Feb. 19, Randall Woodfin, mayor of Birmingham, addressed campus at the inaugural Distinguished Speakers event, hosted by the Psi Iota chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the national Political Science Honors Society. Samford’s Title IX office also partnered to sponsor the event.
Woodfin attended law school at Samford’s Cumberland School of Law before beginning his political career. He discussed leadership and the different “leadership nuggets” Samford students can take away to be good leaders in the world. He emphasized his key aspects of leadership: leaders should never stop learning, leaders should be listeners and leaders should act with customer service.
“I submit to you, one of the top values should always be customer service, good quality, customer service. How do you take care of your customer and or your client and all the people?” he said.
Woodfin was born and raised in Birmingham, the city he now leads. He takes the stance of a non-partisan politician.
“Every single day I don’t have to get up and think about Republican and Democrat politics, because it all sucks. And partisan politics, everybody, is not leadership,” he said. “See, when you’re a non-partisan mayor, you are either forced to or voluntarily embrace the notion of what leadership really means, the ability to problem solve, the ability to co-create with others, the ability to help people.”
Woodfin grew up having no fewer than eight people living in his home, and he lived with four different generations. He spoke of sitting at the feet of his great grandmother and listening to her stories and advice.
“As a municipal governor in an organization, we need to be adept enough to realize, accept, and embrace we have different generations we work for,” he said. “Therefore, we need to be in a position to communicate in every communication channel that exists. That’s our job. That’s our responsibility.”
Professor Noemi Oeding is the faculty advisor for the Psi Iota chapter of Pi Sigma. The chapter resumed in 2023, and Oeding became the advisor in 2024 when she joined Samford.
“When we restarted, we knew that we wanted to do something with the chapter and make it be something impactful for the community, the Samford community,” she said.
Chyna Bates serves as the president of the Psi Iota chapter, and this event is helping to kickstart the new era of the chapter.
“We’ve really just been working on giving the organization a really good start, a good baseline for those behind us,” she said. “In the previous years, there hasn’t been many activity and things like that, and so we really wanted this ‘line on your resume’ to really mean something.”
The chapter will also host a policy pitch competition next month, where any Samford student can pitch an idea for a policy they would like to see implemented at the university, state or federal level. Winners are also able to pitch their policy to some legislators.
Woodfin suggested that Samford students could be more invested in the Birmingham community by starting a “Birmingham first” service organization, to direct Samford students’ service toward the surrounding local community.
“As it turns out, if you become a very effective listener, turns out if you truly embrace customer service, then you be a very effective communicator,” he said. “You will be a leader among leaders.”
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