Amanda Slavin
Listed on this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 for Marketing and Advertising, Slavin is a millennial and Generation Z expert.
She is the chief executive officer and founder of CatalystCreativ, an experience studio that’s focused on helping cities, brands and institutions flourish by developing educational and inspirational experiences through strategy as well as on and offline campaigns to engage Millennials. Slavin and CatalystCreativ have worked with brands such as NPR, Dell, Ekocycle and Starwood Hotels.
CatalystCreativ is funded by Zappos CEO and venture capitalist Tony Hsieh as part of the Downtown Project.
Slavin is the keynote speaker for the Women’s Leadership Colloquium.
“She’s a young woman who has made herself millions,” said Debra Dobkins, organizer of the colloquium and dean of the Women’s College at Brenau University.
Caroll Burrell
The president and chief executive officer of Northeast Georgia Health System has been a part of the senior management team at NGHS since January 1999. Previously she has served as executive vice president and chief operating officer from 2004 to 2011. In June 2011, Carol was named president and CEO.
Under her leadership, the health system’s flagship hospital — Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville — has been named Georgia’s No. 1 hospital by CareChex (2014, 2015), one of America’s 50 best hospitals by Healthgrades (2013, 2014) and one of the nation’s 100 top hospitals by Truven Health Analytics (2013, 2014). In fact, for 2015, CareChex ranked NGMC No. 2 in the nation for overall hospital care. Burrell also led the construction of the state’s newest hospital, NGMC Braselton, which opened in April 2015.
Georgia Trend magazine placed her on their 2015 list of the 100 most influential Georgians.
Charlotte Atkins
At age 13, Atkins started working for newspapers as a sports stringer for her hometown newspaper in Alabama. Then for the next three-plus decades, she spent her career in newsrooms on the East and West coasts.
A graduate of Auburn University, Atkins has worked at newspapers in Eufaula and Auburn, Ala.; Vero Beach, Fla.; Monterey, Calif.; and Columbus, Rome and Gainesville.
After more than 35 years in newspapers, she changed careers in late 2011. She left her post as editor in chief of the Rome News-Tribune for another calling — to take the helm of the nonprofit Cancer Navigators as executive director to help cancer patients on their journey. That career choice gave her weekends free and more flexibility to tend her parents in two different cities who were battling Alzheimer’s, both of whom she lost since.
She returned to the newspaper business as publisher of The Times Oct. 6, 2014.