Atlanta legend Ingrid Saunders Jones turning 80

The grand dame of Atlanta corporate philanthropy, Ingrid Saunders Jones, was celebrated Sunday afternoon at the special event space Flourish. The original, smaller venue was scrapped because so many people wanted to honor her.

Saunders Jones spent 31 years at the Coca-Cola Co., culminating as senior vice president of global community connections and as president of the Coca-Cola Foundation. Several of her successors were in the room.

Attendees included all sorts of celebrities. Former Atlanta mayors Andrew Young, Shirley Franklin, Bill Campbell and Keisha Lance Bottoms came to honor her.

Valerie Jackson, the widow of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, was also in the room. Saunders Jones once served as Mayor Jackson’s executive assistant until Carl Ware lured her to join the Coca-Cola Co.

Young was the first to speak. He remembered when Coca-Cola icon Roberto Goizueta informed the all-male Atlanta Action Forum that Saunders Jones would now be representing the Coca-Cola Co. at that prestigious biracial gathering of business leaders. Goizueta gave her full authority to speak on the company’s behalf, an unprecedented role for a woman at the company.

“Ingrid could tell you to go to hell, and you would look forward to the trip,” Young said laughingly. “I think this is the convening of the angels of Atlanta who have made this a great and glorious city.”

In true old Atlanta fashion, the Sunday gathering included university presidents, business leaders, philanthropic executives as well as civic stalwarts. Almost everyone in the room had been touched by Saunders Jones personally, professionally or both.

“Ingrid, you are a teacher at heart,” Shirley Franklin said. “There are many students of yours in this room.”

Franklin then recalled how Saunders Jones had orchestrated a meeting with her boss, Neville Isdell, so that Coca-Cola would donate land to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Nearly everyone who spoke mentioned Saunders Jones’ ability to get people to behave – whether it was to start and end an event on time, how to dress, what to say and who to say it to.

“You know Ingrid can be pretty damn pushy,” said Ware, who got to know Jones when he was president of the Atlanta City Council. When he was offered a job at the Coca-Cola Co., he reached out to Jones to join him. “Thank you for the most incredible mentor-mentee relationship ever.”

The three organizers of the event were Nancy Rigby, president of the Cox Foundations; Cecelia Corbin Hunter, a close friend of Jones; and Tony Conway, founder of Legendary Events and owner of Flourish.

Conway said the event started out as an intimate luncheon for about 20 people, not more than 10 times that many.

“You have been a true blessing in my life for decades,” Rigby said.

Corbin Hunter stated the obvious.

“Everyone here has a special place in your heart,” she said, mentioning the YWCA of Greater Atlanta. The event was a fundraiser for the renovation of the Phillis Wheatley YWCA on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

When she was brought up to the front of the room, complete with a large birthday cake with giant sparklers, Saunders Jones complained. The Clark Atlanta University chorus sang Happy Birthday.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything. They were quite rude, as a matter of fact. I’ve been very nervous. I’ve articulated that. But they didn’t care,” she said about not being part of the event planning details. “I’m used to be doing and not being done.”

She then looked across the room — describing her move from Detroit to Atlanta in 1977 as a moment of destiny.

“I was going to be good wherever I was going to be,” she laughed. “But there’s nothing like the City of Atlanta. Carl Ware, I got him straight. Maynard Jackson got us all straight. This is a special place.”

Then, making another appeal for the YWCA, Saunders Jones said: “I have harassed a number of people in this room, and I offer no apologies.”

Then she offered a way to look at history.

“You have to see Atlanta in decades,” she said. “Shirley Franklin taught me that.”

The birthday celebration reminded me of when Saunders Jones retired in the spring of 2013. The company gave her a warm send-off at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History.

“I can’t imagine life without Ingrid at the Coca-Cola Co.,” said then-Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent. “We are also talking about two eras here — B.I. (Before Ingrid) and A.I. (After Ingrid).”