Director of Giving Cristen Hemmins, a native of Jackson, has long run an advertising-sales business, Hemmins Hall Inc., from Oxford, Miss., servicing a variety of publications and glossy magazines including Oxford American and Delta Magazines. She graduated from Vanderbilt University and has a master’s degree in southern studies from the University of Mississippi.

Cristen serves on the board of the Mississippi ACLU, Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, and LOU-Home, a nonprofit organization that looks to provide affordable housing to the low-income population of the Lafayette-Oxford-University community. She has long been civically and politically engaged, serving as a delegate to the 2012 DNC and was the Clinton campaign pick from Mississippi for the National Rules Committee of the 2015 DNC. 

In 2015, she ran for State Senate, District 9, against an 18-year incumbent, raising $100,000 as a first-time candidate and garnered just shy of 40% of the vote.

She is happily married to an Englishman whom she met when he came into Oxford’s Square Books where she worked, looking to buy a map of Alabama while riding his bicycle solo across America. They have three teenagers, and all live in an old farmhouse on the edge of Oxford.

Cristen now directs all fundraising and grant-writing for the Mississippi Free Press. Email her at cristen@mississippifreepress.com and make her happy with your tax-deductible contribution to the Mississippi Free Press here.