Les Wright
During her more than six decades of service to the city of Columbus in the public and private sectors, Les Wright was an elected official, an institution builder, and a committed community leader focused on improving the status of women and families. She was the first African American woman to serve on the Columbus City Council and was President Pro Tem in her second term. During her nine years on Council, she garnered national recognition for her innovative work with law enforcement and the juvenile courts to address school truancy, resulting in her selection to co-chair the National League of Cities’ Task Force on Youth, Education, and Families and to appear on the ABC-TV news magazine, “Prime Time Live.”
A protegee and close friend of former City Council President Jerry Hammond, Les was often the lone woman in a room full of the city’s male movers and shakers. Drawing on this experience as an African American woman blazing trails in business and politics, Les founded the Alliance of Black Women in 1982 and Corporate Sisters in 1995 to encourage and support African American women in the political and corporate arenas. In 1992, concerned about the impact violent imagery in the media had on children, she created the nonprofit, Strategies Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE), a clearinghouse for community-based initiatives focused on nonviolence. Its signature event, the SAVE awards, showcased and celebrated videos promoting peaceful conflict resolution written and starring Columbus public school children. SAVE was recognized by the Clinton White House for its innovative approach to reducing juvenile violence.
During her sixty year career in Columbus, starting in the Columbus Public School System, then as an executive at Columbus & Southern Ohio Electric (now American Electric Power), and, finally, as an elected official, Les was honored by dozens of local, regional, and national business, community, and service organizations and amassed a distinguished record of service on numerous nonprofit boards, including the United Way, the Boy Scouts of America, Children’s and Doctor’s Hospitals, the King Arts Complex, City Year, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the Columbus Urban League, and as President of the YWCA. Even in retirement, Les continues to represent the city as a Joint Venture Partner for the John Glenn International Airport with the Paradies-Lagardere company, one of the country’s largest airport retailers.
Born in Keiser, Arkansas during the Great Depression, Les came to Columbus at the age of 5 and is a 1955 graduate of Columbus East High School. She was a faithful member of the Trinity Baptist Church for more than 50 years, where she taught in the nursery school. Les was married to Cornelius (Neil) Wright, Sr. for 58 years. Together, they ran a successful janitorial business and raised two children, Elisse (Lisa) and Cornelius Jr. (Tim) in Southeast Columbus. Les recently celebrated her 85th birthday and, when she’s not in Texas with her son, doting on her twin granddaughters, Ava and Hannah, she lives with her daughter in Silver Spring, Maryland.