Twenty years of the state’s best and brightest in business, government, nonprofits, science, healthcare and education, plus a look back at some of our previous nominees and where they are now.
Four of the 40: Clockwise from left|!!| Sucheta Rawal|!!| Go Eat Give|!!| Smyrna; Brett Fowler|!!| Turner Wood and Smith Insurance|!!| Gainesville; Jaime Foster|!!| Georgia Grinders Premium Nut Butters|!!| Brookhaven; and Desmond Timmons|!!| F.D. Roosevelt State Park|!!| Pine Mountain.
This year Georgia Trend celebrates 20 years of honoring outstanding Georgians under the age of 40 – the state’s best and brightest – and looks back at 20 of our picks from years past to find out where they are today.
The 2016 40 Under 40 represent business, government, politics, nonprofits, science, healthcare and education. The 40 were chosen from nominations made by readers throughout the state. Final selections were made by the Georgia Trend editorial staff. We’re proud of our selections and glad we can share the stories of these Georgians and their achievements on the following pages.
Four representatives from this year’s group, shown here and on the cover, were photographed by Jennifer Stalcup. Shown clockwise from left, they are Sucheta Rawal, Go Eat Give, Smyrna; Brett Fowler, Turner Wood and Smith Insurance, Gainesville; Jaime Foster, Georgia Grinders Premium Nut Butters, Brookhaven; and Desmond Timmons, F.D. Roosevelt State Park, Pine Mountain.
Alpa Amin chose neither a typical nor an easy legal career by advocating for some of the most isolated and disadvantaged members of our society: immigrant victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse and human trafficking.
As the lead attorney of a program she started, Victims of Violence, at the nonprofit Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network, Amin created a new way to deliver free legal help to people who need it most. She screens and supports applicants and mentors and advises volunteer lawyers, while personally handling some of the trickiest cases.
Dabouze Antoine was fulfilling a community service requirement as a teenager when he discovered he had a gift for working with children. Today, as a teaching assistant at Ash Street Center in Forest Park, Antoine uses that gift to help children with emotional disorders reach their target goals of self-control, following directions and completing assignments.
When he is not in the classroom, Antoine is dedicated to helping others locally and globally through a wide range of volunteer activities, including H.O.P.E. Ministries of Georgia Inc., a nonprofit he founded to support mission work in his native Haiti.
Dedicated to informing and educating Georgians on the complex issues impacting the state, Rickey Bevington reports on topics from politics and the economy to healthcare and the arts.
When LaSandra Boykin mentors young people, she urges them to join companies where they can follow their passion. She is grateful Delta Air Lines is that kind of company.
In her role as project manager, she helps others from nine to five, then follows Delta’s live, work and serve “Rules of the Road” away from the office in numerous volunteer projects. For example, she serves as special events co-chair for United Way’s Youth Professional Leaders Board, organizing leadership activities for the group.
Olivia Chelko-Long was inspired by those who stood up 30 years ago for people with AIDS and HIV without allowing stigma or fear to stop them from helping. Today she’s on the frontline, raising awareness for the disease. While executive director of AIDS Athens, Chelko-Long developed a plan to administer more than 1,000 HIV tests annually, provide more than 450 individuals with housing and establish an $8-million resource center that delivers services from healthcare to childcare.
When you’re passionate about a cause, it can show in everything you do. Such is the case with Yaminah Childress, who has dedicated her work to helping young people succeed.
A single mother who put herself through law school with little guidance, Childress now provides that guidance to at-risk youth. Free mentoring services, low-cost summer camp, free meals after school and in summers, and programming specifically designed for single mothers and teen girls, the DREAM It Forward Foundation’s work is widespread.
“I like to show [the youth] you can pretty much be what you want to be if you’re willing to put the work in,” says Childress, who also operates the Childress Group, a small business management, legal support and tax firm. In that role, she assists aspiring entrepreneurs with starting and sustaining their businesses.
