Administrative Office of the Courts Director Deborah Taylor Tate was the keynote speaker for the Junior League of Nashville general membership Tuesday, September 20.
Director Tate spoke to members about her career and life of service through her presentation “Women Building a Better Nashville.” She touched on her responsibilities at the AOC serving hundreds of members of the judiciary, including the Tennessee Supreme Court, which has a female majority.
Her presentation noted that Nashville ranks first in the nation for women-owned businesses, that a woman is mayor of Nashville for the first time in history, and the judiciary’s recent and overwhelmingly successful project to handle complex business litigation is led by local Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle.
Debi also spoke about the human trafficking epidemic that has gripped our nation and state. She shared details of a recent Tennessee Bureau of Investigation operation that netted over 100 arrests across the state over the course of a year, but she stressed there is still much to accomplish in this area. She encouraged members to volunteer their time to assist victims of human trafficking.
Among Director Tate’s accomplishments, in 2006 she was awarded the highest honor within the Association of Junior Leagues, as the recipient of the Mary Harriman Award. She was nominated to the Federal Communications Commission by President George W. Bush on November 9, 2005 and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on December 21, 2005 and sworn in as FCC Commissioner on January 3, 2006.
On June 20, 2007, Commissioner Tate was reappointed by President Bush to a full five-year term. In 2014, she was appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court as Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Commissioner Tate has been an adjunct lecturer at the MBA, Nursing and Law School level and served as a Director at Vanderbilt’s Institute on Public Policy. Commissioner Tate formerly served as Legal Counsel and senior policy advisor to two Governors: then Governor (now U.S. Senator) Lamar Alexander and former Governor and Congressman Don Sundquist.
See more about her bio here.
