10/25/2022
Hi! I'm Alexis Rhodes and some of my favorite things are community advocacy, reading, making jokes during work training calls, chocolate, Taylor Swift, 90 Day Fiance, and the sweet sound kittens make when eating dry food.
I also believe our Board should have fun, passionate, thoughtful, caring folks on it - ideally who are parents and educators themselves.
My family and I have lived in Spartanburg for 2 years, having moved from Atlanta during COVID to be closer to our family here. My husband is Brandon, who works in analytics and loves Star Trek, and my awesome kids are Cameron (5) and Charlie (2), who love popsicles and digging holes. We also have a diabetic dog, Alice, 2 very rude cats (Todd and Levon), and 4 chickens (names have been redacted for privacy reasons).
I am a 15-year veteran of digital advertising, primarily working with strategic planning of programmatic campaigns, which basically means I will find you and serve you ads across all your devices - sorry about that. It comes with a lot of budget management experience and a significant amount of training and leadership, which I look forward to bringing to the Board of Directors.
In my spare time, I have also been a passionate community advocate, serving as Chairwoman for 2 years on a political action committee (fundraising, events, community education, business partnerships, and legal compliance). I have been a volunteer for Furkids, Dad's Garage Theater, and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. I also served on Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms' Committee to Reimagine Atlanta City Detention Center, developed to guide the City Council on the community transformation of the building that formerly served as detention housing. I also love chatting about education, representation, diversity/equity/inclusion, and neurodivergence: my mom is a retired primary school teacher and my sister is a school psychologist for Spartanburg District 7.
As a wee one, I grew up in Washington, GA and attended public school. I graduated from Georgia State University, met my husband freshman year, and kept him around. We popped up to NY for a couple years and settled in Atlanta as we built our respective careers, "flipped" most of our first house room-by-room, and ultimately had our kiddos. Cam and Charlie are the light of our lives and we adore their curiosity, humor, and kindness. We look forward to supporting them, and all of their friends at school, as much as we can on the Board.
As a part of the public school system, I passionately believe GREEN should be advocating for teachers and listening to their voices (they are the ones at school who know our kids best!), as well as ensuring students' equal access resources and opportunities, accessible transportation options, sufficient recess time, limits on homework and worksheets for the younger children, and a focus of social-emotional learning instead of screen time regardless of a student's age. I can't wait to see what we can do together to create kids that are strong, capable, empathic, community and environment-oriented eager learners and future members of society.