Latest From Maria's Metro
Back when I was a student at Grady High School, I remember my Georgia history teacher pointing to a sentence in our textbook that said Henry Grady was a great ...
About Maria's Metro
Maria is a longtime Atlanta business, civic and urban affairs journalist with a deep knowledge of our city, our region and state. Since 2008, she has written a weekly column 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.
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Back when I was a student at Grady High School, I remember my Georgia history teacher pointing to a sentence in our textbook that said Henry Grady was a great Southerner and orator.
It’s an awkward time to bear the name – Henry Grady. Just ask Henry Grady III, the great, great grandson of Henry Grady, champion of the “New South” movement launched in the 1880s.
It felt like a gut punch. Losing C.T. Vivian and John Lewis on the same day – July 17 – was almost too much to bear. The phrase I kept repeating in my head was: “We are losing Atlanta’s greatest generation.”
The incoming president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta – Frank Fernandez – hopes to unleash the power of collaboration to galvanize metro Atlanta to address issues of inequity in our region.
For Paige Alexander, becoming president and CEO of the Carter Center was a coming home in more ways than one. “Atlanta is like the bookends of my professional and personal life,” Alexander said in a recent interview in her office at the Carter Center. “It really is the only job I would have back to Atlanta for because it capitalizes on all the areas I’ve worked on.”
Atlanta may get a new and improved tree ordinance after all. The Atlanta City Council held a Tree Ordinance Work Session on June 25 to discuss a proposed draft ordinance prepared by consultants and released March 20.
For corporate America, 2020 was the year of virtual annual meetings. In the past three months – annual meeting season – nearly all of Atlanta’s major companies decided to go virtual rather than convene their shareholders in person.
“She took one for the team.” That’s the way Dave Wilkinson, president and CEO of the Atlanta Police Foundation, described the Saturday resignation of Erika Shields as Atlanta’s police chief.
Seriously? The administration of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has proposed to drain all the city’s dollars in the Eastside Tax Allocation District to plug a hole in its budget.
As we emerge from one of the darkest weekends in Atlanta’s history, a light is shining bright.
