By: Lennard James
Resilience is often revealed not during the easiest chapters of life, but during the moments when leadership is challenged, decisions are questioned, and the road ahead becomes uncertain. Wanda Halbert has demonstrated the resilience of a leader who has spent decades standing her ground on issues close to her heart while continuing to serve the Memphis and Shelby County community.
As Halbert prepares for the next chapter of her journey, her story is larger than any single position she has held. It stretches across education, city government, county administration, business, and community advocacy. Through each chapter, she has remained willing to speak up for issues she believes affect everyday people.
Halbert has served as Shelby County Clerk since 2018, but her history of public service began long before she entered that office. A graduate of Kirby High School, she continued her education at the State Technical Institute at Memphis, Bethel College, and the University of Memphis, where she studied organizational management.
Her professional background also extends beyond government. With more than three decades of administrative experience, Halbert has worked with organizations including FedEx Services’ Information Technology Division, the Black Business Association and Peerless Properties Real Estate Agency.
Those experiences provided a foundation for a public-service career focused on administration, neighborhoods, education, economic opportunity and constituent concerns.
Before becoming County Clerk, Halbert served on the Memphis Board of Education and later represented District 4 on the Memphis City Council from 2008 to 2016. Her public career also placed her among women who broke significant political barriers in Memphis, including becoming the second African American woman in the city’s history elected to a citywide office.
But titles tell only part of her story.
Throughout her years in public life, Halbert has attached herself to issues that directly affected families and neighborhoods. During her City Council tenure, her work included efforts involving employee healthcare, utility assistance, literacy, parks, neighborhood redevelopment, blighted properties, drainage concerns and opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses.
Among the initiatives associated with her council service was reviving the city’s Pre-65 health insurance program for employees. She also supported strengthening civilian law-enforcement review processes and helped revive a Utility Payment Assistance Program with $4 million in funding.
Education remained another priority.
Her record included involvement in a $2.4 million school literacy initiative, reflecting a belief that strengthening communities begins with investing in children and giving families access to educational opportunities.
Her work also reached into Memphis neighborhoods through funding directed toward park repairs and redevelopment. According to her official biography, those efforts included $500,000 for city park repairs and another $1.6 million for park and neighborhood redevelopment.
Halbert also helped create the city’s Minority & Women Owned Business Oversight Commission, an initiative tied to an issue that has remained important across Memphis for decades: ensuring that minority and women entrepreneurs have meaningful opportunities to participate in the city’s economic growth.
That kind of advocacy illustrates a recurring characteristic of Halbert’s public life.
She has been willing to hold her ground.
Public leadership rarely comes without criticism. Anyone who spends years making decisions in government will eventually encounter disagreement, controversy and opposition. The measure of resilience is not whether those moments occur. It is whether a person continues moving forward when they do.
Halbert’s career demonstrates that she has never been afraid of difficult conversations.
Whether the issue involved city employees, public education, minority businesses, neighborhood investment or constituent services, she developed a reputation for taking positions and defending the issues she considered important.
That quality is particularly significant in public service.
Government decisions can sometimes become numbers on spreadsheets, lines in budgets, or language buried inside legislation. But behind those numbers are people: an employee concerned about healthcare, a senior citizen struggling with a utility bill, a child learning to read, an entrepreneur seeking an opportunity, or a family concerned about the condition of its neighborhood.
For Halbert, those human concerns have repeatedly found their way into her public work.
Her journey also reflects the importance of education and family. She is the mother of two adult sons, Andre’, a local entrepreneur, and Stephon, an Assistant Attorney General in Washington, D.C. Both attended Memphis public schools and historically Black colleges and universities. She is also a grandmother.
Those personal connections add another dimension to a career deeply rooted in Memphis.
Now, as one chapter of her public-service journey gives way to another, Halbert has an opportunity to reflect not simply on offices held, but on decades spent participating in the civic life of her hometown.
The next chapter does not erase the chapters that came before it.
There were victories. There were challenges. There were difficult days. There were moments of disagreement and intense public scrutiny. Yet resilience is precisely the ability to continue standing after experiencing all of them.
Wanda Halbert has proven herself to be as resilient as any leader who has traveled the demanding road of public service.
Her story is one of a Memphis woman who moved from Kirby High School into business, education, city government, and county leadership while remaining connected to issues she believed mattered to ordinary citizens.
Leadership does not require universal agreement. Sometimes it requires the courage to hold your convictions even when it’s difficult.
For Wanda Halbert, that willingness to stand her ground has been part of her journey.
And as she prepares for whatever comes next, one thing is certain: her years of service, her battles fought, the causes she championed, and the resilience she demonstrated have already written a substantial chapter in the history of public service in Memphis and Shelby County.
