Celebrating Susan Shows’ and Lee Herron’s service to GRA

Friends and family of the Georgia Research Alliance marked the retirement of two key leaders — Susan Shows and Lee Herron — on March 27 at an evening reception at The Oceanaire in Midtown.

The two leaders were celebrated for their many years of service to GRA. Shows spent 22 years at GRA, and Herron was there for 16 years — both steering the state’s efforts to cultivate academic research and technology ventures.

Shows officially stepped down as GRA’s president and CEO on Nov. 1, though she still is serving as a consultant. That’s when her successor, Tim Denning, began running the highly respected organization that brings together top business, academic and government leaders.

Herron, whose last day with GRA will be March 31, is retiring as senior vice president of the Alliance. Recently Herron has been leading GRA’s Greater Yield Initiative, which helps develop promising agricultural technologies to boost Georgia’s farm and agribusinesses industries.

Joining GRA in 2008, Herron directed its nationally-renowned venture development program — helping launch more than 200 university-based companies. Those ventures have attracted more than $2 billion in equity investment. As an entrepreneurial leader for 20 years before joining GRA, Herron helped guide prospective entrepreneurs to leverage their academic research into economic opportunities.

“It’s incredibly hard to overstate Lee Herron’s contribution to GRA and the difference Lee has made,” Denning said at a GRA board meeting earlier this year when announcing Herron’s upcoming retirement. “Some called him ‘the dream killer’ because of his ability to send many folks back to the drawing board. I prefer to call him ‘the dream maker.’”

GRA Chair Lizanne Thomas thanked Herron for his 16 years of service at GRA and for his prior tenure at the Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech. That’s where he began giving advice and guidance to Shows and her predecessor, Mike Cassidy.

Dozens of people, including Cassidy, showed up at the retirement reception for Herron and Shows, even though it was on the eve of the last day of the 2024 General Assembly.

GRA, launched in 1990 by then Gov. Zell Miller, fared pretty well his year in its budget requests. In addition to its annual budget allocation of a little over $10 million, GRA received about $4.5 million in funding from the supplemental budget.

That level of state funding however is significantly less than the organization received during its first 20 years in operation — some years receiving more than $40 million for research and venture development.

GRA is a true public-private partnership. The eight research universities cover half the overhead of the organization, and the private sector covers the other half of what has been $1.5 million. Tommy Holder of Holder Construction, who leads the effort to raise the private funds, said the overhead is increasing to $1.7 million. With the universities and the private sector covering the overhead, 100 percent of state funds goes into research and venture development.

At the board meeting two months ago, Denning said it had been a “privilege and pleasure” to become president and CEO of GRA. “I’m a kid in a candy store,” Denning said.