DOING WHAT WE DO BEST BETTER
Dr. Debra
Powell
EDUCATION, bUSINESS, AND GOVERNMENTAL CONSULTANT
CIVIC EXPERIENCE
The first female mayor of East St. Louis, Illinois, and second-youngest mayor in the city's history.
Debra A. Powell has invested a great deal of energy and care into ways to improve her city. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article days after her victory, Powell summed up her mayoral responsibilities as essentially giving the people more services for their tax dollars. Shortly into her tenure, Powell pursued ways to give members of her community more for their tax dollars through improving the appearance of the city's structures and streets, implementing changes in the city's administration, creating a business environment ripe for prosperity for city residents and investors, and encouraging black business participation in the city's economic revitalization and development projects.
In June of 1999, the staple store of East St. Louis's new strip mall opened. Powell was the guest of honor at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Walgreens store, the first major retail store to open in the city in forty years. The shopping center was a major development for the city at $10 million and, in July, President Clinton spoke to a crowd in its parking lot. Accompanied by Powell, fellow East St. Louis native Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Reverend Jesse Jackson, Clinton urged Congress and the constituency to support his new markets initiative, which is in essence a proposal for government assistance in business development in areas of high unemployment and poverty across the nation, including East St. Louis.
Her governance experience includes preparing $50 million multi-year budgets for operations and community development, organizing regional business forums, revitalizing business plans and realigning company objectives to increase overall profit and production, monitoring industry trends and introducing new services to update marketing strategies, drafting policies and procedure legislation that adhere to the laws on all governmental levels, networking with elected officials on local, county, state and federal levels, conducting union negotiations, and hosting public hearings.
education experience
Dr. Powell has years of experience in urban school districts of all sizes.
She has the requisite leadership skills in budget management, operations, community/public relations, curriculum and instruction, restorative justice, and the ability to identify, nurture and develop human capital successfully in order to accelerate productivity that leads to success.
As a school Superintendent, she was able to analyze the district's needs and make the tough decisions to set it on a course for major improvement. One of the first orders of business was to look at what was working well and not so well with the district. She led the team that conducted an internal audit of the 32 process standards set forth by the Mississippi Department of Education. They used this as a roadmap for implementing necessary changes for improvements. One of the major deficiencies revealed in the standards audit was more than half of the teaching staff was on an emergency license. The team developed relationships with local universities and colleges that helped teachers create a plan that led to an initial teaching certification license. A plan was developed whereby the universities had a representative come to the schools and registered teachers on the spot. Dr. Powell also assigned central office instructional staff and engaged community partners that assisted with praxis instruction that helped teachers be successful. Additionally, a feeder system was created with some of the universities for student teacher experience and permanent teacher placement.
Dr. Powell has additional experience leading school accreditation teams, conducting accountability audits, leading teams to deliver project requirements, and develop solutions, conducting Professional Development (PD) sessions, training on how to develop a positive and effective climate and culture, monitoring and evaluating staff performance, developing platforms for instructional practices design through data-driven decision making, creating and revising employee handbooks, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and restorative justice training.
Athletic experience
At the end of her four year tenure, she was the all-time leading scorer in the history of women’s basketball
Dr. Powell graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She entered in 1981 on a basketball scholarship. At the end of her four year tenure, she was the all-time leading scorer in the history of women’s basketball, third all-time in rebounds, and fourth all-time in steals.
Since graduating in 1985, she is still known as the most prolific player in the paint. This power forward was the first player to make the 1st all-conference team in the university’s program history. During the off season, Powell earned All-American honors as the second leg of the women’s 4 x 100 meter relay on the track team. She also was invited to the Olympic trials in the 100 meter hurdles.
Debra got her start training with coach Nino Fennoy alongside Jackee Joyner-Kersee where they won state titles in track & field and basketball.