Cindy Williams, Vice President of Client Services at Info Retail, believes in building relationships with people that lasts for years. Be someone who enriches other people’s lives by building bridges and not walls. Networking is very important if you want to be really successful!
Marti Blackstock, Vice President, Asset Manager with Parkway Realty Services, encourages us to be passionate about our job. Find out what it is that you really love to do & pursue it. Take advantage of your skills & strengths.
Cindy Williams is Vice President of Client Services at Info Retail—a strategy and design agency, where she leads inter-disciplinary teams in customer advocacy and acquisition. She specializes in customer-centric relationships and collaboration to maximize the worth of brands and customer environments. Williams is highly experienced in home furnishings and bedding markets. She is a dedicated mentor, a court advocate for foster children, and candidate for a degree in psychology and criminal justice.
Since joining Info Retail in 2003, Williams has led the agency’s strategies in bedding and furnishings markets, serving a variety of international, national and online retail and manufacturing clients including Tempur-Pedic, Restonic, Dream Fit, Mattress Firm, Innovative Mattress Solutions, Klaussner, Lane and others. Prior to joining the firm, she led a distinguished 10-year career in bedding, as Southeast regional sales manager for International Bedding Corporation and manager of specialty sleep at Simmons Company.
Williams is a member of the board at WithIt—women’s leadership development network in the home and furnishings industries, and at the Better Sleep Council, educational arm of the International Sleep Products Association.
She writes a regular column at Sleep Savvy, a magazine for sleep products professionals, and has contributed to publications including Home Furnishings Business and Bed Times. Williams has spoken on the retail experience, the voice of the consumer and the practice of service design at a number industry conferences and tradeshows, including Furniture/Today Bedding Conference, World Market Center Las Vegas, and AmericasMart Atlanta.
Resolved to be also “a point of light” in her community, Williams is a founder and board member at a cost-free family counseling center in the north Georgia Appalachian area. She has worked as a court appointed special advocate for foster children, and is pursuing a degree in psychology and leadership studies at Kennesaw State University.
Parkway Properties, a member of the New York Stock Exchange, specializes in the operation, leasing, acquisition, and ownership of quality office properties. It has been a steward of capital in the public arena since 1971 and has been solely dedicated to the office industry since the mid‐1990’s. Parkway team members apply an uncompromising focus on operations, the cornerstone of their business strategy, to create a solid dividend and long-term returns to their shareholders and investment partners.
Parkway Realty Services is a commercial real estate services and advisory firm established in 1983 that currently manages and leases approximately 24 million SF of office space in 11 state.
Marti Blackstock is a real estate professional with 25+ years of experience in property management, leasing, marketing and asset management. Blackstock is a Certified Property Manager (CPM) & Certified Commercial Investment Manager (CCIM). Her current affiliations include Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM), Commercial Investment Real Estate Institute (CIREI), Atlanta Board of Realtors, Central Atlanta Progress & Metro Atlanta Chamber. She is currently Vice President, Asset Manager with Parkway Realty Services responsible for the operational and financial performance of 14+ commercial properties totaling 5.5 million square feet in five submarkets in the Atlanta metropolitan area. This portfolio includes a 2.5 million square foot, four city-block, mixed-use asset in Downtown Atlanta.
A conversation with Richard Debban & Brian Patton from www.alpharettabusinessassociation.com
To create a thriving Alpharetta, alive with business, shopping, and activity.
Craig Belnap is an energetic business executive with extensive broad-based experience leading businesses in the US, Asia and Europe. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, with shameful French, Craig has an extensive background in global operations, business management, and human resources. He is deeply experienced with Joint Ventures, well versed in Mergers & Acquisitions and enthusiastic about enhancing the competitiveness of global enterprises by developing long-term organizational, operational, and financial capabilities.
Craig joined Alcoa in 1995 and has run global operations with assignments in the US, China and Switzerland. In the late 90’s, Craig held the position of Operations Director for Alcoa’s Equipment Manufacturing division with sales throughout the world. In 2000 he transferred and moved his family to Shanghai, China where he was General Manager of the Foil Manufacturing business and then Managing Director of Operations for Rolled-Products in China. In 2003, he was asked to establish a Human Resource function for Alcoa in Beijing, China, which now serves 24 locations in 9 countries in Asia Pacific. For the past 5 years, Craig was the President of Alcoa Architectural Products (AAP)—a $350M business with operations in the US and France. Early in his career, Craig worked in the US aerospace industry in roles such as engineering and new product design.
