Category: Guest Column

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 […]

By Guest Columnist MATTHEW RAO, chair of BeltLine Rail Now. I voted for More MARTA, not less MARTA. And like me, so many of you did too. More MARTA, the 40-year program funded by a half-penny tax to fund transit in the City of Atlanta, passed in 2016 with 71 percent of the vote. And […]

By Derek Prall Hi everyone! My name is Derek Prall. You might not recognize the name as it doesn’t appear on many bylines here, but I’ve been working in the background of SR for a few years now. Simply put, I’m the guy that makes sure our copy is error-free and everything runs on schedule. […]

By Guest Columnist MELITA EASTERS, executive director and founding chair of Georgia WIN List, the state’s leading PAC for electing pro-choice Democratic women. Georgia voters who care about reproductive freedom have the opportunity to do more than wave protest signs by actively supporting candidates for the United States Senate, governor, attorney general and the Georgia […]

By Guest Columnist SHANE JACKSON, president of Jackson Healthcare and co-founder of goBeyondProfit. At the height of the pandemic, we witnessed heroic effort and excruciating fatigue across the medical industry from doctors and nurses who provided bedside care as well as those who support them. We hoped that once the pandemic receded, we would collectively […]

by Guest Columnist BO HIERS, history enthusiast, fourth-generation Atlantan, and super-proud grandfather of his beloved grandson, Fletcher. To prepare ourselves for yet another 4th of July celebration in our fine city, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and hit up the Way Back Machine for insights into how we celebrated our patriotic holiday in […]

by Guest Columnist NELL BENN, CEO of Agape Atlanta. It’s been 25 years since Agape Atlanta Youth & Family Center first opened its doors. A program that began as an outreach ministry of Trinity Presbyterian Church is now a five-day-a-week, wrap-around program. Agape’s programming is uniquely embedded in the Atlanta Public School System and serves […]

By JOSEPH BANKOFF, former chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech and former senior partner at King & Spalding. If every politician is “heartbroken” over the repeated loss of young lives from gun violence why do we remain paralyzed to seek common-sense solutions? Why do we fail to find ways […]