Phil Norris

Phillip Norris was born in 1948 and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950’s and 1960’s. His father was the state president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and active in the AFL-CIO Union movement. He was influenced by listening to his father talk politics with his friend Clifford Durr, a noted human rights lawyer, Rhodes Scholar, FCC commissioner, and one of the lawyers that got Rosa Parks out of jail in 1955.

Phillip graduated from the University of Alabama with an undergraduate degree in communication and an MSW and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with degrees in education and applied behavioral science and did his post-doctoral work in negotiation management at Harvard University. He is the recipient of the Rush Silver Medal award from the American Psychiatric Association, a legislative citation from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and wrote a syndicated series for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. He was the President of the South Alabama Institute and the Director of the University of South Alabama Baldwin County, a regional campus of the University of South Alabama, for 25 years.