Category: Guest Column

By Guest Columnist ROBERT KERR, audit and assurance partner at Deloitte and Touche. For some years now, many organizations have embraced community-minded environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives. These initiatives aim to improve the world and burnish an organization’s reputation in the community. No small business asset, ESG has been a strong signal on the […]

By Guest Columnist BOB WILLIS, chief investment officer at Willis Investment Counsel.  We do not know exactly what Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is thinking or how he evaluates our nation’s current spike in inflation. Nor do we know how he thinks about interest rates as the antidote to the highest inflation rate in forty […]

By Guest Columnist KIMBERLY BEAUDIN, president and CEO of the College Football Hall of Fame. As the first female CEO in the College Football Hall of Fame’s 71-year history, it’s important to reflect on my path, on those who championed and believed in me and on those who still present a very real challenge today. […]

By Guest Columnist BILL TODD, Georgia Tech professor of healthcare management. On Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022, the life of the remarkable and humble Dorothy Marie Mallinson Todd was celebrated at her lifetime home church, St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in West End. It is the blessed congregation of mostly Black faithful that begs to […]

By Guest Columnist PETER DYE, assistant director of community and global engagement and TheDream.US scholar advisor at Oglethorpe University. Last month, Oglethorpe University hosted the inaugural “Coalition and Community Building: Supporting Georgia’s Undocumented Students in Higher Education.” The conference was sponsored by the Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative (AGREC) and gathered community leaders, higher education […]

By Guest Columnist JEFF JOSLIN, co-chair of the Resilience Building Action Team for the nonpartisan, nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Another senate runoff. After a grueling election season, we must now endure the onslaught of four more weeks of negative political ads. Hopefully, we’ll all go back to the polls in what will be an expensive, […]

By Guest Columnist JOHN BARROW, former representative of Georgia’s Twelfth Congressional District. Twice in the last six months I’ve heard Andy Young tell an audience that any time the federal government offers to pay you 90 cents on the dollar to do something you ought to do anyway, it’s like being given “free money.” He […]

By Guest Columnist SUSAN NEUGENT, President Emeritus of Fernbank Museum. Known in archaic twentieth-century parlance as the unabridged Encyclopedia Britannica on two legs, Jeff Rader will conclude his tenure as a DeKalb County Commissioner at the end of this year, after sixteen years of public service. Rader first won election in the highly engaged district in 2006 […]

By Guest Columnist MICHAEL MINOR, Georgia Health Plan Chief Executive Officer at UnitedHealthcare Community & State Our health is influenced by more than just the care that we receive. In fact, according to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, medical care only makes up 20 percent of our health influences. The other 80 percent consists […]

By Guest Columnist TONY ROBERTS, president and CEO of the Georgia Charter Schools Association. Georgia’s non-profit public charter schools strengthen the overall public school system by offering more children an opportunity to receive high-quality public education at a school that works best for them.  By law, charter schools are tuition-free and open to all students […]

By Guest Columnist JIM SCHRODER, project manager for Alex Garvin on The Beltline Emerald Necklace report in 2004. On a warm, sunny day on Sept. 10, 2004, Alex Garvin looked out of the helicopter at a massive granite quarry with the skyline of Midtown Atlanta only a few miles away in the background. Without hesitation, […]

By Guest Coulmnist ERNEST BROWN, chair of Abundant Housing Atlanta. I’m lucky. I got to grow up in South Dekalb County in the 90s, an enclave of Black excellence that prepared me to succeed in more ways than I can measure. I got a scholarship to attend Emory, a great job right out of college, […]

By Guest Columnists MATTHEW PIEPER, executive director of Open Hand Atlanta and KEVIN WOODS, president of the Atlanta Medical Association. After moving to Atlanta in 2020, David, a successful publicist and professor, found himself in financial crisis after the pandemic wreaked havoc on his career. Things spiraled into a full-fledged catastrophe when a rare disease […]

By Guest Columnist DAVE PAULE senior consultant at Our Fundraising Search and Georgia State University instructor. It’s hard to avoid political messaging in Georgia during campaign season. This election is no exception, with some of the most extensive messaging surrounding Herschel Walker’s controversial involvement with Patriot Support. This story has legs beyond the campaign; it […]

By Guest Columnist ADAM KOVACEVICH, founder of Chamber of Progress. A bill to slash tech companies’ ability to remove harmful posts, including foreign misinformation, came just short of making it through the Georgia legislature this year. And if the GOP widens its majority, it very well may pass in 2023. Democrats in Georgia rightfully opposed […]

By Guest Columnist TIM ECHOLS, Georgia Public Service Commissioner. In a political year like this one, everyone needs a little escape. Enter Dragon Con and the thousands of costumed characters that invaded downtown Atlanta on Labor Day Weekend.  While there are plenty of Disney princesses and Batmen, some of the characters had some “energy-related” superpowers, and […]

By Guest Columnist JENNIFER OWENS, president of HealthMPowers For decades, the issue of food security has driven policy debates, charitable giving, community development and strategies to improve population health. Access to food among under-resourced communities, especially in difficult economic times, is a perennial issue. At no time in recent memory has that been more heightened […]

By Guest Columnist CHARMAINE MINNIEFIELD, activist and visual artist. My great-grandmother’s name was Ora Lee Fuqua. She was born on a sharecropping plantation in Central City, Ky. We were owned by the Fuqua family, a prominent white family in the South and beyond. My work retraces her story by recalling the Ring Shout. Praise houses […]

By Guest Columnist ERIC ROBBINS, President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. I have been a Jewish community builder for decades. I have lived through countless episodes of war, famine, natural disaster and refugee crises that gripped the global Jewish community. This past spring, I traveled to Poland’s border with Ukraine to […]

By Guest Columnist TED TERRY, DeKalb County District 6 Commissioner. No matter where you live, someone in your neighborhood feels the housing crunch. It could be the single mother of two down the street, the teacher living on a modest income struggling to live near where they teach or an empty-nester grappling with feelings of […]