Every year Talladega College hosts a Spring Convocation to lay the foundation and inspire students who, for the next five months, will be matriculating through
their spring semester courses. This year, on Wednesday, February 4, at 10 a.m. in DeForest Chapel, the speaker was Judge Glenda Hatchett, well
known for her television show, Judge Hatchett.
A graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and Emory University School of Law, where she was an Earl Warren Scholar, Hatchett completed a prestigious federal
clerkship in the United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia. She then spent nearly 10 years at Delta Air Lines, where she was the airline’s
highest-ranking woman of color worldwide. As Senior Attorney, she represented Delta Air Lines in labor/personnel and antitrust litigation and commercial
acquisitions. As Public Relations Manager, she supervised global crisis management and handled media relations for 50 U.S. cities as well as all of
Europe and Asia.
Hatchett has presented leadership sessions for various companies including PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Georgia-Pacific, Wal-Mart and Hospital Corporation
of America Inc. (HCA). Additionally, she is frequently a lecturer throughout the country keynoting several national conferences including Office Depot’s Success
Strategies for Businesswomen Conference, Colgate Palmolive’s Multicultural Summit, the Diversity Conference in the U.S. Senate, the Minority Employers’
Conference at Newell Rubbermaid, Microsoft’s Education Summit, AT & T’s Diversity Summit, Home Depot’s Women’s History Speaker’s Series and Black
Enterprise’s Entrepreneurs Conference.
Hatchett left Delta Air Lines to accept an appointment as Chief Presiding Judge of the Fulton County (Atlanta, Georgia) Juvenile Court – becoming the first
African-American Chief Presiding Judge of a state court in Georgia and head of one of the largest juvenile court systems in the country. She is a member of the
Georgia Bar and the Bar of the District of Columbia.
Hatchett presided over the two-time Emmy nominated nationally syndicated show, Judge Hatchett, for 13 seasons (Sony Pictures Television). Judge Hatchett
won a Prism Award for Best Unscripted Non-Fiction Series or Special for Television.
Currently, Hatchett sits on the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons’ Board of Advisors, a position she has held since 2004, and serves as a consultant to
the National Basketball Association on pressing legal and social issues.
Moreover, she has consistently shown her commitment to community development through her service on various nonprofit boards including: the
National Board of Governors of the Boys and Girl Club of America; the Board of Advisors for Play Pumps International; the Leadership Circle for the After School
Alliance and the Advisory Board for the Women’s Resource Center at Spelman College. Hatchett serves as the national spokesperson for CASA (Court
Appointed Special Advocates), a nonprofit volunteer organization that trains volunteers to represent abused and neglected children and is the recipient of
their President’s Award.
Currently, Hatchett has announced the formation of the Hatchett Firm – specializing in risk and crisis management, as well as innovative and effective
closing and settlement strategies. The firm will also engage a national network of Attorneys to handle complex civil litigation specializing in catastrophic injuries
and mass tort litigation.
Hatchett is the recipient of numerous awards including the Roscoe Pound Award for outstanding work in Criminal Justice, NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall Award and
she has been recognized as one of the “100 Best and Brightest Women in Corporate America” by Ebony magazine. She was named Distinguished Alumna
at Mt. Holyoke College, which later granted her an honorary degree. Her other alma mater, Emory University Law School, named her Outstanding Alumni of the
Year. Emory University also presented her with the highest award given to university alumni, the Emory Medal.
