Press Releases

National Action Network Makes New Appointments

June 12, 2009 — Rev. Al Sharpton, President and CEO of the National Action Network announced two new appointments to the organization. Tamika Mallory has been named Executive Director and Michael A. Hardy, Esq. has been named as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. Both have already begun performing their new assignments.

Ms. Mallory has been on the national staff of the organization since 2001. Her rise in the organization has been swift mainly due to her effective organizing. She began as a press and public relations associate working under Rachel Noerdlinger, Rev. Sharpton and National Action Network’s longtime media director and Executive Vice President of Communications. She then became a lead events planner having led some of the most successful national conventions of the National Action Network. Recently, she became the coordinator for NAN’s Social Justice Ministry and director of NAN’s Decency Initiative. The Decency Initiative was organized in the wake of the Don Imus controversy involving the Rutgers University Women’s Basketball Team; which led to his firing from this national cable and radio programs and an effort to focus on the Music Industry’s use of the “N and B” words. In the January issue of Ebony Magazine, Ms. Mallory was named among the 30 most influential national leaders under 30 years old.

In announcing the appointment Rev. Sharpton said “Tamika Mallory represents the intelligence, youth and vigor that is required to continue to bring the National Action Network into the 21st Century and help guide it in creating the change we all believe in and voted for. The challenges to our civil rights and civil liberties will not cease to exist in this century. It will be challenged in response to a changing world. We need leaders like Ms. Mallory to be on the front line of these battles and bring the innovations to demonstrate that equal rights under the law is still an important struggle for many in this new century. I look forward to working with her and guiding her in keeping the National Action Network as successful and relevant to our hopes and dreams as a people, a community and as citizens of these United States.”

Mr. Hardy is a founding member of the National Action Network and has served as its principle attorney and outside general counsel. He has also represented Rev. Sharpton in many of the controversies that confronted him and his organization down through the years, including the defamation case prosecuted by Steven Pagones, the former Assistant D.A. in Poughkeepsie New York who was accused by Tawana Brawley and her advisors of having participated in her alleged assault and rape. He also represented Rev. Sharpton during his 1997 historic race for Mayor of New York City, when he nearly forced a run-off with then Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messenger.

Of Mr. Hardy, Rev. Sharpton said that “there is no better person that I can entrust to make sure that the National Action Network stays healthy and focused in all its future endeavors. The work of the National Action Network over the last two decades has created a legacy of sustained indignation over the violation of the most basic civil and human rights in many of our communities and, of course, in regards to police misconduct. Mr. Hardy will continue to help guide and preserve our ability to make history.”