A Mississippi State graduate, Amber Lombardo built a career in the advertising industry ultimately building four companies: an advertising agency, digital print shop, art gallery and magazine. After 17 years she sold the umbrella company, Webz. She became Director of Programs at the Mississippi Heritage Trust where she launched a second magazine, Elevation and became heavily involved in state and federal advocacy efforts. She is an ARCUS Fellow and board member of Preservation Action. Today Amber is the Executive Director of the American Institute of Architects | Mississippi. She serves at AIA National as Vice President of the CACE Executive Committee and as a Stakeholder in the Advocacy Capacity Building team. In 2018, she hosted SpeakUp!, an advocacy and action event chartered by AIA National.
JERRY MITCHELL • MS CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
Jerry W. Mitchell is an American investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. He convinced authorities to reopen seemingly cold murder cases from the Civil Rights Era, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's Simon Wiesenthal".[1] In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.
Mitchell was a court reporter for the Clarion-Ledger in 1989 when the film Mississippi Burning inspired him to look into old civil rights cases that many thought had long since turned cold. His investigations have led to the arrest of several Klansmen and prompted authorities to reexamine numerous killings during the civil rights era.
In 1996, he was portrayed by Jerry Levine in the Rob Reiner film, Ghosts of Mississippi, about the murder of Medgar Evers and the belated effort to bring killer Byron De La Beckwith to justice. He was featured in The Learning Channel documentary Civil Rights Martyrs that aired in February 2000 and was a consultant for the Discovery Channel documentary Killed by the Klan which aired in 1999.
Mitchell received his undergraduate degree in communications from Harding University and his master's in journalism from Ohio State University in 1997, where he attended the Kiplinger Reporting Program. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with his wife and their two children.
.jpg)
