Richard J. Alley

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 24, 2013

There is a surge these days in Memphis boosterism, but there may be no one else with their pulse more on what is new and exciting and worth celebrating in the city than Rashana Lincoln.

As director of community engagement for the New Memphis Institute (formerly the Leadership Academy), Lincoln is charged with selling her greatest passion: Memphis.

Born and raised in Memphis, the White Station High School graduate went on to Clark Atlanta University, a small, historically black college that shares a campus with Spelman College and Morehouse College. She graduated in 1996 with a degree in business marketing.

Lincoln returned home as the Olympics descended upon Atlanta, and became caught up in the campaign for Harold Ford Jr.’s congressional run. She joined the staff as an advance person moving out in front of the campaign team. Lincoln said the experience was “intense, but phenomenal; it really exposed me to every pocket of the 9th District.”

Lincoln enjoyed working with the big-money donors as well as knocking on doors throughout the district and talking to the residents and those most affected by elections and legislation.

“I love people; that’s just my nature,” she said.

It was during the campaign that the importance of voting was instilled in her and it drove her to the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville. Her father had a background in the law and she’d always seen a juris doctorate as “a great vehicle for any number of careers.”

She graduated law school in 2001, and though she never pursued a career in law she said the experience was invaluable. Her mother was ill when she came back to Memphis so Lincoln took over operations and management for the family business, Mayweather Catering … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 17, 2013

In her six years as a CPA, Ginna Word has seen the industry from both sides of a spreadsheet, as an auditor for Deloitte & Touche, and as a corporate, in-house accountant for The ServiceMaster Co.

The disparate views, she said, have given her a distinct advantage in her current position as recruiter for the Memphis office of Vaco, an upper-level placement and consulting firm.

The Clarksdale, Miss., native and University of Mississippi graduate came to Memphis after receiving a master’s in accounting from Ole Miss to work for Deloitte & Touche, where she’d interned during college.

“I tell people all the time that, graduating from accounting, there is no better way to start a career; you get exposure to so many things,” she said of her tenure at Deloitte & Touche. “What other job can you say that within a year you can be sitting down in the office of a CFO of a public company interviewing them and asking them about their processes and talking with them about their financial statements?”

Word worked at Deloitte & Touche for four years before leaving for ServiceMaster, where she spent a year. When an opening became available at Vaco, she jumped, and it was there that she said she had an epiphany.

“I realized after six years in accounting that, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it – and I learned a lot from it and I wouldn’t trade the experience I had – but I just didn’t love it,” she said. “I wanted that feeling of really having a passion for what I do every day.”

That passion was found at Vaco where, at first, she was “scared to death,” she said, working in the people business to “match very talented people with great companies.”

There has been a shift in the past few years in the recruitment and staffing game. First, as people were laid off in the recession and frantic for work, and now, as things have calmed and evened out, more people are beginning to look around, not for just anything that might come along, but for a career advancement or change … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 10, 2013

Fittingly, Kenya Bradshaw can trace her life’s mission back to her childhood and a family that valued public service.

As the executive director of the Memphis chapter of Stand for Children Tennessee, it is just such a background that bolsters her in the day-to-day struggle to make education available to everyone as early as possible.

“I feel like, if Memphis is ever to reach its fullest potential, the greatest vehicle through which we can get there is by investing in our children through early childhood education, early home visitation and in also having a strong K-12 public education system,” Bradshaw said.

The Whitehaven High School alum was born in Miami but moved to Memphis at a young age. For college, she went east to the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga where she received an undergraduate degree in marketing and international business. The goal, clearly, was to make her mark in the corporate world of products and finance.

“My life’s ambition was to design the next Coca-Cola product or work for FedEx,” she said. “When I went to college I knew that I was going to work in marketing.”

While in school, Bradshaw participated in the program Student Support Services, which helped her to be able to finish school. Once she graduated, she was given the opportunity to work for the program and quickly moved into management.

“It still is one of the greatest experiences of my life because I could directly see the work that I did translated into changing the lives of my students,” she said.

