Mayor Bill Haslam announced that Avice Evans Reid has begun work as Executive Director of the City of Knoxville's Police Advisory and Review Committee.
Reid, a longtime senior project manager for Information Services with the Tennessee Valley Authority, succeeds Carol Scott, who retired as PARC's executive director late last year.
"Avice Reid brings a wealth of experience to this position and we are very glad she has agreed to join us here in the city," Haslam said. "We look forward to working with her and I'm confident that she is going to be a great leader for this very important board."
PARC was created in 1998 and its mission is to strengthen the relationship between the Knoxville Police Department and the citizens it serves by performing an independent review of KPD actions.
As part of that role the committee reviews incidents following the conclusion of KPD Internal Affairs investigations in response to citizen complaints about police actions.
Reid has been a member of PARC for several years and was serving as its chair prior to being appointed to the post.
"I'm very pleased that Avice has been selected as executive director," said Thomas "Tank" Strickland, the city's Director of Community Relations. "She has been a tremendous asset for this city in her role as chair of the committee and she will be an even greater one for the citizens of Knoxville as its executive director."
"This can occasionally be a difficult job as a liaison between the public and the police department in a sometimes highly-charged atmosphere," Strickland said," and I can't think of anyone we would rather have step into this role than Avice."
Reid, 55, from Knoxville, is a graduate of Austin-East High School. She went on to earn a degree in Mathematics from Knoxville College in 1974.
She has also done graduate work in Computer Science at the University of Tennessee in addition to earning technical certificates in areas such as database administration and application development.
Reid recently retired from TVA after 31 years of service there where she gained extensive management experience.
In addition to serving as a senior project manager for Information Services since 1999 she was a senior account manager for IS and a project manager in both TVA's Human Resources and Applications Technology.
Reid began her career at TVA as a programmer and later became a systems analyst there.
She worked for Union Carbide in Oak Ridge before joining TVA.
In addition to her professional experience Reid has served on the boards of numerous organizations benefiting the residents of Knoxville and Knox County including the YWCA, the United Way of Greater Knoxville, Leadership Knoxville Boards of Directors and The Chancellors Associates for the University of Tennessee among others.