Tag: people

By Chris Schroder

President and CEO of Atlanta Habitat, Larrie Del Martin, had her Moment in 1972 when she and her husband Joe decided to live in and contribute to what was then a struggling intown neighborhood for the sake of community rather than an easier lifestyle.

At the time Larrie Del and her husband were making this decision, intown Atlanta was struggling. A desegregation lawsuit was negatively affecting the schools, and the Georgia Department of Transportation was bulldozing houses and trees in Inman Park and Virginia-Highland to build Interstate 485 towards Stone Mountain. Families were fleeing and property values were sinking.

“We purposefully decided, ‘this is where we want to be, this is going to be our downtown community and we are going to make a difference,” she said. “That was who we were – we didn’t ever take the easy road. We didn’t know how hard it would be, but it was the right thing.”

By Chris Schroder

Almost 11 years ago, the worst tragedy anyone can imagine happened to Brad Cunard. In the days and weeks that followed, as word of the accident spread through Atlanta and around the world on CNN, most people responded with the same question: “How does one recover from that?” Happily, we now have an answer.

“My Moment was the day after tragedy struck,” Brad told us in our accompanying video. “I woke up and my whole world was gone. I lost everything. I lost my business, I lost my family and I had to start over. The first thing I could think of to do was to just go out and start walking, trying to get some sort of flow into my brain. I found that it became more of a prayer walk, if you will. And I went from about 230 pounds down to about 175 pounds over a few weeks time. And that was really the beginning of the new me.”

Gary Price thought things were going well in his 15-year-marriage, so he concentrated on his accelerating management career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Atlanta. Then, being “a typical male, I outsourced all the stuff at home.” His Moment occurred without warning nine years ago, when “my wife decided to walk out of the house and leave me with raising three kids, ages nine, six and two.”

Gary’s journey as a single father paralleled his rise of becoming managing partner of 1,400-plus employees at PwC’s Greater Atlanta market.

An Ohio native, Gary joined PwC’s assurance division, providing counsel to transportation and manufacturing clients after graduating from Ohio State in 1983. He moved to Atlanta in 1999 to lead the firm’s work on the Delta Air Lines account.

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.

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 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.