Fighting for Farm Futures
Ben Gillis will never forget the chilling phone call from his father, Hugh, the morning after…
Author: Jerry Grillo
Four For The Future
As Georgia continues to gain a solid economic foothold in these post-recession years, communities across the state are finding that by partnering together, a positive vision can lead to concrete change citizens are eager to support. For the third year…
Turning On The Tap
Earlier this year, the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority finished a $14-million sprint. They installed about 89,000 linear feet of pipe, creating a 14-mile sewer line to serve the $1-billion Baxter International manufacturing facility being developed at Stanton Springs,…
Striking At The Heart Of Georgia
I’ve walked in the footsteps of George Pickett’s doomed division and stood my ground on Little Round Top at Gettysburg, driven miles out of my way to hear the ticking clock that marked Stonewall Jackson’s last breath, walked along the…
Going Strong
Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like there were tumbleweeds rolling on a whistling wind down 3rd Avenue, the main drag in downtown West Point, a little Georgia town in the southwest corner of Troup County just this side…
Metro Atlanta: Lost And Found
These are the clear signs of economic momentum in Metro Atlanta: consecutive years of solid job growth driven by a mix of growing industries, especially those clustered around technology. Well, it’s that and also a stubborn reluctance to accept “no”…
South Metro Atlanta: Staying Power
There’s this thing in Hollywood called staying power. You’ll hear it applied to movie stars, like Michael Douglas, for example. He’s been around awhile, has a couple of Academy Awards, and at almost 70, he still gets his share of…
Visitors Welcome
Erin Grasso beams at the edge of a frigid muddy pitch, a baby in one arm, another on the way, while her husband Mike whoops it up in a big, yellow John Deere excavator, its single hydraulic insect arm ripping…
Moving Ahead
All of that traffic in, through, around and above Atlanta – it was meant to be. The big rigs circling the city on I-285, the car conga line shuffling down Georgia 400, the airliners circling over Hartsfield-Jackson waiting for permission…
Ready For Its Close Up
Nobody expected the end of the world to last this long or to have such mass appeal. “Who could predict the popularity of a zombie apocalypse? We didn’t, but we’re delighted.” That’s Tom Luse, executive producer for The Walking Dead,…
Mission Possible
Billy Payne believed Georgia was ready for the world's stage when no one else did.
Georgia's New Trustees
The Home Depot founder and Falcons owner Arthur Blank and Olympics visionary Billy Payne are the 2014 recipients of the state’s highest honor.
100 Most Influential Georgians
This 16th edition of Georgia Trend’s 100 Most Influential Georgians includes, as always, some new names and some old ones, as leadership changes and recent achievements combine with resignations, retirements, course corrections and shifts in power to shake the list…
Hall Of Fame: Lasting Influence
John Lewis U.S. Congressman Civil Rights Leader Atlanta Age: 73 John Lewis left the cotton fields of Alabama and became the conscience of a nation at war with itself. The scars still visible on his head are tangible reminders of…
Gun Solutions
I’ve never seen the man before, don’t know his name, but he’s definitely local, or he wouldn’t be embedded at a North Georgia sports shop, where he presents an air of native permanence. I’ve only lived in this rural community…
Against All Odds
The results came in for Sammye E. Coan Middle School, and they were very good, which is why school principal Betsy Bockman was so worried. “I thought, ‘Oh, great, now they’re going to investigate us,’ because our positive growth was…
Deal’s Kitchen Cabinet
Nathan Deal was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat, then got elected and re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat, then switched parties in the middle of his second Congressional term, then got re-elected seven…
Cell Mates
Nick Boulis has the audacity to believe, out loud, that discoveries and therapies designed to improve the human condition – world-changing breakthroughs that have been happening and are happening right now in Georgia – are just as important as…
Unintended Consequences
The United States healthcare system is messed up. It’s a mangled wreck at the bottom of a smoking crater. We spend more, by far, on healthcare than any other country, more than $2.5 trillion annually, about 18 percent of…
Growing Jobs, Growing The Economy
Bob Shaw and Nicole Wimpy are about as different as two people can be. One is a wary, wealthy 80-something who built a carpet empire, sold it, and then started another one. The other is a spirited, middle-aged small-town…
Rising Up
Arthur Blank is living every pro football fan’s dream except his, because owning a National Football League franchise was never his dream. “It wasn’t something I’d planned, either,” says Blank, who bought the Atlanta Falcons from the Smith family following…
Come Together, Right Now
Back when Shirley Strum Kenny was transforming the State University of New York at Stony Brook into one of the nation’s top research institutions, she learned a lesson about the virtues of patience from renowned architect John Belle, who…
Sun Dancing
It’s the sun, the sol of our solar system, to which everything that lives and moves, including the wind, owes its existence. Without the sun, there is no us, no Earth. You can’t miss it. It’s the biggest thing…
The Good Fight
Parker Greene was recruited for a special military operation 40 years ago, and like a dogged, ageless soldier, never deactivated, lost in time behind enemy lines, he’s still on the job, working to accomplish a mission that won’t end,…
2013 Power Women
A Voice For A Community Helen Kim Ho Executive Director and Founder Asian American Legal Advocacy Center Helen Kim Ho is an American Dream come true. Her parents moved the family from South Korea to South Carolina when Helen was…
Competitive Edge
