Terry Sound Business

Sam Williams is one of the nation’s leading experts on urban competitiveness. He ran the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce for 17 years and Central Atlanta Progress for two years. He continues to work at the intersection of business, government and academia through his consulting firm, Business City Partnerships, and as a professor at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.

Formerly he served as a partner and COO with Portman Properties, a global architect-development company, and as president of America’s Mart for 13 years. He has been named as one of Georgia Trend’s Most Influential Georgians every year from 1990­2014, and has received the Governor’s International Lifetime Achievement Award. A native of Tennessee, he is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School.

Is the field of marketing relevant to all Terry majors? In this episode, Terry undergraduate Melissa McDonald chats with Terry professor Kimberly Grantham about how the field of marketing is rapidly changing and its implications for business students of any major.

Have you ever thought about working for a Big Four firm? In this episode, Terry undergraduates Tal Moskovitch and Maddie Jewell each share some highlights from their summer interning at EY and KPMG, respectively.

Ben Ayers is Dean of the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business and holds the Earl Davis Chair in Taxation. He came to UGA in 1996 and previously served as director of the college's highly regarded Tull School of Accounting for nine years prior to his appointment as Dean in 2014. Under his leadership, the college recently closed a successful Building Terry campaign, raising $121 million to support faculty, programs and facilities.

Dean Ayers has received eleven teaching awards at the school, college, and university levels. He was recently recognized as being in the top 5% of the most productive accounting researchers over the past fifty years. He has been actively involved in the American Taxation Association and American Accounting Association and has received national research awards from both.

Dean Ayers earned his bachelor's degree in accounting and Masters in Taxation from the University of Alabama, and his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., he worked for KPMG in Atlanta and Tampa and Complete Health, Inc. in Birmingham.

The Terry Student Podcast is back this semester with episode 5. In this episode, we ask the question, "Why Terry?", and talk with Lisa Meadows about all that the Terry College has to offer outside of the classroom.

Ed Heys ​(BBA '83) is the Atlanta Managing Partner of Deloitte LLP. Deloitte works with a wide variety of Fortune 500 clients. Heys manages a 2,300-employee operation that spans audit, tax, consulting and advisory services across a range of industries, including consumer and industrial products, financial services, healthcare and technology.

Saxby Chambliss served in the U.S. Senate for two terms and in the U.S. House of Representatives for four terms. Georgia Trend magazine, which regularly named him one of its Most Influential Georgians, called him "a highly visible and well-respected presence in Washington," and noted that he earned "a reputation as an affable but straight-talking lawmaker." Chambliss was first elected to Congress to represent Georgia's 8th District in 1994. Throughout his legislative career, he has been recognized numerous times by the public and private sectors for his work on agriculture, defense, budget and national security issues. During his tenure in the Senate, he served as a member of the Armed Services Committee; the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; the Rules Committee; and his leadership and experience on homeland security and intelligence matters earned him an appointment to the Senate Committee on Intelligence, where he served as vice chairman from 2011 to 2014.

Kevin Riley is the Editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a position he has held since January 2011.

Riley is a long-time employee of Cox Enterprises, which owns the Journal-Constitution. He started his career in 1983 at the Dayton Daily News in Ohio while a student at the University of Dayton. During his time in Ohio, Kevin had many roles for Cox, including editor of four daily Ohio newspapers, publisher of the Springfield News-Sun and general manager for Cox’s Ohio online operations. He also writes a column in Sunday editions of the Journal-Constitution.

Kat Cole serves as Group President at FOCUS Brands, having previously been president of Cinnabon Inc. for four years.

In her role, she oversees the more than 4,000 ice cream shops, bakeries, restaurants and cafés in the United States and 60 countries that FOCUS runs under the Moe’s, Shlotzsky’s, Auntie Anne’s, Carvel, McAllister’s Deli, Seattle’s Best Coffee and Cinnabon brands.

In addition, Cole is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and is starting a foundation to fund creative, sustainable approaches to education and self-sufficiency. She holds the distinction of being of only two foodservice company leaders listed on CNBC’s Next 25 List Innovators, Leaders and Disruptors for 2014, which is dominated by tech start-ups and a few financial groups and Fortune 50 companies. She is also co-founder of Changers of Commerce, a leading social movements agency.

In this episode, Terry undergraduates Melissa McDonald, Sam Eanes, and Caleb Stevens have the privilege of sitting down with Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner, Arthur Blank. They discuss everything from leading well to the new MLS soccer team Mr. Blank is bringing to Atlanta in 2017.