Caree Cotwright combined two loves, the arts and nutrition, to forge a career fighting our country’s childhood obesity epidemic. Her work has taken her from the CDC to the University of Georgia, where her research focuses on ways entertainment can enhance nutrition and wellness education for younger children. As part of her research, she’s developed a character, Freggie, who, with his fruit and vegetable friends entertains kids at Head Start centers with the goal of increasing fruit and veggie consumption.
Crump grew up in the restaurant industry, “playing with wings since I was 14,” she says. Since 2012, she’s run a restaurant specializing in Memphis-style wings in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta. Lately, she’s been experimenting with ways to make her food more healthful, and once a week, she organizes around 200 packages of it to distribute to the homeless.
Her passion extends to mentoring young adults and to growing her wings business as she seeks distribution through national retailers. She is also planning a multipurpose wellness center for the West End in Atlanta that will focus on strategies to reduce obesity and hypertension in a food desert.
Curry may hold down two – actually three – different day jobs, but his contributions extend beyond business to civic and government roles. As councilman and mayor pro tem of Shellman, his service has also encompassed cultural and charitable purposes. He sponsored a scholarship for local high school seniors who plan to return home to work after college and served as president of the Cuthbert Rotary Club.
As associate director of the Georgia War Veterans Nursing Home in Augusta, Carlton Deese is responsible for the care provided to Georgia’s elderly veteran population. Under his direction, the 192-bed home recently ranked in the top 15 percent nationally for customer satisfaction from Pinnacle Quality Insight.
With a master’s degree in marketing administration from the Medical University of South Carolina, Deese had planned to become a hospital CEO, but an administration fellowship at the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta changed that.
Miguel A. Dominguez became the first Latino prosecutor in the history of the Rockdale and Clayton Judicial Circuits before transitioning into civil practice. Raised under “very difficult circumstances” in the Bronx, with no role models in sight, Dominguez is known as a compassionate public servant, dedicated to empowering and seeking justice for at-risk youth in underserved communities.
Brittany Duncan has spent most of her life in Woodstock and has a great deal to show for it. Officially, she manages the operations and public communications of the Woodstock police. But outside her work life, she also serves as a founding board member for the Woodstock Public Safety Foundation, works as a volunteer reserve officer, mentors teenagers interested in law enforcement, graduated from Leadership Cherokee and serves on a chamber of commerce committee.
Her greatest passion, however, is helping children in Kenya, where she first visited on a mission trip in 2013. “I fell in love. I definitely left a part of my heart there and go back frequently.” She continues to raise funds for education and training and to improve the lives of those less fortunate in Kenya.
Lynnette Espy-Williams is proof the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, even when the apple and tree are several states apart. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, her parents taught her lessons she’s never forgotten about helping underserved communities. She’s practicing those lessons now in Atlanta’s marginalized areas.
“My life mantra, which I got from my dad, is that ‘if it’s to be, it’s up to me,’ meaning I need to take responsibility and not rely on others to make change I want to see.” That comment led her to become a lawyer, like her father, and assist people in need.
Earlier this year, Kathryn Fletcher, who specializes in quality control, became the third female partner in this regional firm’s 65-year history.
“The most satisfying part of my job is the one-on-one work I do with clients to help them build more successful businesses,” she says.
She has served as president of the Georgia Society of CPAs and in that role worked to teach financial literacy to eighth graders.
Fletcher also has served as president of the Junior League of Gwinnett and North Fulton Counties, is an alumna of Leadership Gwinnett and regularly prepares meals for and spearheaded her firm’s involvement with Open Hand Atlanta.
In 2012, she found her new passion in her grandfather’s natural almond butter recipe. Today her almond butter, NaturAlmond, is sold in nearly 1,000 supermarkets and natural food stores throughout the U.S. and, soon, Canada. Her company produces natural pecan, peanut and cashew butters as well.
