Personnel Note: Libba Vaughan to serve as new executive director for Leadership Birmingham
Libba Vaughan has been selected as Leadership Birmingham’s new executive director, the group’s board of trustees announced today. Vaughan, currently executive director for the Freshwater Land Trust, will serve as Leadership Birmingham’s fourth executive director, effective Sept. 1. Her selection follows an extensive search and selection by the organization’s executive search committee. Vaughan fills the role previously held by Ann Florie, who served in the position 14 years and recently announced her retirement. Vaughan previously directed the Freshwater Land Trust’s philanthropy and communications and served as the director of UAB’s office of Service Learning and Undergraduate Research.“Libba is an extremely talented and community-focused leader, and she’s just who is needed to carry on Leadership Birmingham’s long tradition of developing successful leaders,” said Mike Warren, chairman of Leadership Birmingham board of trustees. “Her drive to help make our city better now and for future generations is evident in her accomplishments with the Freshwater Land Trust and with other efforts she continues to successfully lead today. We are thrilled she is joining us.” “We are excited Libba is bringing her experience to this new role. Her enthusiasm for connecting people and bringing businesses and communities together to accomplish great things is infectious,” said Guin Robinson, chair of Leadership Birmingham’s executive search committee. “Our committee conducted a very extensive search and vetted a number of wonderful candidates. I am proud of their hard work and dedication in finding the best fit. Libba will undoubtedly help take Leadership Birmingham to the next level.” Vaughan is on the board of Alabama Possible, the UAB Honors College Leadership Board, and the One Great Community Council. She is a member of the Rotary Club of Birmingham and The Women’s Network. Vaughan, a 2018 graduate of Leadership Birmingham, led the Freshwater Land Trust’s successful land conservation, restoration and Red Rock Trail System projects, including the recently completed Kiwanis-Vulcan Trail. She also raised funds for the organization’s largest operating budget increase during her tenure. At UAB, she launched a faculty development program that increased university and community engagement. “Leadership Birmingham is vital to the success and prosperity of greater Birmingham,” Vaughan said. “It is the incubator and inspiration for ideas and connections and actions that make our region a better place for all of us, not just its graduates. “I am so proud of what the board, staff, partners and I have accomplished together at the Freshwater Land Trust and what they are positioned to do in the future. I am honored to be asked to build on my collaborative experience to serve Leadership Birmingham and continue and grow its transformative impact,” she said. More than 1,700 people have graduated from Leadership Birmingham since it began in 1983. The program’s purpose is to inform and educate participants through a series of issue-oriented monthly programs and is based on the belief that knowledge and relationships are key elements of effective community leadership. In addition, Leadership Birmingham directs programming for the Alumni Association and Youth Leadership Forum, a program for 10th- and 11th-grade students from public, private and parochial schools in Jefferson County. Republished with the permission of the Alabama Newscenter.
Leadership Birmingham Executive Director Ann Florie retiring
Ann Florie starts an interview about retiring as executive director of Leadership Birmingham by talking about her predecessors and how much they meant to the organization. “We’re the beneficiaries of what they did,” Florie says of Leadership Birmingham’s first two directors, Sheila Blair and Elise Penfield. Those who know her well say that is the essence of Florie: deflecting attention from herself, even as she has been the face of the leadership program for the past 14 years. “She personally and symbolically is Leadership Birmingham in the eyes and minds of those who have been through the class with her,” says Mike Warren, CEO of Children’s of Alabama and chairman of Leadership Birmingham’s board of trustees. “To talk about her predecessors and their importance to the organization, that does sound like Ann. It is my great hope that in the recesses of her mind that Ann knows she’s done an extraordinary job and we are most grateful for it,” he says. Florie this week announced her retirement, effective Sept. 1. “I will be 65 in September,” she says. “I think it’s a good time.” Florie offers no concrete plans for life after Leadership Birmingham other than to say, “I think I’ll be involved in something.” Her role as the leadership program’s director has allowed her “to be involved in a whole lot of things in the community. I’ll miss being in the mix.” To those who know her, it’s impossible to imagine Florie not in the mix. She has been deeply involved in the Birmingham community for decades – as a Mountain Brook school board member, in Junior League, the Downtown Kiwanis Club, the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, the Women’s Fund, Region 2020, the Birmingham Business Alliance, the Freshwater Land Trust, the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, United Way of Central Alabama, McWane Science Center, the Jefferson County Personnel Board, the Birmingham Water Works Board and, of course, Leadership Birmingham. “Ann is civically obsessed,” says Guin Robinson, who is a graduate of Florie’s first class in 2005 and a longtime friend. “To people who are civically obsessed, it’s almost impossible for them to sit down. “As long as there’s a mix, Ann Florie will be in it,” he says. Florie entered the mix soon after she and her husband, Mike, moved to Birmingham in 1978. The Arkansas native grew up in the tiny town of Weldon and went to school at Newcomb College at Tulane University in New Orleans. She met her future husband in law school there and moved with him to Birmingham for his new job. Florie began to volunteer, becoming involved in PTA and Junior League and the Mountain Brook school board. She credits growing up in a small town with fueling her passion for community work. “I literally grew up in a town of 100 people. You operate at a grassroots level. You get to know people,” she says, noting that her parents were “very engaged” in the community. “Growing up in a small town sitting on the sidelines isn’t an option,” Florie says. “Everyone has to be engaged and everyone has to work together, so I guess I gravitated to what I knew – projects that involved understanding who people are and how they can work together to get things done.” Florie looks back on her career and says she could have been smarter about her career path, but has no regrets for how it turned out. “It’s been incredible. I think working with people around issues I cared about, it’s been great, fascinating, interesting – all the things one hopes,” she says, adding with a laugh, “I didn’t make a lot of money. “But I got to meet people I would never have known and be involved in things. It was a great gift.” Robinson, the director of community outreach for Jefferson State Community College, chairs the committee tasked with hiring Florie’s replacement. Doing so will be a tall order, he says. “We have to look at what has happened and we have to look at where we are now, and build on the history and the work of Ann Florie and so many others, including the other executive directors,” he says. “Let’s just say this. I think everyone got it right to this point. We’ve got to get it right going forward.” Sharon Blackburn, a senior U.S. district judge and a member of the hiring committee, says of Florie: “It’s impossible to overstate the impact Ann has had on Leadership Birmingham and our city. During my year in Leadership Birmingham (2011), I was amazed by her enthusiasm and knowledge. I can’t imagine it without Ann.” Leadership Birmingham has had few transitions in its own leadership in its three-and-a-half-decade existence. The result of the Birmingham Area Chamber of Commerce’s effort in 1981 to start a community leadership program, the first class was selected in 1983. Every year since, Leadership Birmingham has brought together a diverse group of 50 to 60 leaders in the Birmingham area to explore issues including education, government, health care, criminal justice, economic development and quality of life. “What we hope, what the program is designed to do, is have people leave here having found different perspectives, a broader knowledge about the community, and be able to do whatever they do in a more informed way,” Florie says. “We hope we give you the tools to do what you do differently and more effectively, and that it works to the benefit of the community.” She believes Leadership Birmingham works in ways small and large. She has seen the effect the intense, day-long meetings each month can have on the class. “I’ve watched people change over the course of a year where they have a better understanding of the community and can apply what they have learned to what they do,” she says. “It changes your perspective on what you do. It empowers people to make a difference.” That difference can show up on a large scale. For example, graduates of Leadership Birmingham’s 1997 class – including Florie – began Region 2020, which led efforts to promote regional cooperation and citizen
