Leadership summit nears capacity

By Staff
special to The Star
Jan. 25, 2004
LIVINGSTON, Ala. Reservations for the Feb. 6 regional leadership summit featuring Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour are nearing maximum capacity.
Dr. Richard Holland, president of the University of West Alabama and host for the event, said UWA's Bell Conference Center will seat 340 people and more than 300 reservations have already been confirmed.
The 2nd Annual Leadership Summit is presented by the Commission on the Future of East Mississippi and West Alabama and corporate sponsor L-3 AeroTech.
Commission chairman Dr. Phil Sutphin, president of East Central Community College in Mississippi, said the summit not only features the two governors, but also U.S. Reps. Artur Davis of Alabama and Chip Pickering of Mississippi.
In addition to state and federal leaders, the summit, titled "Closing the Gaps," will feature Dr. Ron Ferguson. Ferguson, an MIT educated economist, is a longtime public policy lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Senior Research Associate at the Weiner Center for Social Policy Research.
Another feature of this year's summit will be the release of data showing the region's performance toward achieving the Cycle of Prosperity Benchmarks for Accountability and Decision-Making unveiled at last year's summit.
The 41-member Commission on the Future includes the heads of eight area institutions of higher learning, a representative of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and two representatives each from Clarke, Jasper, Kemper, Lauderdale, Leake, Neshoba, Newton, Noxubee, Scott and Winston Counties in Mississippi, and Choctaw, Greene, Hale, Marengo, Perry and Sumter Counties in Alabama.