Category: Past Speakers

Dr. Robert D. Lightfoot is the Executive/Medical Director of Victory Health Partners, a faith based, nonprofit medical clinic formed to provide medical care to low income uninsured patients in the Gulf Coast. It was after serving on several mission trips to Central and South America with his wife, Tami, Dr. Lightfoot realized the need in his own community to provide care to those without health insurance.
Dr. Lightfoot graduated summa cum laude from Auburn University in 1977. He graduated from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 1981, with honors. After completing his internship and residency at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in 1986, Dr. Lightfoot joined his brother in Mobile, where he has practiced as a general surgeon for 17 years.
Dr. Lightfoot is a member of the Medical Association of Alabama, Mobile County Medical Society, Christian Medical and Dental Association and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is certified by the American Board of Surgery.
Dr. Lightfoot and his wife Tami enjoy spending time with their 6 children and 9 grandchildren. They are active members in their church, Church of His Presence.

David Bagwell
David Bagwell is a retired lawyer who lives in Point Clear. He was President of our club almost a quarter century ago in 1992, was an assistant district governor, and is now a member of the Point Clear Rotary Club. Before he retired he was listed as a Super Lawyer in antitrust law and in what they named “Bet the Company Litigation”, but he would rather be remembered as a decent maritime lawyer, which people understand.
David is a graduate of Vanderbilt University where he and Win Hallett were fraternity brothers. He graduated in 1968, one of those years when the world fell apart. After college he travelled around the world for a year studying international business on a Corning Travelling Fellowship. He reports that all the Corning Fellows but him got rich in business.
David says that he did not learn much in kindergarten, but that in Army Boot Camp he learned everything he needed to know to be a lawyer: how to type and how to bayonet people.
David went to Alabama Law School where he was in the same class with Senator Jeff Sessions. David had a higher grade average than Sen. Sessions did, but Sen. Sessions climbed higher in the world than David did.
David and his wife have three adult children, and seven grandchildren. He likes to fish and shoot birds and read and visit grandchildren.

John is a native of this city and a graduate of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He has been licensed and active in area real estate markets since 1975 and served for over 23 years as member, and later chairman, of the Mobile Zoning Board of Adjustment. He and Allan Cameron founded Peebles & Cameron in 2001, taking up a national relationship with Grubb & Ellis in 2003. When the NAI flag was offered to them in 2010 they became NAI Peebles & Cameron, and in 2013 they merged with the firm of Gleason and Roberds, becoming NAI-Mobile. John is the only dual accredited commercial real estate broker (SIOR and CCIM) in south Alabama. Peebles has redeveloped over 25 historic buildings since returning to Mobile, and is presently engaged in converting a 19th century Masonic lodge on St. Francis Street into 21st century creative space and 16 high end loft apartments. He was an organizer and founding member of the Board of the Downtown Mobile District Management Corporation (the “BID”) and remains actively engaged with the Downtown Alliance and it’s varied enterprises. He was also instrumental in the founding of the Hearin Chandler Mobile Carnival Museum and maintains an active interest in Mardi Gras as a cultural icon in this City. He currently serves on the board of the Alabama School of Math and Science, the Alabama Archives Foundation in Montgomery, the Mobile Arts and Sports Association, and the Friends of Magnolia Cemetery. His past service includes the boards of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and the Mobile History Museum. Peebles is also a serving brother of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. He is married to the former Allison Hand and has two sons aged 27 and 24. He is a communicant of Christ Episcopal Church, where he has served on the vestry and as Warden.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS/COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Mobile Area Association of Realtors Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR) Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) Mobile Commercial Investment Real Estate Exchange Club Alabama Association of Realtors Mobile Chamber of Commerce Mobile Carnival Museum Downtown Mobile District Management Corporation Downtown Mobile Alliance

Chris Barraza is the Director of Programs for Mobile United, working to create a continuum of development programs for emerging leaders of all ages and backgrounds. She oversees the curriculum, logistics, execution and evaluation of Mobile United’s three programs, Youth Leadership, Connect & Leadership Mobile.
Philadelphia born and bred, Chris graduated from St. Basil’s Academy and then Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania with a major in art history and a minor in psychology. She is currently enrolled in Spring Hill College’s MLA program, concentrating on Leadership & Ethics. Before joining Mobile United as the Administrator of Leadership Mobile, she was a public relations manager at Red Square, the director of marketing and communications for the Centre for the Living Arts and a special events and public relations manager for the City of Mobile for eight years where she instituted the first-ever Mayor’s Citizens Academy.
Chris has had the honor of being recognized by Mobile Bay Magazine’s inaugural 40 Under 40, Main Street Mobile, the History Museum of Mobile, the City of Mobile and was a Leadership Mobile Graduate in 2009 as well as the Dean of the Class of 2014, the two best classes EVER!

John Kilpatrick is the founder of Veterans Recovery Resources which fulfills his calling to help military service members and veterans struggling with substance abuse and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is an accomplished Entrepreneur and Litigation Support Consultant at his company Legal Imaging for over nineteen years. He has over 30 years reserve military service including 12 years as an intelligence analyst in the US Marine Corps Reserve and over 18 years as a Medical Service Corps Officer in the US Army Reserve. His active duty overseas tours include Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-1991), Panama (1999), Kosovo (2005-06) and Kuwait (2015).He also served an eighteen month tour at the Office of the Surgeon General at Headquarters, Department of the Army (2009-2010). John is currently a Lieutenant Colonel assigned as Commander of the 7223rd Medical Support Unit in Mobile, AL. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Spring Hill College and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. John and his wife Laurie (Collins) have been married for over 21 years and have three children, Owen (14), Henry (13) and Kate (9). They are active members of St. Mary Catholic Church.

Russell Ladd
Mobile Tensaw River Delta
Russell will give us a nostalgic look back at the yachts, houseboats, and camps in the Delta; then, bass fishing and how he entertained his crew when the fish were not biting. Your enjoyment of the presentation will be enhanced by viewing www.deltaawareness.com, and APT.org At www.aptv.org; click on WATCH on the right hand side of the black bar; enter America’s Amazon in the search box to the left.

Roy Hoffman, a novelist and journalist, is the author of three novels: Come Landfall a novel of hurricanes and war, involving three women and the men they love, impacted by World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq; Chicken Dreaming Corn, endorsed by Harper Lee, inspired by his grandparents’ sojourn from Eastern Europe to Mobile; and Almost Family, winner of the Lillian Smith Award, about a black family and a Jewish family in civil-rights-era Alabama. He is also author of two nonfiction collections: Back Home: Journeys Through Mobile, with a focus on the diverse cultures of the Gulf Coast; and Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations. A native of Mobile, Roy worked as a writer in New York City for 20 years before returning South in 1996 with his wife, Nancy, and daughter, Meredith, to reside in Fairhope. A former staff writer for the Mobile Press-Register, he is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has received numerous honors, among them the 2009 Clarence Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Alabama, and was inducted in 2015 into the UMS-Wright Alumni Arts Hall of Fame. A graduate of Tulane, Roy has been writer in residence at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, and is on the graduate faculty of the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. On the web: www.royhoffmanwriter.com