Influential Georgians

One of the hottest seats in the Georgia House of Representatives during this year’s session belonged to Rep. Vance Smith, Republican from the 129th District. No surprise, considering that Smith chaired the House Transportation Committee, and transportation funding and governance…

It was a stealth visit to Mercer University’s campuses in Macon and Atlanta that soothed Bill Under-wood’s initial reluctance to become the university’s president. “I’d been contacted by [then president] Kirby Godsey about becoming the president, but I told him…

Immediately after Luke Morgan graduated from the University of Georgia in 1975 with his business degree in hand, he returned to Douglas, the small town in Coffee County where he was raised. “I’ve never regretted it,” says Morgan, executive vice…

His second year on the job in 2008, Culpepper “Cully” Clark, dean of the prestigious Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, bought a television station. Technically, the University of Georgia Research Foundation, a UGA-affiliated…

In November 2004, Eric Tanenblatt helped launch Hands On Georgia, a network organizing community volunteer efforts statewide. The launch coincidentally followed a contentious electoral cycle, George W. Bush vs. John Kerry, and at the time Tanenblatt said he hoped promoting…

Sure it’s a tough time, but Bill Young, Jr., chairman of the University of Georgia Foundation, is optimistic. “We’re looking at things over the long haul,” he says. The foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, was created by alumni in 1937…

New Orleans native Joselyn Baker is an enthusiastic spokesperson for her adopted home state of Georgia, where she came to attend college at Oglethorpe University and never left. Baker, 39, currently serves as senior vice president of communications for the…

“From the time I was 10 years old, I knew I wanted to be an architect,” says Norman Davenport Askins, who fulfilled his childhood aspirations on an international scale, having designed and restored buildings from Atlanta to the White House…

It takes something awfully special to draw a guy out of retirement after a 40-year career in both the public and private sectors; at least that’s what Glenn Cornell thinks. “I always said, after I left the state in 2004,…

Though Kristin Connor, executive director of CURE Childhood Cancer, interacts with families facing the dreaded disease on a daily basis, it’s difficult for her to view her life as anything but blessed. “I think I’m the luckiest person in the…