Though she cherishes the education she received at Whitehaven, she felt she was unprepared to be competitive in college and saw the same situation for incoming students at UT … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 3, 2013

When Memphis native Ashley Harper graduated from Central High School and left town, it was for the mountains.

First, for Fort Collins and Colorado State University nestled in the Rocky Mountains where she majored in English and entertained lofty plans of working with metaphors, imagery and language.

Upon her return to Memphis, she did just that working for Burke’s Bookstore for seven years.

When she left Memphis a second time, Harper once again found herself atop a mountain. This time, though, it was Machu Picchu. She, husband, Dan, and their two small children, Flannery and Gus, 5 and 1 at time, respectively, moved to Lima, Peru, in 2000. The couple taught English at a private bilingual school.

She describes the experience of living in a foreign country as “excellent” and “phenomenal.”

“We miss it every day,” she says and would recommend such an adventure to anyone who has the opportunity. “I’m not a traveler, I’ve never done much traveling, but being somewhere and learning to fit in, that’s what I like.”

Back in Memphis in 2004, Harper volunteered at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as an interpreter. Responsibility loomed and the need for paying work led her to Hands On Memphis where she was the “last man standing” before that entity’s merger with Volunteer Memphis … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 27, 2013

Melissa Wolowicz is up with the chickens every morning, working to make Memphis a better place.

The new vice president of development for BRIDGES has been raising chickens in her backyard since she, husband Shawn and son Grayson moved into Midtown and a house shaded by a canopy of trees.

Before the chickens and BRIDGES, however, Wolowicz was vice president of grants and initiatives for The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

The Frayser native and White Station High School graduate attended the University of Memphis for a bachelor’s degree in social work and the University of Tennessee College of Social Work for her master’s degree. As part of her master’s curriculum, she became an intern for The Community Foundation.

“I knew I wanted to help people,” said Wolowicz, who originally began in the psychology program at the U of M. “I quickly figured out that working one-on-one with people was too heavy for me.”

Jenny Koltnow, executive director of the Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation, has worked with Wolowicz over the years and attests to her commitment to the city and the nonprofit community, saying she is “persistent, professional and widely admired.”

Wolowicz’s foray into social work came with an internship for Traveler’s Aid, an organization that assists individuals and families who are in transition, or crisis, and disconnected from their support systems … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 12, 2013

Kim McCollum is at home in the company of Confederate generals, musicians, politicians, murderers and civil rights leaders.

As executive director of the 161-year-old Elmwood Cemetery, McCollum is in charge of the 80 acres that serves as the final resting place to many of the city’s famous, infamous and notorious, as well as thousands of yellow fever victims known and unknown.

Despite such a portentous workplace, McCollum believes she is “working at the most beautiful place in Memphis.”

Indeed, the cemetery is home to almost 1,500 mature trees that bloom throughout the year and, she says, “I’m surrounded by angels in the cemetery, and the statues. How could you not want to come to work here? This place is breathtaking.”

Raised in Southaven, where she still lives with her two children, McCollum attended Southaven High School and then the University of Memphis for a degree in English. Not quite sure how her degree would translate into a career, she hoped to work in the nonprofit sector as a grant writer or in marketing.

“I felt like I just wanted to do some good on some level, or try to,” she said.

Not only does she now run the sort of organization she’d hoped to work for, but her job has her in charge of one of the oldest nonprofits in Tennessee.

While a college student, she went to work for the Memphis Botanic Garden and as an intern for the Pink Palace. Just before graduation it was suggested by a friend that she apply for the position of receptionist at the cemetery and she went to work for the former director, Frances Catmur … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April, 5, 2013

John Bass earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Memphis.

Specifically, the degree is focused on 16th century music compared to modern jazz pedagogy and how musicians then might have been taught improvisation.

Where does one go with such a degree?

Bass has taken it across Midtown to Rhodes College where he is the director of the Mike Curb Institute for Music. The Curb Institute was established to preserve and promote the distinct music traditions of the South, as well as research its effect on history, economy and social systems.

What better place than Memphis, the genesis of so much in popular music? And what better place for a musician from Mobile, Ala.?

