Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms finishes White House position, returning ‘home to Atlanta’

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has finished her role at the White House.

President Joe Biden announced Monday morning that former Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Stephen Benjamin will now serve as Senior Advisor and Director of the Office of Public Engagement for the White House.

Bottoms took on the role in June. According to the White House, the position was supposed to be for just six months, but the White House asked her to extend the role through November.

“I was proud to bring a different voice and a different face to the White House: A voice from the South, an African-American woman in this White House. It was extraordinary,” Bottoms said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Sitting across from the president in the Oval Office, he knew that whatever my response was, I was speaking for so many people.”

The position “works at the local, state, and national levels to ensure community leaders, diverse perspectives, and new voices have the opportunity to inform the work of the President in an inclusive, transparent, and responsible way,” a news release said.

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“Under Keisha’s leadership, the Office of Public Engagement has kept equity at the heart of our agenda and continues to serve as the connective tissue between our Administration and everyday Americans who may not have a voice to reach Washington otherwise. I have leaned on Keisha as a close advisor with exceptional instincts, and I am grateful to her for serving our nation with honor and integrity. I wish her the best as she returns home to Atlanta to be with her family,” Biden said.

Bottoms, who served as mayor of Atlanta from 2018 through 2021, joined the Biden administration last summer to replace Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman who was Biden’s first Office of Public Engagement director as well as a close adviser.

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