Mark Toburen spent most of his life in and around swimming pools, first as a competitor, then as a coach. He earned three letters on the North Carolina State swim team, then ran one of the Southeast’s top competitive…
Robert Jepson, Visionary
Bob Jepson has uncanny vision. That’s what they say, the people who know him. He sees around corners, sees so well that he’s never failed in business, by his recollection. But right now, Jepson is using his telescopic sight…
South Metro Atlanta: The Right Location
Robert Belisle’s town is overrun with cannibalistic zombies, but he doesn’t typically go in for such nonsense. It’s what The Walking Dead leaves in its grisly wake that mostly interests him. While most of us see only peckish monsters…
2013 Economic Yearbook: Metro Atlanta
The Metro Atlanta region is Georgia’s economic and cultural nucleus, a dense urban center within a demographically diverse suburban and exurban patchwork, stitched together by an asphalt web crawling with commuters in a slow hurry to get to work…
The Sound Of Success
There are blessed ancestral notes swimming in J Wunder’s blood, and they fly out in a blazing sonic frenzy, out through his fingers, through his steel guitar, diving into fortunate ears, into the hearts and souls of the people,…
The Essential Economy
Simona frequently is the first or last person you see upon entering or leaving Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. She’s got short, black hair and large, dusky eyes, speaks broken English with a dense Eastern European accent, and…
Most Influential Georgians: Notables
Ani Agnihotri, Founder/Managing Partner of consulting firm U.S. India Business and Research Center (USIBRC) Dr. J. Scott Angle, Dean and Director of UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Joel Babbit, CEO and Co-founder, Mother Nature Network Cheryl A.…
Most Influential Georgians: Georgia's Power List
Henry Ward Beecher must have known a thing or two about influence. He was the subject, after all, of a 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography entitled The Most Famous Man in America. According to Beecher, an obviously renowned 19th century preacher,…
The Poverty Factor
Stephanie Jones was born into the “it’s not what you know, but who you know” world, and her close-knit family didn’t know the right people. Her family’s Appalachian roots run deep in the Eastern Kentucky coalmines, and Jones grew…
Cancer Care In Georgia: New Age, New Options
When Janita Green got her breast cancer diagnosis three years ago, it made absolutely no sense to her. “I didn’t believe it. I was young, active and healthy,” says Green, a CPA for a consulting firm in Atlanta. “I…
The Carter Center At 30 Years
Jimmy Carter must have figured out a way to recycle time, because the man doesn’t waste a minute. He gets more done before lunch than most people half his age accomplish in a day, reading a cyber-stack of newspapers…
Showcasing Agriculture
It’s another sultry August in Perry at the Georgia National Fairgrounds & Agri-center (GNFA), where Republicans are frying fish to raise money in the eighth district, young farmers are meeting en masse to show their goats or cattle, the…
Gateways To Higher Education
Bobby Hammond recognized the boy from a distance, the gangly walk that was hard to miss. “Good kid, smart kid, and all he wanted to do was go to college at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts,” says Hammond,…
Banking On Better Times
Maybe there’s a way out of this mess. Maybe the worst is behind us. Maybe Georgia will eventually overcome its reputation as a poster child for banking failure. In the meantime, there’s enough anxiety over new and developing regulations,…
The Sky Is The Limit
The flying robot invasion has already begun. Lethal, battle-tested drones (unmanned aviation vehicles or UAVs) are being used in Pakistan, and the military wants more of them. Selected universities, law enforcement agencies and aerospace firms currently are operating UAVs…
Are The Odds Improving For Thoroughbreds?
This is when you know you’ve made a good investment in thoroughbred horse racing: The green two-year-old you recently purchased for $14,000 wins his first race at 35-to-1 odds. Then, a month later he wins at 25-to-1. And a month…
Georgia Gold
The second edition of Georgia Gold – our focus on Georgia companies that are at least 50 years old – takes us from the mountains to the coast and points in between, to businesses dealing in stuff you walk…
When Education Means Business
Roman Coley Davis never realized how quickly fishing could get old until it was all he had to do. So he concocted another game plan. Davis had been medically retired from the Army, with a traumatic brain injury and…
2012 Power Women
Dr. Jennifer Frum Vice President for Public Service and Outreach, University of Georgia West Virginia native Dr. Jennifer Frum was bitten by the international bug after traveling and living, briefly, in Europe as a teenager. Later, with degrees in…
Corporate Sustainability
“I was the typical capitalist – you know, Earth is mine for the taking.” – Ray Anderson The notions of corporate environmental sustainability and social responsibility are as old as the concept of business itself. Matter of fact, it was…
Expanding Global Capacity
It’s the middle of February, the day after an absent-minded hip-hop artist was arrested for carrying a .45-caliber Glock in his carry-on bag, which isn’t as uncommon as it probably sounds, not at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. “It’s surprising…
Community Benefits
It’s always a little awkward for Paul Hinchey when they grab his wrist and pump his hand and tell him how much they appreciate the care. Then they’re gone, whole families out the door, stitched and mended, to home…
Energizing The South
There is no telling where Tom Fanning would have ended up if injuries hadn’t kept him out of the United States Military Academy. Twice. But it’s a sure bet he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing now. Fanning became…
Feeding The Hungry
Atlanta Community Food Bank Founder and Executive Director Bill Bolling is Georgia Trend’s 2012 Georgian Of The Year. His work has never been more difficult or more important.
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