Teaching The Healers
The way Maria Whyte and Anita Hufft have it figured, this was bound to happen. They became nurses, decades apart, but the circumstances of their first meeting fated them to meet again. At the very least, it’s a really small…
Author: Jerry Grillo
Georgia's Top Lawyer
Sam Olens was the personification of local government and Metro Atlanta regional planning. He served on the Cobb County Board of Com-missioners from 1999 through March 2010, the last eight years as chairman. He chaired the Atlanta Regional Commission…
Going Deep
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed believes the key to his city’s economic future is buried under 42 feet of water about 260 miles away from his office. “Our long-term goal should be to make the Metro Atlanta region the center…
Living A Worthwhile Life
The Mohawk Nation sent some of its best and brightest to meet Andrew Young, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, hoping to teach him a lesson in leadership. Young was one of Jimmy Carter’s trusted advisors on human rights,…
Georgia's Power List
Our annual listing of the state’s most powerful and influential citizens who affect the lives and livelihoods of all Georgians. Plus, a roster of Notable Georgians.
Healing The Sick
If there ever is a moment of truth this is it: Your life hangs in the balance and you’ve got to choose, right now, where you’d like to go to try and save it. Patti Chism went to her…
The Ad Man And The Rocker
You better change your ways if you plan to stay. Jeff Mosier (“Any Mother Nature Would”) It’s not easy being green. Kermit the Frog It’s a good thing for Joel Babbit that The Rolling Stones weren’t…
One Size Does Not Fit All
Dr. Carol Rountree remembers it well, the warning handed down by the Rich-mond County School System superintendent almost 10 years ago, in which he stressed the potentially disastrous pitfalls of placing too much weight on a standardized test. The…
Coca-Cola: Everywhere At Once
If you are alive today, odds are that Coca-Cola has always been part of your personal backdrop. It is the best-known brand in the world, its iconography the most instantly recognized pop-cultural set dressing from America to Zimbabwe. Born…
Real Science, Real Impact
“At a time when statewide employment shrunk – and this has been the worst economic stretch I’ve seen in my lifetime – biotech and life sciences actually grew through the recession,” says Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center,…
New Direction, New Name
In the graphic imagination of Dr. Ricardo Azziz, inky, stippled people with forlorn postures merge with fantastic landscapes, an army of ants crawls over a yellow field, tree branches sprout human hands clutching umbrellas, and a faceless man cowers…
New Chancellor, Big Challenges
Every baseball team has a guy who can play a variety of positions well, a guy who can play third base on Friday, roam centerfield on Saturday, then pinch hit on Sunday and stay in the lineup as a late…
Georgia's Banking Landscape
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” It originates with 16th century Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus. But it’s also a lyric from the Tom Waits song, Singapore, and a line from the Steven Spielberg film, Minority…
Thinking Ahead
There’s a little game you can play if you pay attention to John Stumbo for any length of time – how often can he fit the phrase, “Fort Valley, USA” into the conversation? Chances are that you’ll lose count, but…
Georgia’s Season In The Sun
When you are the type of golfer who turns A 150-yard par three into a six-stroke cross-country quest over every bit of terrain except the direct route from tee to hole, it’s difficult to imagine contributing to anything beyond sunburn…
Surviving A Stroke
Andrei Bersatti is having trouble finding the words, and it’s not because English is his second language. It’s one of the aftershocks from the explosion in his brain. He’s also having a difficult time making decisions and thinking quickly. …
Partly Sunny In Georgia
The sun preceded humans by four billion years, give or take an eon, and in another billion years it will consume us, if we don’t kill ourselves first or we somehow avoid being dispatched by plague, meteors, aliens or some…
Health Insurance: An In-Between Time
At its most basic level it sounds like a great idea, a no-brainer for anyone remotely interested in the well-being of the human race: healthcare for every citizen, rich or poor. Who can argue with that? What’s not to like?…
Paying For Pavement
Lamar Paris can sit in his Blairsville office and imagine the convoluted road ahead, U.S. 129, heading south, twisting and climbing through Neels Gap, then falling away toward Cleveland, where it meets with a new bypass around that busy little…
Fannin County: Pride Of Place
Bo Chance has seen the pattern before: first, the faraway look; then, the wide-awake consciousness that may have come from the splash of a cold mountain stream or the sudden realization that what is really important is right here, right…
Children's Crusader
It was a few minutes after 10:00 and the family was settling in for the night when Donna Hyland’s 15-year-old daughter Brooke entered her parents’ bedroom. “We picked her up early from school that day, thought it was probably…
Northeast: High Hopes
In the middle of January, right after a heavy winter storm, 400 hopeful people from across Northeast Georgia slid into Gainesville on slick roads for a job fair. They must have liked their odds. ZF Wind Power LLC was looking…
Broken System
Zach Hayes thinks he flew out through the sunroof, but he isn’t sure. His memories of the accident that nearly killed him are choppy and grainy bits of sound and vision that don’t complete the story; the only arc he…
Departures And Arrivals: A Changing Of The Guard
Forgive Bob Hill if he gets a little misty-eyed over good old 53-3129. You could say they were close. Hill was there at its gleaming birth. He helped raise it. And he was there when it reached the end of…
Taking The High Ground
For three years the nation had been tearing at itself, North and South drawing blood in torrents, at places like Antietam and Shiloh, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and Chicka-mauga. President Lincoln wanted a new, aggressive commander to take charge of all…
Mending Broken Hearts
