Career
She was elected from Senate District 2 in a special election held on October 2, 2010, to replace Ann Duplesis, who resigned to take a position in the administration of Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Displaced by redistricting, Willard-Lewis ran in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 22, 2011, for the District 3 seat in the state Senate. She was instead defeated by another African-American Democrat, the incumbent senator, Jean-Paul Morrell, who polled 11,280 votes (533 percent) to Willard-Lewis" 9,911 votes (468 percent).
Willard-Lewis also represented District 100 in the Louisiana House from 1993 to 2000, when she was elected to the New Orleans City Council.
She left the council in 2010 under term limits. She was succeeded in the House by Pat Swilling, a former National Football League linebacker.
In 2009, Willard-Lewis was back in the news for telling fellow Councilwoman Stacy Head to "sit down with your prop" when Head was displaying a poster critical of the Orleans Parish garbage-collection fees—a discussion which preceded the New Orleans e-mail controversy. Willard-Lewis participates in a number of community organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. By profession she is a public relations consultant for Lakeland Hospital.
She has two children.
