Lady Carlson has been organizing with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) since 1991. She began her organizing career as a leader in the Triangle Interfaith Project in Southeast Texas when it was in the Sponsoring Committee stage. A native of Port Arthur, TX, her first organizing assignment was with The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) in Houston. She went on to serve as a Senior Organizer with Dallas Area Faith (DAI) and the Lead Organizer with Allied Communities of Tarrant (ACT) in Fort Worth.

Lady grew up on the segregated West Side of Port Arthur in the early 1950s.  She is a widow and has three children and seven grandchildren. Her paternal grandfather grew up in the Jim Crow area of Shreveport, known as “bloody Caddo” because of the number of Blacks lynched during that period. She does this work partly out of her passion to leave a legacy to her children of a more just society than the one she, her grandparents, and parents were born into.

Part of IAF’s goal is to identify and train local talent in communities and Ms. Carlson is a direct product of that effort. Over the past 30 years, first as a leader and then as an organizer, she has worked in various areas of Texas and Louisiana to create broad-based institutions where families learn to act together on their own behalf across race, denomination, socio-economic status, gender, geography, and all the lines that separate communities

In 2004 Ms. Carlson moved to Alexandria, LA, as the Senior Organizer for Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith. She is now the Lead Organizer of the Westside Sponsoring Committee, which covers an area that includes Iberville, West Baton Rouge, and Pointe Coupee Parishes