Specializing in employee benefits, Brett Fowler has become the go-to person on healthcare reform, frequently speaking to organizations on the topic. But it’s his long list of community involvement that’s most impressive, from United Way and Main Street Gainesville to the Georgia Mountain Food Bank.
Attorney Evan Glover is a nationally recognized expert on ways organizations can defend against and respond to cybersecurity attacks. While serving as legal director at Sony’s mobile group companies in the Americas, Glover successfully weathered the highly publicized 2014 cyber attack on Sony Pic- tures. A year later the Snellville native joined GE Transportation, where he uses his expertise to protect critical locomotive and mining infrastructures.
But Glover’s interests and activities extend much further. He personally raised more than $100,000 for Pro Bono Partnership of Atlanta to provide legal services to those who can’t afford them; served on the board for Create Your Dreams, a program for students living in underserved areas of Atlanta; and served as president of Essential Theater, a theater festival that supports Georgia playwrights.
Whether she’s coordinating children’s activities at the local farmers market, planning projects for the Georgia Museum of Agriculture, leading fourth-grade girls at her church or speaking to students at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, Jennifer Dorminey Herzog enjoys giving back to the community where she was born and raised.
“My parents instilled in me that we are very blessed, so it is our obligation and also our privilege to give back, and I try to have my life reflect that,” says Herzog.
Jen Hidinger and her late husband, Ryan, spent years running a supper club to raise funds for their dream restaurant, Staplehouse. Then, in 2012, Ryan was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. The restaurant industry rallied around him to raise funds for treatment and inspired a much-needed nonprofit organization, The Giving Kitchen.
Although it’s a job you may not learn about on career day at school, Jason Holt began his career as a 16 year old, mowing grass and washing cars at a funeral home in Rochelle. Today, Holt is the owner of Paulk Funeral Home, with locations in Fitzgerald and Ocilla.
It can be emotional conducting funerals in a town of 10,000, where the families he serves are often friends and neighbors, Holt says. But he believes that helping people at the most difficult time of their lives is his mission.
Away from the funeral home Holt’s life remains one of service. The youngest member of the Fitzgerald City Council, he is currently serving his third term. He is also active with his church, the Fitzgerald-Ben Hill Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club and his three young sons.
In her curriculum, she uses “non-traditional but rigorous” methods, including video games, computer apps and scavenger hunts. “I’ve taught math in pool halls and at the mall,” she says.
So far, Jones has trained more than 17,000 other teachers about her methods, presented her techniques at several universities and created best practices videos for Teach for America. This year, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching, the nation’s highest honor.
Leading a team of event planners and building campus-wide partnerships to successfully produce more than 100 events annually, Michael Kloss has worked with visiting dignitaries and luminaries like Paul Simon, Alice Walker, Sir Salman Rushdie and Jimmy Carter.
Crafting these premier live event experiences led Kloss to recognize the need for responsible event planning, including composting, smart sourcing and eliminating waste. Today Emory graduates wear gowns made completely from recycled bottles, diverting more than 80,000 from landfills each year.
Through these events, which require hundreds of hours of planning, Kloss finds inspiration.
Yolanda Lewis is the first African-American female appointed as chief administrative officer and is the top administrative official of the largest and busiest court system in Georgia. She promotes her mission of “re-imagining justice” through her volunteer work with the Southern Center for Human Rights and as vice president of the National Association of Court Management.
Lewis has served on the Smart Justice Council, the Repeat Offender Taskforce for the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Fulton County Court Improvement Taskforce and many other advocacy groups.
Mahoney is especially proud that SEEA is a place where people who might have different initial goals – consumer groups, utilities and state agencies – can come together to find pragmatic solutions to energy issues. “No matter how you identify, you know that we will hold an honest non-judgmental conversation to be able to figure out something that’s good for the people who live in our state,” Mahoney says.