Bass’ father was a physician by trade and also an after-hours banjo player, so Bass grew up with music in his ears and, eventually, a guitar in his hands.

After a typical adolescence spent playing in garage bands around town, Bass took the not-so-typical turn of seriously studying jazz. His high school band director suggested the University of Southern Mississippi, where Bass majored in jazz guitar.

He and his wife, Johnnie, considered Memphis for their respective pursuits and programs. She is an audiologist now with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and he received his master’s in jazz guitar from Memphis before pursuing his doctorate.

While working on that advanced degree, Bass began teaching guitar as an adjunct professor at Rhodes College, which doesn’t offer a degree in music, per se, yet in the liberal arts tradition students can graduate with a Bachelor of Arts and a major, or emphasis, in music … (read more)

Standout Profile for The Memphis Daily News

March 29, 2013

Willy Bearden is a local filmmaker best known for works such as his 2010 feature “One Came Home” and the Memphis Memoirs series on WKNO-TV.

He produced the video exhibitions for the Cotton Museum and has produced the New Year’s Eve telecast from Beale Street as well as the Blues Music Awards for the Blues Foundation.

The bearded and bespectacled Bearden is a renaissance man with a down-home flair whose talents extend far beyond any single medium.

“I’m a filmmaker, a writer and a storyteller, and I think all of these things are connected, at least as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I couldn’t be a filmmaker if I weren’t a writer, and I couldn’t be a filmmaker if I didn’t know photography.”

And it’s his photography that will be in the spotlight during an opening reception Friday, March 29, at 6 p.m. at the Leadership Memphis Gallery 363 (365 S. Main St.) during the South Main Art Trolley Tour.

For the show, Bearden culled 10 years of photographs for the 20 or so to be edited, printed and framed.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into it,” Bearden said. “I’ve had a good time going through and choosing things, it’s been interesting to kind of walk back through the thousands of things I’ve shot.”

Ken Hall has partnered with Michel Allen in Allen Projects, a gallery and consulting firm, to curate shows for Leadership Memphis. The Bearden photography installation marks one year for such shows.

Hall has known Bearden for several years and was familiar with his video and production work, but when he saw the still photography for the first time, he wanted to showcase it to the public.

“I was just mesmerized by his great work in still photography,” Hall said. “So immediately – I think the next day – I called him for an exhibition at Gallery 363.”

Bearden, a Rolling Fork, Miss., native, spends a lot of time in the Delta and his photography represents this … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

Oct. 15, 2010

Susan Rubio spent much of her life in private education before realizing that she belonged elsewhere – closer to the street.

Having attended Harding Academy as a child and later working there as a teacher and administrator, she “wanted to give back to someone who couldn’t afford a private education.”

“I’m a good teacher and I was always attracted to the ones who did the poorest and just didn’t like school, the ‘bad kids,’ “Rubio said. “So it was like a homecoming when I first started here. I felt like I was finally teaching at home.”

For Rubio, home is HopeWorks where she is director of education, a place where the lesson of self-sufficiency and the wisdom in teaching a man to fish is put into practice every day. HopeWorks helps those in need, those out of work or looking for a change in their lives, by teaching them basic skills and helping them to advance their knowledge base … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

Oct. 1, 2010

Having entered the legal profession as a means to develop a long-term business career, Milton Lovell realized his goal recently when he was named the new chief financial officer and general counsel of nexAir.

Lovell received his undergraduate degree in finance and accounting, and a juris doctorate from the University of Mississippi. He worked for a brief time for accounting firm Arthur Andersen doing business consulting in Memphis before going to New York University for a master’s in law and taxation.

From there, he returned to Memphis to work for Burch, Porter & Johnson PLLC, where he handled mergers and acquisitions, business transactions, business formation and contracts with clients such as Helena Chemical Co., BankTennessee and the Hyde Family Foundations.

“There’s no better place in Memphis, in my opinion, to practice law than Burch Porter and it’s just a terrific environment to nurture a lawyer and to really allow a lawyer to practice his profession,” Lovell said. “I was never looking to leave Burch Porter; it was just an opportunity.” … (read more)