National Council - Alpha Chi

Featured Speakers and Panelists
Carlotta Walls LaNier
Carlotta Walls stepped into history in September 1957, when at age 14 she became the youngest
of nine students chosen to integrate Little Rock Central High School. The students became known
around the world as the Little Rock Nine, and with great courage and determination they
changed the face of American education forever.
After Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus closed Little Rock’s high schools the next school year to avoid
further integration, Carlotta was forced to sit out her junior year and take correspondence
courses. But she was one of the two members of the original nine who returned to Central in
1959. On May 20, 1960, she became the first African‐American girl to participate in a graduation
ceremony at Central; others received their diplomas via the mail when Faubus closed the schools.
Carlotta attended Michigan State University for two years and then moved to Denver, where she
continued her education and graduated from Colorado State College. She married, began her
career as a program administrator for the YWCA, and in 1977 founded her own real estate brokerage firm.
Among her many awards are the Congressional Medal of Honor, which President Bill Clinton presented to each member of the
Little Rock Nine, two honorary doctorate degrees, and recognition as a member of the Colorado Woman’s Hall of Fame and the
Girl Scouts Women of Distinction. She also serves as president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation. She and her husband, Ike, live
in Englewood, Colorado, and have two adult children, a son and a daughter.
She recently authored her memoir, A Mighty Long Way: My Journey To Justice At Little Rock Central High School, published in
2009 by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House.
Carol H. Rasco is doing double duty at this convention, as organizer and moderator of the panel
discussion at the Clinton Presidential Center and as head of Reading Is Fundamental, Alpha Chi’s literacy
partner in Little Rock. Ms. Rasco worked in the White House for four years as domestic policy adviser to
President Bill Clinton and directed the Domestic Policy Council. She later served as senior adviser in the
Department of Education and as director of the America Reads Challenge, a campaign to promote the
importance of all children reading well and independently by the end of the third grade.
Originally from Arkansas, Rasco earlier worked for Mr. Clinton for ten years as the chief policy adviser in
the governor’s office and also served as the liaison to the National Governors’ Association. After she left
the federal government, she was the executive director for government relations at the College Board
before taking her present position as chief executive officer of Reading Is Fundamental.
Panelist Janis F. Kearney served in 1992 as the Clinton‐Gore presidential campaign’s director of minority
media outreach. Following the election she moved to Washington as part of the transition team, working
first as a White House media affairs officer and then at the Small Business Administration. In 1995
Kearney returned to the White House as the first‐ever presidential personal diarist. For several years
during Clinton’s second term and into his transition from office, Kearney followed the 42nd president on
a daily basis. Kearney also travelled around the country asking fellow African‐Americans about their
impressions of Clinton. She chronicled those interviews in her book Conversations: William Jefferson
Clinton, From Hope to Harlem.
Discussion panelist James L. (Skip) Rutherford was a long‐time informal adviser to Mr. Clinton as both
governor and President. In 1997, during Clinton’s second presidential term, Rutherford was appointed
chairman of the board of the William J. Clinton Foundation; in that role he supervised the planning for
the Presidential Center and also worked closely with the President and various cabinet departments. In
2006 he stepped down from the Foundation chairmanship to become dean of the University of Arkansas
Clinton School of Public Service, a graduate program housed on the grounds of the Presidential Center.
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