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Longtime Rock Island educator, disability advocate and NAACP leader Bonnie Ballard easily recalls the day years ago when she joined other Quad Cities women at a conference titled “Women Dare to Lead.”
Fast forward to Friday, Oct. 7, when this lifelong activist and agent of change proudly accepted the Athena Leadership Award sponsored by Arconic and celebrated during the Quad Cities Women Lead Change (WLC) day-long conference and awards luncheon.
In all, nine outstanding women leaders were honored at WLC’s annual Athena Award and Women of Influence Awards luncheon. The event boasted 525 in attendance at the Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf and another 100 taking part online.
Honorees spanned all ages – beginning with the WLC’s signature Athena Leadership Award for female leaders aged 60 and older, which was sponsored by Arconic.
This is the 16th year Athena winners have been recognized in the Quad Cities by WLC and its predecessors. In recent years, WLC added the Women of Influence Awards for female leaders ages 30-59, and the Emerging Leader Awards for women aged 18-29.
Honorees are selected by a panel of past honorees and community members based on nominations detailing their achievements, community engagement, and service to empowering women in the QC region.
Ms. Ballard used her acceptance speech to celebrate all female leaders.
“Do you know why we as women are better leaders?” she asked. “Because we know how to get things done.”
The multitasking Ms. Ballard has spent a lifetime doing that according to her daughter D’Juana Ballard, who nominated her for the award.
Bonnie Ballard “is an educator, mentor, sponsor, philanthropist; she holds a professional reputation showing high integrity and ethical standards,” D’Juana Ballard wrote. “She embodies the criteria for the Athena Award.”
For her mother, who serves as the current Rock Island County NAACP president, the fight for equal rights and representation have been a hallmark of her life in public service. As a teacher in Cleveland, Mississippi, Ms. Ballard changed the structure of the business department to help kids succeed.
Before the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law, the younger Ms. Ballard wrote, Bonnie Ballard worked to provide equal access to education by enforcing a school attendance requirement that was regularly violated by her district’s superintendent. The district boss owned a plantation. He often removed students from school to work in the cotton fields. Ms. Ballard took on the superintendent by following policy and failing kids who missed too many days, and the superintendent ended the practice.
In 1970, she made history as the first Black teacher at Cleveland’s East Side High School to receive a master’s degree from Delta State, a previously all-White institution, her daughter wrote. Later that year, Bonnie Ballard and husband Tom relocated the family to Illinois where she began her career as a junior high school counselor in what now is the Rock Island-Milan School District.
As an educator, she recognized all her students’ potential to learn and they acquired a solid education, her daughter said in the nomination. For example, Bonnie Ballard championed disruptive students who had been incorrectly labeled as learning disabled.
Her teaching methods “led them to develop the self-discipline to control their own behavior,” D’Juana Ballard wrote. Her mother would later become director of career orientation at Rock Island High School where she developed an internship and job training program for junior high and high school students.
From 1979-1982, she also served as the first Black president of the Rock Island Education Association (RIEA) and successfully negotiated what was then the best contract for teachers and staff in Illinois.
In 1987, she became a champion of people with disabilities when she went to work in the Equal Employment Division for the U.S. Army at the Rock Island Arsenal. She also managed a work recruitment program for individuals with disabilities. That sparked her interest in the Illinois/Iowa Center for Independent Living of Rock Island, where she is in her second term as board president.
Ms. Ballard has been a member of the NAACP for 55 years and president of the Rock Island branch since 2020. She also recently was appointed to serve on an education task to explore an education proposal she had sent to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Her community work includes serving on a committee to improve the west end of Rock Island, participating in clothing drives and regularly speaking at events designed to inspire young and old Rock Island residents.
Throughout her life, Ms. Ballard told the WLC crowd assembled to honor her, that her motto has always been: “If I can help somebody on this journey, then my life won’t be in vain.”
