TV Anchor Shelby Myers to Keynote Clarke County United Way Luncheon

Clarke County native and television anchor Shelby Myers will deliver the keynote address at the United Way of Southwest Alabama’s 2026 Clarke County annual meeting and awards luncheon on Sept. 10.

The free event will be held at the Grove Hill Senior Center, located at 113 Clark Street. Doors will open at 11 a.m., and the program will begin at 11:30 a.m. Lunch will be provided.

The annual gathering will recognize volunteers, businesses and community partners for their service and support. Awards will also be presented to workplaces and individuals whose fundraising efforts contributed to United Way’s 2025 campaign.

Returning home to speak

For United Way, the choice of a Clarke County native for the keynote is a natural fit. Myers, a graduate of Thomasville High School, built a broadcast journalism career that carried her from the Gulf Coast’s television market to a nightly anchoring chair, and her homecoming reflects the organization’s habit of putting local faces on local service.

Myers studied broadcast journalism and sociology at the University of South Alabama before entering television, a combination that pairs the technical craft of news with the social grounding that community-focused reporting demands. She began her television career in Biloxi, Miss., as a multimedia journalist before becoming a nightly news anchor — the entry-level-to-anchor arc that small-market newsrooms still offer reporters willing to do every job in the building.

She took her current anchoring role in 2018, starting as an investigative reporter and weekend anchor before moving into the nightly seat. That path — from investigative work to the anchor desk — is the kind of career local audiences follow, and it is precisely what makes a speaker like Myers valuable to a civic gathering: she has both the familiarity of a homegrown story and the platform of a working journalist.

Her keynote is expected to center on service and community, the themes the annual meeting exists to celebrate. United Way events typically use the keynote to connect the year’s fundraising results to the human work those dollars support, and a speaker with Clarke County roots can make that connection in terms the room will recognize.

What the annual meeting does

The Clarke County annual meeting and awards luncheon is the county-level edition of the recognition cycle that United Way of Southwest Alabama holds across its service area. The organization raises funds through workplace campaigns and community giving, then distributes support to partner agencies and programs addressing education, financial stability and health across the region.

The September gathering serves two purposes at once. It closes the books on the 2025 campaign, honoring the workplaces and individuals whose fundraising made the year’s work possible, and it turns the community’s attention toward the campaign ahead. Awards presentations are the visible heart of the program — a moment when the volunteers and businesses that carried the drive are named in front of their neighbors.

Recognition of this kind matters in a county like Clarke, where the pool of volunteers and donor businesses is smaller than in metropolitan areas and where a handful of workplaces can account for a large share of the annual total. The luncheon is, in effect, the county’s thank-you note, delivered over lunch at the Grove Hill Senior Center.

The event is free and open to those who register, with doors opening at 11 a.m. and the program beginning at 11:30 a.m. Lunch will be provided, and registration is available online.

Grove Hill as the host site

The Grove Hill Senior Center, at 113 Clark Street, is a familiar civic venue for the Clarke County seat. Grove Hill sits at the center of the county’s road network, and its community institutions — the courthouse, the churches and the senior center among them — routinely host the gatherings that bring county residents together from Thomasville, Jackson and the smaller communities in between.

Holding the luncheon at the senior center also reflects the working scale of rural United Way events. Unlike metropolitan galas, county annual meetings run on community rooms, volunteer setups and a midday format that lets working attendees participate without an evening commitment. Doors at 11 a.m. and a program at 11:30 a.m. mean the event fits a lunch hour — with the meal provided by the organization and its sponsors.

Clarke County’s role in the regional United Way is shaped by its geography. The county sits north of Mobile, and its towns — Thomasville, Jackson, Grove Hill — anchor the northern tier of the organization’s southwest Alabama service area. County-level meetings keep the organization’s work visible in communities that are a drive away from the Mobile headquarters.

About the speaker

Myers’ biography traces a route familiar to Gulf Coast journalism. After graduating from Thomasville High School, she studied broadcast journalism and sociology at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, then entered the business in Biloxi, Miss., as a multimedia journalist — the roles that combine reporting, shooting, editing and on-air work in one position.

She became a nightly news anchor on the Mississippi Gulf Coast before taking her current anchoring role in 2018. Her start in that position came as an investigative reporter and weekend anchor, a progression that put her on the accountability side of the news before the anchor desk.

For the Grove Hill audience, the keynote speaker’s story is a local one twice over: a Clarke County product who left for the coast and built a career, returning to speak to the community organizations that shaped her. United Way events often draw that dynamic deliberately — the homecoming speaker links the organization’s mission to the county’s own track record of producing people who give back.

Myers joins a list of community figures who have carried the keynote role at United Way gatherings across southwest Alabama, a slot typically filled by leaders whose work connects to the organization’s focus on education, income stability and health across the region.

How to attend and get involved

The event is free, but seating and lunch planning run on registrations. Registration is available online for those planning to attend the Sept. 10 luncheon, and the organization has directed sponsorship questions to Sierra Skipper.

Sponsorships are the practical engine of events like this one: local businesses underwrite the meal and the program costs, keeping the luncheon free for the volunteers and guests being honored. Businesses interested in that role have a direct contact in the organization’s staff.

United Way’s role in southwest Alabama

United Way of Southwest Alabama operates across a multi-county region that includes Clarke County, raising money through workplace giving campaigns and directing it to partner agencies and community programs. The model is built on the annual campaign: employers run workplace drives each fall, employees pledge, and the organization allocates the results to programs vetted through its community investment process.

In rural counties, that funding reaches further than it might first appear. Partner agencies providing everything from emergency assistance to youth programs operate on budgets where a United Way allocation can be the difference between a program’s continuation and its end. The volunteers honored at the annual meeting are the workforce behind that system — the campaign cabinets, workplace coordinators and board members who run the drives.

The 2025 campaign being recognized in September represents a year of that work: workplaces across the county organizing, individuals giving and the totals adding up to the community investments the organization announces through its cycle. The awards luncheon is where those totals become faces — the top workplaces, the standout volunteers, the partners whose support carried particular weight.

For attendees, the meeting also functions as the county’s annual briefing on community needs. United Way organizations use these gatherings to report on where the money went and where the gaps remain — the kind of information that shapes the next campaign’s goals.

The September date and what to expect

The Sept. 10 luncheon follows the rhythm these meetings keep: doors at 11 a.m. for arrival and seating, program at 11:30 a.m., lunch served as the awards and recognition proceed, and the keynote anchoring the program’s center. Attendees should plan for a midday event that runs through the early afternoon.

The Grove Hill Senior Center’s location at 113 Clark Street puts the venue in the heart of town, accessible from the county’s main routes. Residents coming from Thomasville or Jackson will find the drive manageable for a lunch-hour event, which is part of why the organization keeps the format.

Those planning to attend should register online in advance so the organization can plan seating and lunch. The free-admission model depends on accurate counts, and the registration step is how the United Way staff keeps the event working at no cost to guests.

The luncheon brings together the pieces that define Clarke County’s civic calendar — a hometown speaker who made good on the Gulf Coast, the volunteers and businesses whose giving sustains the region’s safety net and a venue in the middle of the county seat. The awards will name the people behind the 2025 campaign; the keynote will send the room back to work on the next one.

Registration is available online now, and sponsorship information is available from Sierra Skipper for businesses that want to support the event and the campaign work it celebrates.