Brett and Emily Mills, Skye Perryman Among 2026 Baylor Line Hall of Fame Honorees

The Baylor Line Foundation recognized leaders across several fields on Saturday, February 28, at its annual Hall of Fame Awards ceremony. Honorees included justice advocates, community leaders, teachers, academicians and clergy. The Baylor Line Foundation is an independent resource dedicated to telling the stories of alumni, faculty, staff and others connected to the Baylor University community.

Ministry of Hospitality and Justice

Brett and Emily Mills received the Abner V. McCall Humanitarian Award for their work with women in, and on their way out of, the commercial sex industry. Their work began as Jesus Said Love, an initiative to be a loving presence to women in Waco-area adult entertainment venues. It has transformed into Lovely Village, a residential development that will provide homes and resources for women escaping trafficking and sexual exploitation.

In addition to safe housing, Lovely Village advocates for living wages and trauma-informed care that lead to sustainable success.

In their acceptance speech, Brett Mills reflected on how their Baylor experience shaped their faith, which continues to guide their work. “Faith requires proximity,” Mills explained. “Twenty-one years ago, Emily and I began walking alongside women healing from sexual exploitation, trauma and trafficking. We met women whose names most people will never know—women written off and surviving things no one should ever have to survive.”

Emily Mills connected the story of Lovely Village to scripture, reminding attendees of names in the Bible such as Tamar, Hagar and Rahab. According to Mills, these were “women who were objectified and abused, who negotiated deals for future generations, and cried out for mercy when the world did not believe them worthy of it.”

She also drew a direct line between Lovely Village and the red-light district that operated in Waco between 1889 and 1917. Known as The Reservation, women caught in the commercial sex industry created an economy that helped build the city on the banks of the Brazos River, yet were not allowed to enjoy the benefits of their labor.

“These women who worked in legalized prostitution, whose children were denied access to public schools, and whose mothers were denied home ownership in Waco—these are women who paid the highest price with their bodies,” Emily Mills said. “And yet, Waco also asked them to pay taxes to create our infrastructure, to create that bridge that you drive across. [These were] immigrant women, Indigenous women, women born to enslaved Black women and their white masters, women used by lawmen and then oppressed by their law.”

For the Millses, Lovely Village is a declaration to these women and others who have followed: “Welcome home.”

Legal Light

Waco native and Baylor graduate Skye Perryman received her second honor from the Baylor Line Foundation at the ceremony. In 2018, she received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award while working as senior counsel at Democracy Forward, a nonprofit, nonpartisan legal organization that challenges unlawful and undemocratic executive actions. Perryman is now the CEO of Democracy Forward, which has been on the front lines of litigating against the current Trump administration.

At this year’s ceremony, she received the Distinguished Alumna Award for her efforts in fighting extremism and anti-democratic movements.

Perryman began her remarks by narrating her Baylor story, which included a promise to stay close to home for college if her mother would allow her to graduate high school at age 16. This meant attending Baylor, where she learned in her first year that she could “travel the world of ideas” from the campus on the banks of the Brazos River.

In her freshman year, Baylor’s football team finished with a record of 1-10. Perryman noted that this was a time before the new stadium and elaborate tailgating, when you could drink nothing stronger than Dr Pepper. During that year, she said, she “learned the virtue and value of showing up for games that you know you’re going to lose, and that sometimes you just have to ignore the rules and tailgate anyway.”

Perryman carries those lessons into her fight for American democracy, which she acknowledges has been on a shaky precipice since the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. After that event, she said, the United States appeared on an international list of “backsliding democracies” and has remained there since.

Since Perryman took the helm at Democracy Forward—and since Trump’s second inauguration—the organization has blocked the administration’s efforts to defund K-12 educational institutions over DEI initiatives. It has also successfully challenged the collection of sensitive demographic data from law firms and restored congressional oversight of ICE detention facilities.

For Perryman, the struggle has spiritual roots: “Ours is a spiritual tradition that works through ordinary people to find a way through fear, to the love and courage of a carpenter and an unwed mother who found the courage to find their way home by listening—by listening to the angels who say, ‘fear not.’”

In addition to her Baylor honors, Perryman has appeared on numerous other lists, including Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Washingtonian’s Most Powerful Women and Good Faith Magazine’s “25 Who Inspire.”

Other Honorees

Also honored at the Hall of Fame ceremony was Rev. Daniel Vestal, a minister who has fought for the Baptist principles of soul freedom and the separation of church and state. Vestal was a leading figure in the struggle against fundamentalist extremism in the Southern Baptist Convention. For many years, he served as executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a movement of moderate and progressive Baptists that emerged from those struggles.

Information on other Hall of Fame inductees can be found on the Baylor Line website.