Biographical Information
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Rev. Dr. D. Anthony Everett
Executive Director Dr. Everett is an ordained elder of the United Methodist Church. Having served as associate director for African American Ministries for the Kentucky Conference, he pastored and served in churches from Dallas, Texas, to Lexington, Kentucky,and Cleveland, Ohio. He has a passion for human rights, transformative justice, and prophetic activism.
Dr. Everett graduated magna cum laude from Paul Quinn College receiving the B.S. degree in Organizational Management. He earned the MDiv degree with certification in Urban Ministry from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, where he was a Seminarians for Worker Justice Intern with Interfaith Worker Justice. Dr. Everett earned a DMin degree from United Theological Seminary as a fellow of the Prophetic Preaching and Praxis Walker/Cummings Cohort. Dr. Everett is an advocate for the human rights of oppressed and marginalized Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). His advocacy and faith led himto support sentencing and criminal justice reform legislation in Kentucky and nationwide, including legislation seeking voter enfranchisement of citizens who were previously incarcerated, the abolition of for-profit prisons, and the transformation of the mass incarceration / criminal punishment system. Dr. Everett has written op-eds to the Lexington Herald Leader and the Louisville Courier Journal on issues of criminal injustice and held prayer vigils during legislative sessions to bring to light the issue of voting rights for former felons. He served as a representative from the Kentucky Council of Churches to the initial Kentucky Smart on Crime Coalition. He was an avid supporter of the Take back Cheapside Movement which successfully removed two Confederate statues from public property in Lexington, Kentucky. He has made numerous presentations before church, civic, and collegiate bodies on topics of interest ranging from racial justice, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, civil and human rights, LGBTQAI+ discrimination, and the Movement for Black Lives. A 2010 Leadership Kentucky graduate, the Honorable Governor Steven Beshear appointed Rev. Dr. Everett for two terms to the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights as an at-large member where he served as vice-chair. Governor Beshear commissioned him with the title of Kentucky Colonel, Kentucky’s highest title of honor bestowed in recognition of an individual’s noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to the community, state, and nation. In consideration of Dr. Everett’s contributions to the Lexington community in areas of interfaith, fairness, justice, and inclusion, the Honorable Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington declared April 23, 2018, Reverend D. Anthony Everett Day in Lexington. Dr. Everett enjoyed a long tenure as an executive with over 19 years from EDS Corporation (now HP Enterprise), a global information technology services company where he serviced accounts in Flint, Michigan as well as Dallas and the corporate headquarters in Plano, Texas.During his tenure, he served as a loaned executive to the United Way of Genesee County and a volunteer executive director for the BDPA Education and Technology Foundation. He provided in-kind services as the EDS Project Manager for the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation School of Adaptive Computer Training of Atlanta, Georgia and raised over $1.5M for the program. He volunteered as an AMACHI Program Mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters, a program that mentors children of incarcerated parents. Under his leadership, Project Alpha, a teenage male pregnancy program sponsored by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, reached the Dallas County Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center and over 300,000 households in the Dallas Metro Area. Aside from activism, corporate, and academic life, Reverend Dr. Everett enjoys family time, music, comedy, audible books, podcasts, and exercising. He is a light-middle weight, three-time gold-medal National Collegiate Tae Kwon Do Association champion and received the volunteer of the year award from the Urban League of Greater Flint for his outreach to neighborhood children through a free program teaching Tae Kwon Do. Born in Washington, D.C., Reverend Dr. Everett is married to American Spiritual Ensemble soprano soloist, Dr. Angelique Clay Everett, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky School of Music and native of Louisville, Kentucky.The Everetts are an empty nest, blended family with four adult children and one grandchild. |