Speakers

Ken spent most of his working career as a Petroleum Engineer and Engineering Supervisor, working along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. He has also worked as a financial representative and stockbroker prior to retirement.

He has been a Rotarian since 2000, serving as Club President in 2008-2009. He was chair of the Slidell Heritage Festival for three years, a joint venture between the Rotary Clubs of Slidell and Slidell Northshore.  He has participated in ten Matching Grants and Global Grants and traveled four times to Mexico to immunize children against polio.

His current Rotary duties are District International Service Director, Rotary Leadership Institute Facilitator, Global Grants Chair, and Annual Fund Chair. He served for four years as District Newsletter Editor and District Website Manager and has participated in the last six Ole Man River PETS. He is a ShelterBox Ambassador and serves on staff at the annual training in Texas for new Ambassadors. ShelterBox is a Rotary Project Partner, specializing in disaster relief.

He has been named District Rotarian of the Year once and Club Rotarian of the Year twice. He has also received a Governor’s Award and District Meritorious Service Award. While president, his club was named Rotary Club of the Year–Medium. He is a Major Donor, Benefactor, and a Bequest Society member.

In 2015, he returned from a US–Russia Friendship Exchange program in western Russia and spoke on his experiences at an international conference in Houston. He also participated in a Friendship Exchange to New England. Thompson has hosted three Rotary Youth Exchange Students and is active in Kairos Prison Ministries. His wife Paula and he have one daughter, Kathryn, who lives in Arizona. He is a member of the Aldersgate United Methodist Church choir in Slidell and sings for the Northlake Performing Arts Society in Covington.

William Rogers, who goes by the nickname "Brother", became the director of the Programs and Communication Division of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 2017.  From 1990 to 2016, he was the associate director of the John C. Stennis Center for Public Service in Starkville, Mississippi. Before joining the Stennis Center, Brother served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Representative Donald Payne of New Jersey. Brother graduated magna cum laude in 1987 from the University of Alabama, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in economics, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and was selected as a Harry S. Truman Scholar from Mississippi. He holds a master's degree in public affairs (MPA) from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He grew up in Brandon, Mississippi and was a high school exchange student in Kyoto, Japan.
 

Shadrack White serves as the Director of the Mississippi Justice Institute out of a desire to help working people—particularly when a rigged government wants to take away their right to start a business, stop them from practicing their religion, or hide decisions from their view by breaking ethics laws.

Shadrack grew up in Sandersville, Mississippi – population 789 – in a blue-collar family. His father and grandfather were oilfield pumpers, and his mother and grandmother were teachers. After attending public school, Shadrack earned his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Mississippi. He studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, earning a master’s in economic history.

Shadrack’s law degree is from Harvard Law School, where he learned the meaning of fighting for your values even when it’s unpopular. Shadrack served as President of the Federalist Society (a conservative legal association), grew Harvard’s Federalist Society to be the largest in the nation, and brought speakers to campus to defend the legality of public prayer, the morality of work and free enterprise, and the importance of traditional moral values.

In 2011, Shadrack served as Director of Policy to then-Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant during his first run for Governor. Four years later Gov. Bryant tapped Shadrack to manage his $4 million re-election campaign and help craft the agenda for his second term.

Prior to joining the Mississippi Justice Institute, Shadrack practiced law in the private sector at a firm in Ridgeland, helping to litigate cases from large multi-district litigation down to small state court cases. He served as a Special Prosecutor in Rankin County, successfully prosecuting felonies involving the family of an elected official. During law school, he worked for a team of prosecutors at the Organized Crime Drug Task Force in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston. He has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Mississippi and previously worked as a fellow at a national think tank on state policy. Today Shadrack and his wife, Rina, live in Rankin County.

Sam Britton was elected Public Service Commissioner for Mississippi’s Southern District in 2015. He grew up in Waynesboro, Mississippi where his mother worked in the school lunch room and drove a school bus while his father worked in the oil industry as a roughneck.

Britton graduated from Jones County Junior College before attending the University of Southern Mississippi where he completed a business degree. After college, Sam worked with his uncle in their pipeline construction business. In the wake of the oil bust of the early 1980’s, Britton returned to school and completed a degree in accounting, his second bachelor’s degree from USM. Britton then began and completed requirements to become a CPA.

After working with the offices of the State Auditor and the State Tax Commission, Britton began his own accounting firm.

Britton holds certifications in areas including Accredited in Business Valuation, Certified Valuation Analyst, Certification in Financial Forensics, Personal Financial Specialist, Chartered Global Management Accountancy, and was recognized by the Mississippi Business Journal in 2014 as a "Mississippi Leader in Finance.”

Britton currently serves as Treasurer of SEARUC (Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners), and is a member of OMS (Organization of MISO States). Britton is also a member of NARUC (National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners) and serves on the Committee on Electricity and NARUC’s Finance Committee.

Sam is an active member of First United Methodist Church of Laurel and serves as a Lay Servant and is a member of the Church Council.

Britton has completed several marathons including the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., The New York City Marathon and the San Francisco Marathon, which he completed on his 50th birthday.

Sam and his wife, Robin Robinson, live in Laurel, Mississippi.