Influential Georgians

When she was 11 or 12 years old, Stacia Hendricks, now 50, lived with her family in Pacific Grove, a coastal town near Monterey, Calif. “Every day after school I’d take the dogs out for their walk,” she says. “Every…

The phrase “people power” routinely punctuates Tom Malone’s conversation. Malone, 69, is the retired president and chief operating officer of Milliken & Co., who in 1983 became the first non-family member to ever hold that job. He remains an enthusiastic…

Some years ago, attorney and part-time writer Abe Schear came to an unsurprising realization. “I figured out that my clients and friends would rather read about baseball than leases,” he says. Schear, 56, a partner in the Atlanta law firm…

Eldridge W. McMillan, 73, a member of the State University System’s Board of Regents, tells a remarkable story regarding his first teaching job in Atlanta in 1954. “I was supposed to teach at Price High School,” he says. “But the…

Matt Towery, 48, defies pigeon-holing. He’s an outspoken semi-pundit who doesn’t socialize much with anyone, let alone political types. He’s a free-thinking conservative whose business partner, Pierre Howard, trounced him in the 1990 lieutenant governor’s race. He benefited from the…

A small – but high quality – gallery in Highlands, NC, found an unlikely arts patron in longtime Atlanta attorney and businessman Bob Fisher. After 25 years practicing law (five years at King & Spalding and another 20 years in…

Robin Rhodes was the youngest of four children in her family, thus it fell to her to “Run, go get the paper.” Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that for the past 21 years, Rhodes has been involved in the business…

At 74, Wayne Shackelford just won’t slow down. Immediately following his retirement from Geor-gia’s Department of Transportation (DOT), where he served as commissioner from November 1991 until May 2000, Shackelford became senior vice president for business development at Gresham, Smith…

During the three days before Thanksgiving, Joseph “Butch” Thompson, 63, will roll out three smokers and spend hours hovering over some 900 turkeys. The former Cobb County commissioner and president and owner of Butch Thompson Enterprises, a site preparation contracting…

Tom Bell, CEO of Cousins Properties Inc., has a theory about why busy people seem to get more done. “I think it has to do with a person’s demeanor and skill set,” he says. “The more you do and the…