The fifth generation to live on his family’s farm in Statesboro, Elliott Marsh is dedicated to helping Georgia’s farmers and future farmers. As a volunteer, Marsh serves on the Agricultural Advisory Committee of Southeast Bulloch High School, the Advisory Committee for 4-H Youth Development for UGA Cooperative Extension and the board of Advancing Georgia’s Leaders in Agriculture and Forestry, among other organizations.
Professionally, the University of Georgia alumnus helps Georgia farmers implement precision agriculture, which uses technology to determine acre by acre where and how much seeds, water, fertilizer and more to add to improve their yields.
While working as the marketing director for Tony Award winner Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company, Jennifer Dwyer McEwen cut spending by more than $100,000 and increased sales by 30 percent. She took her current post in 2011, when the theater was hamstrung by debt. Within 18 months, she had paid off the debt and secured $200,000 in reserve. Today, she has six months’ operating expenses and True Colors productions are among the most critically acclaimed in the city.
Miller has many roles in Savannah, but this motto seems to be their commonality: giving back to his community. Whether spearheading the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum’s first capital campaign as chairman of the board, helping others publish educational and motivational books and magazines with his company, C.A. Miller Publishing, or mentoring disadvantaged African-American young men with his Bridge Builder Foundation, Miller’s mission remains the same. And with this mission he pays it forward as well, empowering others to reach for the same noble goals he sets for himself.
He counts participating in Leadership Georgia among his most enjoyable experiences. That’s because you go through the program with your spouse.
“It was a great way to learn a lot about each other and go around the state and see what’s succeeded and what hasn’t,” he says.
Sucheta Rawal soon left that corporate career to follow her real passions: food, travel and cultural awareness. Beginning as a part-time blogger, today she is a renowned food writer, teaches cooking classes and runs a nonprofit, Go Eat Give. She organizes sustainable and culturally aware trips designed to provide a vacation with authentic experiences of a place, its people and its food.
First in his family with a college degree (actually three degrees), Teddy Reese has what he calls “a seat at the table” as a nonprofit attorney and a young man, giving him a direct connection to mentor underserved children. He lives the belief that it takes a village to raise a child.
“Growing up in rural Wilkerson County, I saw my grandmother and mother sacrifice to give me opportunity, and all children should have and need that same chance,” says Reese.
The nature of his work constantly serves the community, but his efforts with Muscogee County’s Positive Behavior Intervention Services, Greater Columbus Chamber and pro bono work with 501(c)(3) startups, as well as other advocacy groups, have earned him the reputation as having a heart the size of Georgia.
Katherine Roberts saves lives every day at Atlanta Medical Center, and she is currently establishing an integrative care regimen involving Reiki and other alternative healing methods that will complement the treatment her patients receive.
Her influence also extends to another continent. Several years ago, Roberts planned to spend four months in Zambia and ended up dwelling there for three years in a mud hut with no electricity or running water.
While Wes Rogers is known for the success of Landmark Properties, a real estate firm specializing in quality student housing in his hometown, he is known well beyond those borders.
“We started Landmark 12 years ago by serving the housing needs of students at the University of Georgia and are now serving those needs for students across the country,” Rogers says. That includes The Mark and The Standard near downtown Athens as well as managing or developing housing in 18 other states; in fact, his company is the top developer of student housing in the U.S.
His motivation to give of his time and money to Extra Special People, an organization empowering children with developmental disabilities, is his belief that giving has a direct, immediate and significant impact on the lives of special needs children.
After graduating from Georgia Southern University in 1999, Trey Sheppard returned to his hometown to be a part of his family’s trucking business and to help improve the lives of his neighbors.
He sits on the boards of several organizations, including the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, the Georgia Southern University Athletic Foundation and the Citizens Bank of the South. He is an advocate for adult education and workforce training and was named by Gov. Nathan Deal to the Technical College System of Georgia Board in 2012. He also devotes his efforts to the Broken Shackle Ranch, a Christian-based home in Washington County for young men struggling with drug abuse and emotional or psychological issues.
