Former Atlanta Mayor and CNN Commentator Keisha Lance Bottoms and DeMaurice Fitzgerald Smith, Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association, will be the featured speakers at the upcoming Commencement ceremonies at Delaware State University.
Mr. Smith will speak during the 10 a.m. Thursday, May 12 Commencement for graduate students at Memorial Hall Gymnasium. Ms. Bottoms will give the keynote address at the 10 a.m. Saturday, May 14 Commencement for undergraduates at Alumni Stadium.
“Commencement addresses fit uniquely into our university motto, ‘Enter to learn. Go forth and serve,’†University President Tony Allen said. “Where the period sits between those sentences – between learning and leaving—lies commencement. It is a special moment for our students, a moment full of pride and promise, and I am particularly delighted to welcome both Mayor Bottoms and Mr. Fitzgerald Smith to join us. Their life experiences speak to their characters – as both learners and servers of the greater good. I look forward to their joining our community to celebrate all that our graduates have achieved and all that is yet to come.â€
DeMaurice Fitzgerald Smith, the graduate student’s Commencement keynote speaker, was reappointed to his fifth term as Executive Director of the NFL Players Association in fall 2021.
In March 2020, he successfully negotiated his second long-term Collective Bargaining Agreement with the National Football League. The 11-year deal will introduce an additional game into the regular season but also provide players with their guaranteed highest share of NFL revenue in history.
He also led the negotiations to create comprehensive COVID-19 protections and protocols for his membership, obtained comprehensive testing and opt-out provisions for players, and designed the return to play agreements that secured NFL Players being paid their full salary for the season despite a projected $3 billion revenue shortfall for the NFL in 2020. The NFL was able to play an entire season, playoffs, and Super Bowl LV in Tampa Bay, Florida during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Smith is a sought-after motivational speaker for corporations, labor unions, and charities, and a guest lecturer and distinguished speaker on college campuses around the country on the topics of leadership, ethics, sports law, and high-stakes negotiation.
A native of Washington, D.C., Mr. Smith resides in the nation’s capital with his family.
Keisha Lance Bottoms has been a lifelong public servant, serving as the 60th mayor of Atlanta, Georgia from 2018 to 2022. Only the second woman to hold the city’s highest office, she served as a City Council member and judge prior to being elected Mayor.
Leading with a progressive agenda focused on equity and affordable housing, Mayor Bottoms served as Chair of the Community Development and Housing Committee for the United States Conference of Mayors.  She was also invited to join the prestigious Concordia Summit, where she shared the stage with global leaders discussing the importance of public-private solutions to the immigration crisis.
Among other accomplishments, while serving as Mayor, she established the city’s first fully staffed Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, appointed an LGBTQ Affairs Coordinator and a Human Trafficking Fellow, and eliminated cash bail bonds throughout the city.
She was designated a “Women to Watch†in 2018 by Viacom’s BET Network and has been profiled by numerous magazines.
In addition to being named a political commentator for the CNN network, she is currently serving as Vice-Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Protection for the Democratic National Committee.
In June 2021, she was named an honorary HBCU Executive Leadership Institute fellow at Clark Atlanta University.  A fifth-generation Atlanta resident, Ms. Bottoms resides with her husband Derek and their four children.
