Skip to main content. For more than 30 years, Deborah Richardson has led nonprofit organizations in advancing transformational social change. She is the first African American to lead the year-old Affiliate. Raised in the historic African American middle-class community of Collier Heights, Deborah was surrounded by neighbors who were civil rights icons, professionals, and everyday folks as foot soldiers of the movement, including her parents.
Every day I came home and begged my parents to bring me back to my neighborhood school. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger, and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it.
Richardson is a nationally recognized expert in identifying and dismantling gender and racial injustices. She testified before Congress, advised advocates and elected officials in creating, enacting, and implementing local, state, and federal public policy reform.
Opened in , The Center is the only public institution which displays the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Papers, and interactive exhibits showcases the stories of everyday people engaged in the American Civil Rights Movement and created a footprint that continues to inform modern day movements for global human rights.
Denis Mukwege. In , Deborah was the Power to Inspire recipient. Her commitment to ending sexual and labor exploitation of children and youth began in during her tenure as Director of Program Development of Fulton County Juvenile Court. Her testimony, among others led to the shut-down of the site. Deborah convened more than two hundred multi-sector stakeholders representing private, public, faith, and community-based partners to commit to a three-year strategy to address strategies to address the socio-economic conditions of vulnerable children, and interrupt market demand for those buying and selling children for exploitation.
