contextual factors that produce (or inhibit) biased evaluations and, consequently, limit (or enable) the career advancement prospects for members of stigmatized groups. Her interest in leadership is rooted in the belief that a leader’s most important responsibility is to create a work climate that enables all employees – from both advantaged and disadvantaged groups – to contribute more fully to accomplishing the goals and missions of their organizations.

She deeply values service to others in both formal and informal capacities. She was elected as an executive committee member of the Academy of Management Gender and Diversity in Organizations division and is serving as the Chair of the Junior Faculty Consortium and Doctoral Student Consortium. Alison is also currently serving as a SIOP CEMA mentor and is a member of the PhD Project network. Alison is passionate about social justice and aspires to use her research as a tool for discussing timely issues that concern us all. She has published in journals such as Academy of Management Review, American Psychologist, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Review, and Journal of Social Issues. She has also published work in Harvard Business Review.

July 3, 2020 - When and How to Respond to Microagressions, by Ella F. Washington, Alison Hall Birch and Laura Morgan Roberts

The Rotary Club of Arlington considers hosting excellent guest speakers like Dr. Alison Hall Birch. For further information, contact Kurt Bartley, President Elect.