Sandra Wicks Lewis

Sandra Wicks Lewis is a native of Charlottesville, Virginia.  At the age of nine, she, along with eleven other students, integrated the public schools in 1959 after a one year period known as “Massive Resistance” when two schools in Charlottesville were ordered to be closed by the Governor and the local school board, rather than obey a court order to integrate.

Sandra is a graduate of the University of Virginia with a B.A degree in Sociology (‘72) and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (‘80) with a Masters of Business Administration. Her class at UVA was the first class of women to graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences, and she was also the first African-American woman to graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sandra has worked primarily in the financial services field. After receiving her MBA, she joined a Merrill Lynch branch in Las Vegas as a Financial Consultant. While there she became a fully licensed Series 6 and 7 investment advisor and broker for Merrill Lynch clients. Her final position before retirement was as a private banker with Nations Bank and its successor, Bank of America.

She credits being a child thrust in the middle of the integration and civil rights movement in Charlottesville for her motivation and ability to enter jobs in management and financial at a time where there were few if any women and minorities. However, her greatest influencers were her parents, Robert and Elizabeth Wicks and her husband, Lemuel Lewis, a UVA College and Darden graduate in ‘69 and ‘72, as well as the close-knit African American community in Charlottesville.

She has served on numerous non-profit boards including Leadership Nashville in Nashville, TN; United Way of South Hampton Roads; and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA. She has also served on the University of Virginia Alumni Association Board of Managers and is currently a charter member of the Advisory Board of the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia.

Sandra has established the “Charlottesville 12 Scholarship Fund” at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation for graduating students at Charlottesville High School and a donor advisor fund in her parents’ name, “The Robert and Elizabeth Wicks Fund” for local community organizations.

In an interesting twist of fate, Sandra shares a connection with Emily Couric through Venable Elementary School. It was at Venable Elementary that Emily began her activism by volunteering in the 1980's as a reading teacher, then promoted to room mother. Venable principal at the time, Dr. William Chapman, urged Emily to become vice-president and then president of the Parent Teacher Organization. Emily said that was the beginning of her political career. 

She was a member of the Charlottesville Public Schools Educational Issues Task Force in 1984. In 1985, Couric applied for an opening on the Charlottesville School Board, and served for six years, the last year as the board’s chair. In 1995, she launched her campaign for State Senate.