Keisha Lance Bottoms

Bottoms was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 18, 1970, to Sylvia Robinson and Major Lance, an American R&B singer who had a number of US hits in the 1960s, including "The Monkey Time" and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um". She was raised in Atlanta and is a graduate of Frederick Douglass High School.

She earned a bachelor's degree in communications from Florida A&M University, concentrating in broadcast journalism. She earned a J.D. degree from Georgia State University College of Law in 1994. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Bottoms was a prosecutor and also represented children in juvenile court. In 2002, she became a magistrate judge in Atlanta. In 2008, she ran unsuccessfully for a judgeship on the Fulton Superior Court.

Bottoms was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 2009 and 2013, representing District 11 in southwest Atlanta. She served until 2018. She was concurrently the executive director of Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority starting in 2015.

In 2017, Bottoms used $40,000 of taxpayer money to send out a 58-page end of year city council district flyer which included 80 pictures of herself. The mailer was also sent outside of her district, leading to a campaign finance complaint. An ethics investigation found that Bottoms accepted $6,900 in contributions that exceeded legal limits and $110,797 in contributions that exceeded debt limits. As a result, she was fined $37,000.

Bottoms' family history can be traced back five generations to Shepherd Peek, a freedman from a plantation near Crawfordville, who may have served in the Georgia state legislature during Reconstruction.

In October 1994, she married Derek W. Bottoms at Ben Hill United Methodist Church in Atlanta. They met three years earlier during their first year as students at Georgia State University College of Law. After unsuccessful attempts to conceive biologically, they adopted their four children.

Her husband is the vice president of employment practices and associate relations for The Home Depot. He joined the company in 2000, after spending more than five years at the law firm of Powell Goldstein. He has served as a board member for several foundations.

Bottoms is a member of The Links, a social and service organization of prominent Black women that was founded in 1946 and is based in Washington, D.C.