Terri Sewell (D-AL-07)i

Alabama District 07

Terrycina Andrea “Terri” Sewell

Congressman Terri Sewell, Biography from House.gov

Terri Sewell was raised in Selma, Alabama, where she inherited her family’s legacy of public service. Her maternal family offered its homestead to weary travelers on the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery. Influenced greatly by her parents and grandparents, she spent her childhood summers in Lowndes County with her grandparents. Terri’s grandfather, a Primitive Baptist Minister and a farmer, instilled in her a love for the land, an appreciation of hard work and the importance of her faith. It was her grandfather and the members of his beloved Beulah Primitive Baptist Church that gave Terri a deep appreciation and respect for the Black Belt region of Alabama and its people.

The first black valedictorian of Selma High School, Terri attended Princeton University, graduating cum laude in 1986. Terri was awarded a Marshall/Commonwealth Scholarship and received a Masters degree with first class Honors from Oxford University in 1988. She is a 1992 graduate of Harvard Law School where she served as editor of the Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review.

After graduation, Terri served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Chief Judge U.W. Clemon, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Alabama, in Birmingham. Terri began her legal career at the prestigious law firm of Davis, Polk & Wardwell in New York City, where she was a successful securities lawyer for more than a decade. Upon returning home to Alabama in 2004, she has made a significant impact both professionally and through her community activities.

Terri was recently a partner in the Birmingham law office of Maynard, Cooper & Gale, P.C. where she has distinguished herself as one of the only black public finance lawyers in the State of Alabama.

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