Category: Sections

By Maria Saporta

Genuine Parts is putting its succession plan in place.

As expected, Genuine Parts announced Monday that its board had elected Paul Donahue to the position of president of the automotive parts, industrial products and business services company. In 2010, the company had revenues of $11.2 billion.

Tom Gallagher will continue to serve as Genuine Parts’ chairman and CEO. For the record, Donahue, 55, will be only the seventh president of the 84-year-old company. Previously Donahue had been serving as executive vice president of the Genuine Parts Co. and as president of the U.S. Automotive Parts Group.

By Maria Saporta

At the First Monday breakfast of the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce, Fresenius Medical Care announced that it was adding 120 jobs by opening its new Peachtree Billing and Verification Office in Kennesaw.

The expansion will provide billing and insurance verification services for the company’s dialysis services operations in the Southeast. The facility will initially open with 75 to 80 employees, and it is anticipated that the new center will eventually employ up to 120 employees.

By Maria Saporta

This past week, I was able to moderate two different panel discussions — one on race relations and the other on the environment — and both left me optimistic with where we’re headed as a nation and a state.

The race relations panel at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta was part of the week-long Trumpet Awards, one of the most highly regarded awards programs for African Americans that was founded by our own Xernona Clayton.

By Maria Saporta

Marcia Prewitt Spiller, headmaster of the Children’s School for more than two decades, has been named as the Woodward Academy’s vice president and dean for academic affairs beginning July 1.

Spiller will succeed Ron McCollum, Woodward’s vice president and headmaster, who is retiring after 33 years at Woodward Academy, which is located in College Park.

In addition to leading the Children’s School, Spiller is chair of the National

By Maria Saporta

At the State of DeKalb County breakfast Thursday, CEO Burrell Ellis made a plea for “One DeKalb” and spoke against the “cityhood” efforts underway in communities such as Brookhaven.

It was the second annual State of the County breakfast, hosted by the Council for Quality Growth and the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce, that was held at the Thalia Carlos Community Center on Clairmont Road.

By Maria Saporta

Mark Lytle has been selected to become division director of the Georgia Centers of Innovation — an effort that seeks to accelerate the growth of six of the state’s strategic industries: aerospace, agribusiness, energy, life sciences, logistics and advanced manufacturing.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development, which is overseeing the Centers of Innovation along with the Georgia Research Alliance, selected Lytle, who has been with the department since 2002.

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Tuesday used the platform of the Kiwanis Club of Atlanta to urge support for the penny sales tax for regional transportation that supposed to go before voters in July.

Reed, who was going from the Kiwanis Club lunch to the Atlanta City Council meeting where the issue of airport concessions was to be debated, welcomed the opportunity to talk about something else other than the city’s process of selecting new food, beverage and retail business for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

“I’m going to have a pretty tough time at City Council today,” Reed said.

By Maria Saporta

The Civic League for Regional Atlanta will have a new chairman as of Jan. 1 — Robert Inman “Trey” Ragsdale III.

Ragsdale manages government and community relations for Kaiser Permanente. He also has been involved in a variety of government, business and civic groups in metro Atlanta including the Bank of North Georgia, the Children’s Museum of Atlanta, People to People International as well as several chambers of commerce.

By Maria Saporta

One of Atlanta’s longest serving cultural leaders will be retiring at the end of the year.

Jane Leavey, executive director of the Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, will retire Dec. 31 after 28 years in the role.

Leavey, who had been an employee of the Atlanta Jewish Federation (now renamed the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), saw the need for an archives and history museum that focused on the settlement and presence of Jews in Atlanta.

By Maria Saporta

Longtime Atlanta business leader, Joe Bankoff, will retire on May 31, 2012 as president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center — the largest cultural organization in the state.

Bankoff has been leading the center — which includes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, the Alliance Theatre and Young Audiences — since September, 2006.

“I have found the opportunity to serve in this role to be the most exciting, the most exhausting, the most rewarding and the most challenging job I’ve ever done,” Bankoff said in an interview.

By Maria Saporta

Few folks in town the name of the Atlanta woman executive who oversees a business that generates $110 billion in revenues and more than 500,000 employees.

The woman? Rosalind Brewer, president of Wal-Mart East (a territory that stretches from Maine to Puerto Rico and includes about 1,600 stores) and executive vice president of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Brewer was the keynote speaker at the

By Maria Saporta

One of Atlanta’s most important leaders, who is an unsung hero in his hometown, is finally getting the recognition he deserves.

William H. Foege will receive Georgia Tech’s 2012 Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage award for his leadership in global health.

Among Foege’s numerous contributions include his leadership in the possible eradication of smallpox and other diseases worldwide.

By Maria Saporta

One of Atlanta’s premier African-American-owned companies — Atlanta Life Financial Group — has named former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes to its board.

Barnes, who is joining his first corporate board since he left office in 2003, will be the only non-black board member of the diversified financial services company. At the time this article was posted, I could not determine whether Barnes was the first white person to serve on Atlanta Life’s board.

By Maria Saporta

An agreement to cancel plans for a new coal plant in Blakely, Ga. could mark the end of traditional coal plants in Georgia and even the United States.

LS Power, a New Jersey-based power company, announced Monday that it was halting a 10-year effort to build the Longleaf Energy Station in Blakely.

The decision came after a decade-long opposition campaign by the Sierra Club, Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw against building the plant.