Nell Morris has a long, vertical scar in the middle of her chest, a lingering reminder of the broken heart that would have finished her if not for some fortunate timing. For about 25 years she’d endured a condition…
Historian and History Maker
Sometimes, when Vince Dooley talks to his plants, he sounds like one of those father-figure Confederate generals he admires so much, calmly redeploying soldiers, or a cool-headed football coach readjusting his team, moving players from one position to another. …
Through A Local Lens
Bruce Rodgers had his second heart attack in March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, and through a post-surgery medicated haze he watched the conflict unfold from a hospital bed. He soon went home to continue his recovery and…
100 Most Influential Georgians
This is the 13th edition of Georgia Trend’s 100 Most Influential Georgians, and it reflects a changing of the guard at the highest levels of state government and business leadership, while furthering the notion of Georgia as, basically, a one-party…
Hall Of Fame: Lasting Influence
Ray Anderson Chairman Interface, Inc. Atlanta Age: 76 Ray Anderson has been counting down to zero for 16 years, and he won’t be happy until his company hits rock bottom. “We’ve made a lot of progress toward our goal of…
The Immigration Dilemma
Gabriela Ramos isn’t her real name. She’s self-employed, cleans houses for a living, speaks English well enough to work as a cashier at the grocery store, but her grammar isn’t very good. That isn’t a crime. Her only crime is…
The Message Makers
The advertising people are studying our habits and languages, getting into our heads, doing the math and exploiting the gathered intelligence to win us over, telling us what we want before we know it. Angels and devils on the shoulders…
Salt and Rain
Three years ago Georgia was wilting in the arid throes of a record drought, the worst in more than a century. Scorching heat, record-low rainfalls in historically wet regions and shrinking water supplies pushed most of the Southeast to the…
A Common Vision
It was November 1970 and the founders of Atlanta’s Paideia School intended to start classes in 10 months, but they had no students, no money, no campus and a 25-year-old headmaster with no administrative experience. “And I’m not sure that…
Georgia’s Biotech Challenge
Biotech boosters are quick to tout the industry’s most virtuous goal: improving the health and well-being of life on the planet through innovative research. The other goal that hardly needs mentioning (and therefore, it rarely is) has to do with…
Restoring A Sense Of Community
A waxing crescent moon smiles down on the old Buckhead neighborhood where peacocks used to roam, sometimes stopping traffic on West Paces Ferry Road. About 400 of Georgia’s historic preservation gentry, in bow ties and evening gowns, have gathered here…
Paving A New Way With Pigs
Reproduction can be pressing business, fraught with challenges. But two University of Georgia scientists made a breakthrough discovery in reproduction and regeneration that has thrown open the doors to wide-ranging possibilities, including new therapies for devastating human diseases and the…
Bragging Rights
Jack Rudolph was in the doghouse at home, which was appropriate since the dog was the only one in the family showing him any love. It was October 1977. Rudolph, defensive coordinator for the mighty Valdosta football team, had just…
Georgia’s Passage to India
Stanley Bergman came to Georgia for directions to India that Google Maps can’t provide. Bergman is chairman and CEO of Henry Schein Inc., a provider of healthcare products and services to dentists, physicians and veterinarians, a New York-based Fortune 500…
Help Desks For Business
Lauri Jo Bennett was realizing two dreams at once. A year ago Bennett, who lives about halfway between Moultrie and Tifton in Norman Park, in the house she grew up in, had just landed the gig she’d been praying for…
Merging & Consolidating
Kirk Wilson says St. Joseph’s Health System was trying to ensure that it would still be providing the kind of care it does today 50 years from now. That’s why it entered into an agreement to merge with crosstown rival…
Widespread Panic And The Business Of Making Music
Bill Cochran was talking about Widespread Panic’s grip on his soul, and he kept coming back to the word energy. “The reason I go everywhere I can to see these guys is the energy they provide. They give me something…
Georgia’s Biotech Future
It was the kind of blockbuster news that gave hope to the dying, a bullish revelation that sent stock prices soaring. After decades of theorizing and testing and coming up with mostly nothing, medical scientists found a way of stimulating…
The Duck Stops Here
Dan Amos doesn’t wear a tie to the office as a general rule, but he keeps one in the car just in case. And when he does put on the occasional ornamental fashion noose, chances are good it has a…
Pushing For Reform
Sharon Jenkins Tucker is living her second life. The first one fell apart and vanished like a dream. “I had a fabulous job,” says Tucker, who was putting her master’s degree to work as international admissions counselor for her alma…
Northeast: Link To The Future
Without question, 2009 was a miserable year for the state, national and planetary economies. But a group of economic developers in Northeast Georgia will remember the year a bit differently. “I think 2009 will go down in history as the…
Matters Of The Heart
It got to where Paul Smith couldn’t feed his dogs without losing his breath or feeling chest pains. Couldn’t hunt, couldn’t even take a bath. The exertion was killing him. “I was living, but just living, wasn’t much functioning to…
2010 Power Women: Change Agents
Renee Lewis Glover Atlanta President and CEO Atlanta Housing Authority When Renee Glover came to the Atlanta Housing Authority in 1994, the city had a larger percentage of its citizens living in public housing than any other major American city.…
Hope And Help
Brencie Werner discovered the lump herself. It was spring 2008 – after the experts had concluded that breast self-examination was probably a wasted effort, and not worth a physician’s time to teach patients how to do it. Fortunately, Werner hadn’t…
History Makers
The Georgia Historical Society and the Office of the Governor will add the names of baseball legend Hank Aaron and business leader and philanthropist Ted Turner to the roster of Georgia Trustees at the Historical Society’s Birthday Bash and Awards…
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