Maria Saporta, executive editor, is a longtime Atlanta business, civic and urban affairs journalist with a deep knowledge of our city, our region and state. From 2008 to 2020, she wrote weekly columns and news stories for the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Prior to that, she spent 27 years with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, becoming its business columnist in 1991. Maria received her Master’s degree in urban studies from Georgia State and her Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Maria was born in Atlanta to European parents and has two young adult children. She launched SaportaReport in February 2009.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on June 5, 2015
The recipient of the Council for Quality Growth’s 2015 Four Pillar Award will be Dan Cathy, president and CEO of Chick-fil-A Inc.
The Four Pillar Award event, which will be held on Oct. 1 at the Georgia World Congress Center, will have a special twist. The night will shine a spotlight on the Westside community just across Northside Drive from the GWCC and the new Atlanta Falcons football stadium.
Funny how things turn out.
One week we closed the book on hosting the 2015 Nobel Peace Laureates Summit. Then last week, we learned we will be hosting the 2016 Clinton Global Initiative next June.
“There is a strong probability it will be for 2017 as well,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said in an interview with two reporters on June 12.
Atlanta can become the business gateway to Cuba, Mayor Kasim Reed said Friday morning after his quarterly meeting of the Atlanta Committee for Progress – a high-level group of business and civic advisors.
That is why Reed will be joining Ambassador Charles Shapiro, the president of the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, on a business-oriented trip to Cuba from June 27 to July 1.
The strategic international effort to eliminate river blindness (onchocerciasis) received a major boost today when philanthropist Sir Emeka Offor announced a $10 million gift to accelerate the fight against the devastating disease in Nigeria.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on June 5, 2015
A major new initiative to dramatically increase the number of Atlanta high school students who enter and graduate from college and technical schools is being launched — thanks to a $20 million investment from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation.
After spending more than seven years with the Perkins + Wills architectural firm, Ryan Gravel has decided to blaze his own trail once again.
Gravel is best known for writing his Master’s Thesis on a potential transformation of a 22-mile rail corridor surrounding central Atlanta – a project now known as the Atlanta BeltLine.
The Atlanta Community Food Bank has selected Kyle Waide as its new president and CEO – although there’s no expectation that he will be replacing Bill Bolling, the founder of the trend-setting nonprofit.
Waide, who joined the Atlanta Community Food Bank three years ago after a multifaceted career in nonprofits and with Home Depot, was selected after a national search that considered about 600 potential candidates.
The clock is ticking on Fort McPherson.
The next board meeting of the McPherson Implementing Local Redevelopment Authority (MILRA) is scheduled for Wednesday, June 17 as all-day work session.
It appears unlikely that the sale of 330 acres of Fort McPherson’s 488 acres to Tyler Perry will close on that day.
But MILRA officials say the closing should happen shortly thereafter.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 29, 2015
Mercy Care is launching its most ground-breaking expansion project near Buford Highway with the help of a $4 million grant from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation, part of the Robert W. Woodruff family of foundations.
The World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates has made it official.
The organization that had awarded the 2015 Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to Atlanta back in 2013 issued a release late Thursday afternoon confirming that it is moving on.
It will hold the 2015 Summit in Europe.
By Maria Saporta A dean of Atlanta’s advertising community – Dave Fitzgerald – will be handing over the position of CEO of Fitzgerald & Co. to Matt Woehrmann, currently executive vice president and the worldwide account director for Coca-Cola at McCann Worldgroup. Fitzgerald will become chairman of the Atlanta-based agency he founded 32 years ago. […]
In the end, there was no peaceful resolution in Atlanta’s quest to host the Nobel Peace Laureate Summit in November, 2015.
The latest effort had been explored diligently by the Rotary Club of Atlanta, which finally voted unanimously at a board meeting Monday afternoon not to proceed with plans to host the 2015 Summit.