Ashlyn Shockley, a native Atlantan, has had a multidisciplinary career grounded in public service. She directed the National Council on Youth Sports Safety. She was a co-director of the New Leaders Council training people in political entrepreneurship and previously worked for a Georgia representative. She also served as National Attorney General for the National Black Law Students Association and has co-founded a full-service firm designed to provide experiential marketing for niche markets, primarily minority consumers, and event production.
She draws inspiration for her vast involvement from her father, her “hero,” a post office employee who “didn’t see himself as a leader.” But the overwhelming, “beautiful” response at his funeral from all the people he affected has stuck with her.
An engineer accelerating critical change in the built environment, Stanton Stafford’s efforts carry over to his role with Lifecycle Building Center of Greater Atlanta, which operates a large-scale salvaged building materials retail facility in southwest Atlanta.
In four years, LBC has kept 2 million pounds of building material out of the landfill by donating more than $500,000 of materials to 50+ nonprofits and schools and selling discounted materials direct to the public. Their efforts are gaining notice.
“We’re getting a lot of cool attention from a wide swath of the Atlanta business community,” he says regarding recent partnerships and additional support.
Desmond Timmons oversees a staff of 30 and stewards nearly 10,000 acres of park land with 70 miles of hiking trails and a million-dollar budget. “I have the best job in the world because my office is the great outdoors,” he says.
When he arrived in 2012, the historic Liberty Bell swimming pool, a 1930s-era spring-fed project of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), needed repairs and faced closure. Timmons held special nighttime events and swimming lessons and allowed after-hours rentals for parties. The pool was a hit.
“They said we couldn’t make a profit from the pool, but for two seasons it has been profitable. That’s our biggest achievement so far,” he says.
He also oversaw a $1.6-million renovation of 16 historic CCC cabins, revenue has increased every year since he arrived in 2012, and attendance at the park has risen each year as well.
Looking for a role model for a game changer? Look no further than Kris Vaughn. It’s a status in title and spirit she achieved while still in her 20s when she ran Young Gamechangers, the leading program of GeorgiaForward, before becoming the parent group’s executive director.
GeorgiaForward seeks to engage young professionals with business, political, academic and civic leaders to find innovative solutions to our state’s challenges.
“Participants are from a variety of areas, so we are creating a statewide network of young professionals who understand the importance of statewide community,” Vaughn says.
Whether she was helping Habitat for Humanity or a local food bank, Catherine Woodling was involved in community service from a very young age. During college, the Atlanta native interned with then Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
“At that point I became fascinated with the inner workings of local government and how an individual can make a difference and a lasting impact,” she says.
The desire to make a difference and an impact has led Woodling to serve as president of her Reynoldstown neighborhood association and as vice chair of the City of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU), which is a group of 25 citizen advisory councils that represent the city’s 242 intown neighborhoods and make recommendations to the mayor and city council on zoning, land use and other planning issues.
When Jessica Wright was 24, her family faced an all-too-familiar crisis: Her grandmother needed assistance but did not want to move into a convalescent home. So Wright launched a home-care business with her grandmother as her first client. Today, Innovative Senior Solutions serves more than 250 clients and employs more than 100 staff members.
“I enjoy helping seniors and individuals with disabilities live at home with their familiar belongings, which helps them stay well and happy,” Wright says.
As head of The Leadership Institute, Shana Young’s reach spans the state. Her involvement in the Jim Blanchard Leadership Forum extends that reach across the country. But it’s her work in the local community that she delivers tirelessly.
20 Years of 40: Where are They Now?
A look back at some of our picks from years past and where they are today.
Then: Chief Scientific Officer for ProLinia Inc.
Alliance Eminent Scholar and Professor and Director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center at the University of Georgia; Chief Scientific Officer for ArunA Biomedical Inc.