Wesleyan College is proud to introduce two new members to its board of trustees. Their tenures began immediately after receiving unanimous support from the current board.
Verda M. Colvin was appointed to the Georgia Court of Appeals by Governor Brian Kemp on April 9, 2020. She previously served as a superior court judge in the Macon judicial circuit which serves Macon-Bibb, Crawford, and Peach Counties having been appointed by Governor Nathan Deal on April 16, 2014.
Prior to her appointment, she was an assistant United States attorney in the middle district of Georgia and served the federal government as an assistant district attorney in Clayton County, Georgia; as an assistant solicitor in Clarke County, Georgia; and as assistant general counsel at Clarke-Atlanta University in Atlanta.
Colvin earned her bachelor’s degree from Sweet Briar College in Virginia, and her J.D. from University of Georgia School of Law. She is a member of the Macon Bar Association, Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, the Rotary-Downtown Club, the Fuller Center, Community Partnership, and she serves as a troop leader for Girl Scout Troop 60022 at St. Peter Claver Catholic School. She also is co-chair of ONE MACON and on numerous boards in the Macon community. She is the mother of two children who attend St. Peter Claver Catholic School and Mount de Sales Academy. She is married to Nathaniel Walker with whom she shares two adult children.
Ruth Knox, a 1975 graduate of Wesleyan College, has served the institution in several capacities, including president of the alumnae association (1985-1988), chair of the board of trustees (1994-2002), and president of the College for fifteen years until her retirement in June of 2017. She was the College’s first alumna to hold the office and its second woman president.
Before moving to Macon, Knox was a lawyer in private practice in Atlanta, having graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1978. She currently is a community volunteer, serving on several boards that include the Georgia Humanities Council, the Georgia United Methodist Foundation, and the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation. Knox also is executive director and a trustee of The Hall-Knox Foundation.
She now resides in Thomson, Georgia - in the family home where her father was born and lived virtually all his life and where Knox and her siblings grew up. She is a member of the Thomson First United Methodist Church and the Thomson Rotary Club.
In June, the College announced three new trustees: Waldo E. Floyd III, MD, a fourth-generation medical doctor who specializes in surgery of the hand at OrthoGeorgia in Macon; Lori Reese Patton, a 1990 graduate of Wesleyan College and a 1993 graduate of Mercer University’s School of Law who currently serves as chief recruiting officer for Womble Bond Dickinson in Durham, North Carolina; and Wesleyan College alumna Jessica Kendrick Thomas, Class of 2008, an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, D.C., working as a contractor to improve military pay functions for the United States Navy.
In June, Wesleyan College welcomed ten-year board of trustee member Amy Rauls to the position of chair. Rauls serves as vice president of Southeastern Retirement, a family-owned business with retirement communities in Macon, Savannah, Marietta, Raleigh, and Pensacola. Macon native, CEO of B&D Industrial, and fifteen-year trustee Andrew Nations stepped down as board chair, and continues to serve the College as the board’s chair of the committee on trustees.
At its September 10 committee meeting, the committee on trustees approved the nomination of Gena Franklin as trustee emerita. A Wesleyan alumna, Class of 1971, Franklin is a past chair of the board of trustees and formerly served the College as vice president for institutional advancement. She is the recipient of the Wesleyan College 2002 Alumnae Award for Distinguished Service to Wesleyan, a member of Phi Kappa Phi, and has served on the boards of Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia, Historic Macon, and Leadership Macon.
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