By Maria Saporta
This just in.
The Captain Planet Foundation has named Leesa Carter as its new executive director.
Carter has been executive director of the Georgia Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, will take over the organization “dedicated to high quality programs that empower youth to become global environmental change-makers,” according to a news release.
Hope Arbery was a young successful real estate attorney when she was assigned a case for which law school did not prepare her: how to balance the demands of a growing practice with her developing desire to stay home raising two young boys.
Deliberating the issue while at home on an extended break from the firm, Hope’s Moment occurred when her next door neighbor called.
At about the same time the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing arguments in the Justice Department’s challenge to the Arizona immigration law last month, there were a couple of developments which paint a much different vision of the future than might be guessed by Americans on either side of the immigration issue.
A few days before the much-publicized hearing, Audi announced it has selected Mexico as the site for its new SUV manufacturing plant, spurning several U.S. suitors, including Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. This follows recent decisions by Honda, Mazda and Nissan to build or expand on plants in Mexico, which is projected to increase its auto manufacturing by over 40% by 2015.
This news adds context to the second development, a report by the Pew Hispanic Center that net migration from Mexico to the United States, legal and illegal, has slowed to a halt and may even be moving slightly in the other direction.
Bo Jackson was driving urgently down New Providence Road in Alpharetta on the foggy, rainy election night of November 7, 2006, hoping and praying his – and any parent’s – worst nightmare was not about to unfold before his eyes.
Bo’s Moment wasn’t when his son Parker died; it occurred months afterwards. “I was forced with a decision and a choice,” he says in our accompanying Moments video, filmed at Parker’s grave. “How was I gonna react to this tragedy? Was I gonna to let it bury me or was I going to rise above it?”
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 27, 2012
Washington, D.C. — Metro Atlanta leaders witnessed firsthand how a city has stimulated its economy by investing in transit, sidewalks, bicycle facilities and smart growth development patterns.
When big-box Wal-Mart announced plans to move into indie-minded Decatur, neighbors mobilized protests.
A legal campaign began. Anti-Wal-Mart yard signs popped up. Across the road from the planned development, Tony Powers keeps the keen eye and taste that has made his family business – Intown Ace Hardware – survive and succeed.
As the world gets more homogeneous, his answer is a more diverse identity. His store’s evolving eclecticism mirrors the funky flowering of Decatur itself.
Seventh grade can be an awkward time for any student, but for former Atlanta City Council President and current Grady Foundation President Lisa Borders, helping to integrate an independent private school in Atlanta made it especially challenging.
“What I learned is that I had the capacity not only be at that school, but to excel, and it taught me to deal with adverse circumstances, always,” Lisa said.
Just one month after he was inaugurated, President Barack Obama established the White House Office of Urban Affairs with much fanfare.
The executive order stated:
“About 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas, and the economic health and social vitality of our urban communities are critically important to the prosperity and quality of life for Americans.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 20, 2012
Junior Achievement of Georgia Inc. is considering locating two hallmark programs — a JA Finance Park and a JA Biz Town — at the Georgia World Congress Center.
By Maria Saporta
A regional effort to build a regional arts and cultural mindset is losing its leader.
Flora Maria Garcia, CEO of the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition, will become the new president and CEO of the United Arts of Central Florida starting May 29.
Garcia has been CEO of MAACC since 2007, when she succeeded Bill Nigut, who is now the Southeast Regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Tom Key has graced Atlanta audiences with many dramatic productions at Theatrical Outfit and the Alliance Theater, but the curtains rose on his own dramatic Moment 26 years ago when he was offered a chance to lead a theater in New York City.
With echoes of nightly off-Broadway standing ovations for his one-man show still ringing in his head, Tom instead chose to nurture his talents in Atlanta – his “home place in the American South.”
By Larry Williams Vice President, Technology Industry Development, Metro Atlanta Chamber A recently released report on the state of Georgia’s technology industry has aimed a spotlight on some of the most exciting and encouraging news for the future of the economy, not just in Georgia and Atlanta, but in the United States and even globally. […]
The proposed deepening of the Savannah Harbor received a major boost today in the form of documents released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The studies released today show the cost would be about $652 million to deepen the Savannah River shipping channel by five feet, to 47 feet. The economic impact of the expected increase in trade would amount to $174 million a year, nationwide.
In a related development, the South Carolina Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a dispute over a state water quality permit that would allow the dredging of the shipping channel, according to a report by the Associated Press. The court’s decision to take the case will fast track a final ruling in a matter that would have been appealed up from lower courts.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is disappointed that MARTA did not get the legislative assistance it needs during the 2012 General Assembly.
But he is not giving up by any means that the situation can be resolved in 2013.
MARTA had sought to permanently remove a state restriction that requires that half of its sales tax revenues go to operations and half goes to capital investments. The state had waived the 50/50 rule for three years, but that time frame runs out on June 30, 2013.
Bob Voyles has spent much of his career developing signature buildings that grace Atlanta’s prime intersections and highways, so “it was like a fire bell going off in my head” when his daughter Virginia revealed she wasn’t moving back to her hometown because of Atlanta’s growing congestion.
“This was a huge surprise to me, because I love Atlanta and worked here nearly 40 years and my family is from here and always expected my children to want to embrace the city that I loved,” Bob recalled in our accompanying video.
By Chris Schroder
Joyce Fownes has completely transformed the workspace of many of her firm’s clients, proving again and again that interior design can alter how employees interact with each other.
Ironically, she found herself completely transformed one recent Easter morning when she felt spiritual “lightning” travel through her body. She hasn’t been the same since – at home or at work.
By Maria Saporta
It gets so bloody depressing.
Once again, MARTA has gotten screwed. This time, it was at the hands of the State Rep. Mike Jacobs, State Rep. Steve Davis and other misguided colleagues who have lost sight of what being a legislator is all about — to act in the best interests of the state.
In the closing minutes of the 2012 legislative session, political motives and missteps failed to remove the noose around MARTA’s neck that forces the transit agency to spend 50 percent of the sales tax it collects on capital improvements and 50 percent on operations.
Late in the last night of this year’s legislative session, in that hour when so much mischief famously has been done, there was a brief but illuminating flash of red which revealed the way things work under the Golden Dome and the potential of social media to disrupt the old order.
You can it watch it, starting at the 3 hour 16 minute mark, on this Georgia Public Broadcasting archive video.
By Chris Schroder
Having now published a dozen installments of Moments, it seemed an appropriate time to visit with Joel Babbit, the ever-inventive viceroy of Atlanta’s creative scene.
The Georgia sheriff who cracked the case of the stolen statue of Brer Rabbit has come out with a last ditch effort against a proposal pending in the Legislature that is strongly supported by Gov. Nathan Deal and ranking lawmakers.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills says the alternative sentencing bill that’s due for a vote Monday in the state Senate is soft on crime and will shift the cost of lawbreakers from the state to counties. The House unanimously approved the bill.
To fight the bill, Sills has distributed an email filled with the sort of rousing language he deployed in August. At that time, the sheriff vowed to throw the law book at thieves who stole a statue of Brer Rabbit from the front yard of the Uncle Remus Museum, in Eatonton.
