Jack Sharman ’83, P’20 ’22 to Join W&L Board of Trustees Sharman will be sworn in at the board’s spring meeting.

W&L Office of Communications and Public Affairs
February 10, 2024

Jack Sharman ‘83, P’20 ’22 will join the Washington and Lee University Board of Trustees at the board’s May 2024 meeting.

Sharman was elected to the Board of Trustees by fellow alumni, following a process led by the W&L Alumni Association’s Board of Directors that invited all alumni to nominate and vote on a slate of three candidates.

Sharman graduated magna cum laude from W&L in 1983 with a B.A. in politics and French and is a partner at Lightfoot, Franklin & White in Birmingham, Alabama. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis and a graduate degree in European studies from the University of Geneva in Switzerland in 1986. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1989.

Sharman began his career as a judicial clerk for the Honorable David B. Sentelle in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1989. He was then an associate at Covington and Burling, participating in the Washington, D.C., law firm’s white-collar, environmental and toxic tort practices. After serving as Special Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services for the Whitewater investigation, Sharman joined the Lightfoot, Franklin & White law firm in 1995, where he later became a partner. His legal practice focuses on investigations, crisis management and white-collar defense.

At W&L, Sharman was a member of the varsity tennis team, Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, served on the Contact Committee, and was a member of Phi Eta Sigma and Pi Sigma Alpha.

As an alumnus, Sharman has served as a member and chair of W&L’s Alumni Admissions Program, as a class agent for the university’s annual fund and as a board member for his local alumni chapter. He served on the Alumni Association Board of Directors from 1994-1998 where he was Association President (1997-1998), as well as on multiple campaign and reunion committees. He taught as an adjunct professor at the W&L School of Law (1992), was an executive-in-residence at the Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics (2021), and recently completed his tenure as a Williams School Advisory Board member (2017-2023).

Sharman completed the Leadership Alabama (Class of 2021) and Leadership Birmingham (Class of 2019) programs. He has also been president of the Mountain Brook Lacrosse Association, and served as senior warden at Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham.

Sharman resides in Birmingham with his wife, Elizabeth, an alumna of Sweet Briar College. His daughter, Mathilde, and son, Jackson, graduated from W&L in 2020 and 2022, respectively.