Tag: Atlanta’s 55 Most Powerful

Since taking office in 2011, Georgia’s state attorney general has stepped up prosecution of sex traffickers, and called for stricter regulation of “pill mills” to reduce prescription drug abuse.

The first woman to oversee the Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta, vice president and general manager Shan Cooper is occasionally seen on the factory floor, chatting with the plant’s 6,300 employees who build C-130J cargo planes and the center wing assembly for the brand-new F-35 fighter jet.

Since leaving strip mall giant Sembler Co.—with whom he built such once-controversial projects as the Edgewood Retail District and Town Brookhaven—to launch his own firm in 2012, Fuqua has shifted into overdrive.

The president and CEO of Emory Healthcare has some pretty big scrubs to fill succeeding John Fox, who led Georgia’s largest hospital system for 16 years before Mandl took over in March. Despite Emory’s Ebola-fighting prestige, Mandl’s off to a rocky start; WellStar recently pulled out of merger negotiations for which he’d been the self-described “quarterback.”

He was elected Atlanta’s 59th mayor in 2009 by precisely 714 votes. Such a razor-thin margin might prompt another politician to take office in a spirit of caution, if not outright humility.

As president and CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Company, Fanning faces delays and cost overruns with two high-profile projects: the Plant Vogtle nuclear facility near Augusta and a coal gasification plant in Mississippi.

When the late minority business pioneer H.J. Russell stepped away from his namesake construction company in 2003, his son Michael took his place as CEO (his other son, Jerome, is president).

The United Way of Metropolitan Greater Atlanta’s president doesn’t just control the purse strings for the behemoth nonprofit’s local chapter. He also determines how its more than $100 million in annual revenue gets divvied up among 200 philanthropic organizations in more than a dozen metro-area counties.

In 1998 the former fax machine salesperson created the shapewear empire Spanx, landing a spot in 2012 on Forbes’ lists of “America’s Richest Self-Made Women” ($1.07 billion) and “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” (number 91).

Georgia’s 73rd House speaker, who’s held the lower chamber’s top spot since 2010, has served as a voice of moderation in the state’s increasingly fragmented Republican party.