Tag: Women Making a Mark 2020

Lessons learned early in life are often the ones that stick. That’s certainly true for Kathy Colbenson, president and CEO of CHRIS 180, a behavioral health and child welfare organization.

“I’m not an artist at all,” admits Virginia Hepner, “but I’m the best audience member.” Growing up in a tiny Arkansas town of 500 people, Hepner, 63, had an uncommon exposure to the arts.

Lori Lane, senior vice president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia, lives and breathes real estate. “I’ve always been that kind of person that my work is my social life,” she says.

Art has always been part of Monica Campana’s life. She turned that passion into a career in 2009 when she co-founded Living Walls, a nonprofit organization that brings public art to underserved communities.

When Anita Johnson was eight years old, she scrawled her signature inside
 her family’s encyclopedia collection as “Dr. Johnson, MD.” Now 53, Johnson has worked at the cutting edge of breast cancer treatment for 25 years and serves as the director of breast surgical oncology at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) in Atlanta.

A visual thinker, Carolyn Meltzer was drawn to medical imaging sciences because she appreciated using pictures
 to solve a complex problem—to her, it
 felt like putting a puzzle together. But at this stage in her career, the 59-year-old neuroradiologist is embracing a different kind of challenge.

Marquetta Bryan didn’t hesitate to say “yes” when she was asked 
to lead American Cancer Society’s first Georgia board of directors. Not only had she lost two people dear to her to different forms of cancer, she couldn’t ignore the high cancer rate among African Americans.

Tara Murphy’s public relations career started with a D in one of her PR classes at Elon University. “It was never something that I wanted to focus on, which is very funny since I’ve now owned a PR company for 24 years."

Andréa Carter believes that a person should be able to bring her “whole self” to her job. And she walks the talk. In her role as executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Global Payments, she says, “I am 100 percent authentically Andréa.”

As the first woman CEO and president of the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, Lauren Koontz shoulders a lot of responsibility.