Rotary officials then informed Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and the Secretariat of World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates of its decision to not be the host organization in partnership with the City of Atlanta.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 29, 2015
When former BellSouth Corp. CEO Duane Ackerman retired as a director of The Home Depot Inc. on May 21, it was the first time in more than 20 years that there was not an Atlantan serving as one of the outside directors on the board.
Over the years, Atlanta has been well represented on Home Depot’s board. In 1993, Don Keough, the former president of The Coca-Cola Co., was elected to the board. A year later, Johnnetta Cole, then the president of Spelman College, joined Home Depot’s board. And in 1995, BellSouth CEO John Clendenin became a director, later to be succeeded by Ackerman. At the same time, at least three of the inside directors also lived in Atlanta — the co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank and the longtime chief financial officer Ron Brill. With a total of 12 directors in 1998, at least half called Atlanta home.
For decades, bicycle lanes, multi-use trails and paths have been developed all over the Atlanta region.
But they have been developed – for the most part – in a haphazard way. A city, such as Roswell, will build a trail along the Chattahoochee River. Or the City of Atlanta will build a separated two-way bicycle path along 10th Street in Midtown. Or the Chattahoochee Hills will build a walkable and bicycle-friendly community in South Fulton near Serenbe.
One of Georgia’s most fragile and significant natural locations – Little St. Simons Island – will be protected in perpetuity – as in forever.
The island is owned by Henry “Hank” Paulson Jr., the former U.S. Treasury Secretary and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, along with his wife, Wendy. The Paulsons, who are both longtime environmentalists, have placed the 11,333-acre barrier island under a permanent conservation easement with the Nature Conservancy – which has been working on the Georgia coast for decades.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 22, 2015
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta is raising its own stakes.
It no longer wants to just provide a safe place for its youth to learn and grow. Thanks to its Vision 2020 strategic plan, it now would like 90 percent of the youth coming to its clubs regularly to graduate on time, live healthy lives and give back to their community.
“We turned up the notch to improve the outcomes of our youth,” said Missy Dugan, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta. “But we may have underestimated where our children were in those areas.”
By Douglas Sams and Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 22, 2015
The company that plans to redevelop downtown’s Underground Atlanta has entered talks with several grocers, including at least one giant — Kroger.
WRS Inc., the Mount Pleasant, S.C.,-based real estate company, has been in preliminary discussions with The Kroger Co., which has been looking at expanding within intown Atlanta, according to commercial real estate sources familiar with the talks.
WRS declined to name the grocery chains it’s been in discussions with.
(Update: Post includes a note to readers with the City of Atlanta’s press release on this announcement).
The City of Atlanta reportedly has hired a new commissioner of planning and community development — Tim Keane, who has held a similar position in Charleston, S.C.
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley announced Thursday that Keane, the city’s director of planning, preservation and sustainability, would be leaving his post on June 26 to come to Atlanta to work for Mayor Kasim Reed.
“I wouldn’t be leaving Charleston for just anything,” Keane told the Charleston Post and Courier. “This is a big job in a big city,…”
The mystery is now solved.
Doug Shipman, who recently announced he would be stepping down as the founding CEO of the Center for Civil and Human Rights – without disclosing his next move, will be the new CEO of BrightHouse LLC.
BrightHouse is the Atlanta-based “purpose-driven” consulting firm founded by Joey Reiman, a veteran marketing professional in Atlanta for decades.
Here is the interesting twist.
The Boston Consulting Group announced on Thursday that it is buying BrightHouse to “create a unique offering to help clients define their true purpose….”
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on May 22, 2015
(Editor’s note: A group of more than 100 Atlanta business and civic leaders visited Toronto, Canada, in early May on the LINK trip coordinated by the Atlanta Regional Commission. The trip’s aim is to learn how other cities are dealing with issues and challenges like those facing Atlanta. Atlanta Business Chronicle reporter Maria Saporta traveled with the group.)
Toronto is a city on steroids.
Although metro Atlanta is almost as large as Toronto (which has a population of 4.25 million compared to Atlanta’s 6 million), everything feels magnified in Canada’s largest city.
