Civic Leader

When Doug Shipman 95C moved to Atlanta to attend Emory, he never thought he would one day hold one of the highest offices in city government. Shipman, a graduate of Emory College of Arts and Sciences and former president of the Emory Alumni Board, was elected president of the Atlanta City Council in the November 30 runoff election last year.

“I came from a very small town in rural Arkansas, and I was in awe of the size of Atlanta,” Shipman recalled in an interview following the election. “I remember driving up the connector from the airport and just staring at the traffic and the buildings. I couldn’t have imagined then the journey in Atlanta that would include serving in city government as well as leading the Woodruff Arts Center and building the Center for Civil and Human Rights.”

A longtime civic leader in Atlanta, Shipman is a newcomer to elected office. He took the helm of the Atlanta City Council on January 3, 2022, when new city leaders were inaugurated, including incoming Mayor Andre Dickens. Shipman ran for the post because he felt it was an important crossroads moment for Atlanta, and he wanted to help build consensus across the city. He has considerable experience forging bridg- es with communities across Atlanta and beyond through his roles as the founding CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, which he led from 2007 to 2015, and as CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center from 2017 to 2020.

As a volunteer, Shipman currently serves on the board of trustees of the Carter Center, which was founded in 1982 by President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory. He is also a board member for the Atlanta International School and formerly served on the boards of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Midtown Alliance, and Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

After earning his undergraduate degree in political science and economics from Emory, Shipman continued his education with a master’s degree in theology and public policy from Harvard Divinity School and a master’s in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

He has remained deeply engaged with Emory over the years, including previously serving as a member and president of the Emory Alumni Board. He currently serves on the Emory Arts Advisory Board and co-chaired the University Task Force on the Arts with Kevin Karnes, now associate dean for the arts in Emory College. In 2019, he received the Community Impact Arts Advocate Award from the Emory College Center for Creativity and Arts.

Shipman came to Emory in 1991 as a Woodruff Scholar. As senior class orator for Emory College in 1995, when he graduated magna cum laude, he called on his fellow graduates “to honestly assess our society and use our education to rectify its injustices.”

“Commit yourself to do more than live; challenge yourself to improve, to affect, to impact our world,” he then urged.

What he learned at Emory helped in many ways to prepare him to do just that, both in prior roles and now as Atlanta City Council president.

“Definitely classes regarding politics as well as data analysis set the stage for the way I think about policy and politics,” Shipman says. “I also studied issues of race, religion, gender, sexuality, and class while at Emory—all of which have long shaped my view on issues of inclusiveness, equity, and history.”

He lists his single most important experience at Emory as taking a course on theology and the civil rights movement taught by Robert Franklin—then a professor at Candler School of Theology and now Laney Professor in Moral Leadership— “which set me on the path of connecting history, religion, politics, and social justice.”

Shipman has often credited his Emory years with broadening his perspective, setting the stage for his future work.