President Barack Obama on October 17, 2011, announced his intent to nominate Wendy Spencer to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees funding for Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America and Obama’s National Call to Service initiative. The nomination currently awaits confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

 

Born in April 1961 to Warren Mays and Gladys (Muggridge) of Thomasville, Georgia, Spencer graduated Thomasville High School and earned a B.A. in Fine Arts and Speech Communications from Valdosta State University in 1983.

 

She went to work as a district representative for Congressman Charles Hatcher, a Democrat representing Georgia’s Second Congressional District in Southwestern Georgia, and then served as director of marketing for the Macon County, Georgia, Chamber of Commerce.

 

Spencer joined the nonprofit sector in 1991, becoming campaign director for United Way of the Big Bend (UWBB) in Tallahassee, Florida, where she stayed until 2001. Over that decade, fundraising rose by 145 percent and in 1999 UWBB was recognized as the nation’s fastest growing United Way among similar sized cities and the fourth fastest among all cities. Further successes came when Spencer served as Statewide Campaign Director for the Florida State Employees Charitable Campaign from 1999 to 2001–in 2000, Florida finished second in the nation in charitable dollars raised by state employees.

 

Spencer left the nonprofit sector for government service in September 2001, when she was appointed to serve as Director of the Florida Park Service, a post she held until 2003. In that year, Governor Jeb Bush appointed her the Chief Executive Officer of the Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, commonly known as Volunteer Florida. As CEO of Volunteer Florida, she managed federal, state, and local grants to engage citizens in volunteer activities, the primary program being AmeriCorps, through which members dedicate a year of their lives to service in communities across the state. During Florida’s record-breaking 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, Volunteer Florida coordinated more than 252,000 volunteers and $85 million worth of donated items, which was the largest mobilization of volunteers in the history of U.S. natural disasters at the time.

 

In 2006, Spencer was appointed by President George W. Bush to the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, and in 2010 she was elected by her peers to a two-year term as Chairman of the Association of State Service Commissions, an organization comprising 54 state service commissions with similar missions.

 

Although she apparently started out as a Democrat, after her appointment to Florida government in 2001, Spencer contributed $200 to the Republican Party of Florida in 2004 and $700 to Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008.

 

She and her husband, Ron, have four sons, one daughter-in-law, and one granddaughter.

-Matt Bewig