Birmingham-Southern College recognizes alumni with top awards

For Immediate Release
Oct. 3, 2019

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Birmingham-Southern College will honor its 2019 Distinguished Alumni, Outstanding Young Alumni, and Rising Star on Oct. 19 during homecoming weekend.

The Distinguished Alumni awards recognize alumni who have achieved outstanding success in their chosen professions. The college will award the distinction to Sandy Thurmond ’84 and Dr. Robert Bottoms ’66. The 2019 Outstanding Young Alumni Award honorees include Kelley Brooks Simoneaux ’07 and Kindred Motes ’12. Graham Spencer ’16 will be recognized as the 2019 Rising Star honoree. The awards will be presented at the Alumni Awards Brunch at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, in Bruno Great Hall of the Norton Campus Center.

Tickets cost $20 per person and may be purchased by contacting Mackenzie Quick in the Office of Alumni Engagement at (205) 226-4917. Student tickets will be available for a discounted rate of $10.

2019 Distinguished Alumni Award honorees:

Dr. Bob Bottoms ’66 – The longest serving president of DePauw University, Bottoms followed a path of service as he worked as BSC chaplain and assistant to the president immediately following his graduation from BSC. He worked as assistant professor of church and ministry at Vanderbilt University until 1986, when he began as vice president for university relations at DePauw University. Bottoms later was named president of the university, where he would stay until 2008.

Under Bottoms’ leadership at DePauw University, applications to the university doubled, student diversity increased from 3.5 percent to 16 percent, endowment increased five-fold, and minority faculty members increased from 3 percent to 17 percent. In 2000, he received the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Chief Executive Leadership Award. The Posse Foundation of New York named Bottoms one of only three “Posse Stars” in 2004. He has served on the boards of the Posse Foundation, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Chicago, the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, and the Center for Leadership Development in Indianapolis.

Sandy Thurmond ’84 – As the current Vice President of Primary Care Services for Children’s of Alabama, Thurmond is responsible for the operations and development of its primary care network and for maintaining relationships with pediatricians throughout Alabama. She began working with Children’s primary care network at the time of its creation in 1995, and has since grown the program to 13 offices located around Alabama, serving around 350,000 patients. After graduating from Birmingham-Southern, Thurmond attended graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Thurmond is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and is a member of the Medical Group Management Association. She serves on the boards of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama, the Omicron Delta Kappa Society and Educational Foundation, and Birmingham-Southern College. She serves on the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women initiative, the United Way of Central Alabama’s Women United Advisory Group, and was the 2018-2019 president of the BSC Alumni Board. She is a past president of the Alabama Healthcare Executives Forum and served three years on the National Chapters Committee of the American College of Healthcare Executives. She has served on the boards of the Kiwanis Club of Metropolitan Birmingham, VSA Alabama, and Alabama Healthcare Executives Forum. In 2019, Thurmond was recognized by UAB’s Commission on the Status of Women as the Outstanding Woman in the Community honoree.

2019 Outstanding Young Alumni Award Honorees:

Kelley Brooks Simoneaux ’07 – At age 16, an accident involving a negligent driver and faulty seatbelt left Simoneaux with waist-down paralysis due to a spinal cord injury. Simoneaux went on to earn her Bachelor’s degree in political science from Birmingham-Southern. She graduated from the University of Tennessee Law School in 2010, where she was president of the Student Bar Association. After working as an attorney representing catastrophic injuries and defect injury litigation, Simoneaux went on to start her own law firm, The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm, PLLC, which focuses on spinal cord injuries. After being denied an Uber ride in 2018 because of her wheelchair, Simoneaux began the advocacy campaign, Wheel2Ride, to direct policy changes regarding the inclusion of individuals with mobility disabilities in using ride sharing platforms. Simoneaux serves on the board of the ENDependence Center of Northern Virginia, and received the Real. Strong. Women of Distinction Award from the national Alpha Chi Omega chapter in 2018.

Kindred Motes ’12 – Following graduation from Birmingham-Southern, Motes served in the Episcopal Service Corps in North Carolina, where his efforts funded arts education for Durham schoolchildren. He then moved to the United Kingdom for his master’s at the University of Essex. He worked in London with human rights organization REDRESS, attending the first Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict as a representative. Motes has also worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center and at the United Nations, where he led campaigns for a coalition of many organizations, including Amnesty International. Since 2016, Motes has worked at the Vera Institute of Justice as digital strategy director, where he leads a team of four. In 2018, he led the campaign #SaveLOP, garnering support from many notable politicians and national organizations. Motes’ editorial work has been published or featured in TIME magazine, The New York Times, POLITICO, The Birmingham News, and The Decatur Daily. He serves as a board member of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ Young Leaders Program, and joined the board of directors for the ACLU of Alabama last month. He was featured as an outstanding alumnus in the University of Essex’s Department of Government prospectus in 2018.

2019 Rising Star Award Honoree:

Graham Spencer ’16 – Graham Spencer ’16 is a fourth-generation alumnus of Birmingham-Southern. After graduation, he joined the Washington, D.C. office of the research/consulting firm, Education Advisory Board (EAB) as an associate. He now serves as a director, working primarily to develop and foster relationships between EAB and four-year institutions of higher education. In his second year at EAB, he co-founded and launched EAB’s global research partnership, designed to serve tuition-driven institutions in a more centralized fashion. Throughout his time at EAB, he has worked with many different presidents and cabinets, providing best-practice research, consulting, and direct marketing to help schools solve issues surrounding enrollment, advancement, student success, policy reformation, and more.

Media contact: Amy Bickers, Director of Communications, (205) 226-4922 or [email protected]

About Birmingham-Southern College

Birmingham-Southern College is a four-year, private liberal arts institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church and accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The institution is the result of a 1918 merger of Southern University, founded in Greensboro, Alabama, in 1856, with Birmingham College, founded in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1898. Birmingham-Southern has students from 34 states and 13 countries and a student/faculty ratio of 12:1.