Craig is a “Leaders for Manufacturing” Fellow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained two Masters Degrees, one in Management and another in Materials Science and Engineering. He attended Brigham Young University for his Undergraduate Studies. Additional notable events include being interviewed by Forbes Magazine on the development and launch of EcoClean™ and featured in CHO World (A Chinese Publication) in Feb 2007 on the topic: “Alcoa: Building Diversity, Developing Women Leaders”
Kris Wustrow is the Managing Director of Our Team In China, an action-oriented consultancy helping American firms with their China strategy, specifically market entry, marketing, sales, sourcing and production assurance. With offices in Atlanta and Shanghai, and a soon-to-be-opened office in Beijing,
Kris holds an M.B.A. in finance from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, a business school ranked in the world’s top 100 programs by The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit. He also earned his B.A. in both political science and history from the University of South Carolina. A native of Greenville, South Carolina, Kris graduated from Wade Hampton High School.
For nearly four years, Kris has been living and working in China, first studying both Chinese language and Chinese consumer behavior and now with Our Team In China, LLC. He is conversational and functionally literate in Mandarin Chinese and passed a national Chinese written examination. Prior to his living abroad, Kris served in various management, consultant and specialist positions for multi-national corporations such as Siemens, P&O Nedlloyd, Merrill Lynch, as well as for other smaller, start-up enterprises. At the age of 35, his vast industry experience ranges from political campaign management and governmental lobbying to publishing to finance to supply-chain optimization.
John has more than 30 years of experience in sales, marketing and engineering. That includes executive experience with leading-edge Fortune 500 high-technology companies, and pre-IPO companies where he was an officer of the company and member of the senior management team. He has held P&L responsibility and managed direct and indirect sales channels in North America, Europe and Asia. His teams have consistently enabled profitable revenues, improved customer satisfaction, and increased market share.
John was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Enpirion, Inc. and led a successful turn-around in achieving profitability. As the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Galvantech, his strategy and management led the company to record sales and a successful acquisition by Cypress Semiconductor Corp. Prior to Galvantech, he was the Vice President of Sales at Equator Technologies Inc, where he captured the company’s first publicly announced design-win with Tektronix, and also managed the due diligence activities for private equity placement from Sony, Canon, Hitachi and others. Previous management positions include Director of Worldwide Strategic Sales at AMD and similar positions at Sharp Microelectronics and Avex Electronics.
Mr. Corbitt holds a BSEE from Florida International University and began his career in biomedical engineering, working with implantable pacemakers at Cordis Corporation in Miami FL. Then he followed his interest in radio communications and designed digital pagers with Motorola in Plantation FL, before making a career change to sales, and joining Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Mr. Corbitt has been a frequent author and been published in Electronic News, PC Magazine, Upside, Business Geographics, Electronic Business, TechLINKS, and EDN. He is a volunteer with the High Tech Ministry, and active with the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), Executive Sales and Marketing Association (ESMA), The Indus Engineers (TiE), and the Kettering Executive Network (KEN).
Make A Difference Radio spotlights the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA). MODA is the only museum in the Southeast exclusively devoted to the study and celebration of all things design. The museum hosts an evolving roster of exhibitions showcasing architecture, industrial and product design, interiors and furniture, graphics, fashion, jewelry and more. Join us as we explore the story behind the museum with their Associate Director Laura Flusche.
MODA will host their newest exhibit Stories in Form: Chair Design by Portfolio Center from February 5th through June 3rd. The exhibit will examine history and design through the medium of the chair and features work by students from the Portfolio Center‘s nationally acclaimed course “Modernism: History, Criticism and Theory”.
We learn about the world of design and the story behind the exhibit with its curator, design student Brittany Baum. Joining us also in the studio is Hank Richardson, the Director of Design at the Portfolio Center.
Chic Perspectives host, Elizabeth Gordon interviews Amanda Brown, Adventurer, Educator, Businesswoman and Global Ambassador.  Just before leaving for Hong Kong, Amanda of Amanda’s Big World Adventure http://amandasbigworldadventure.com stopped by our downtown studio to share how an 18-month journey around the world is the ultimate culmination of her passions, interests and talents.
Amanda is no ordinary entrepreneur, she has created an opportunity and a business like no other. Luckily we were able to catch up with her in the studio the day after her big press conference with the World Trade Center and just days before she departed to China to begin her Big World Adventure.
You’ll want to get her daily updates as she travels as an Ambassador, educator, fashion model, grape stomper, and more. How on earth did she get started with this idea and what made it all happen. Is she scared? excited? ready? Find out in this one of kind interview with a one of a kind woman.
Amanda’s having a blast over there! If you haven’t had the chance yet, check out what she has done so far… http://amandasbigworldadventure.com/blog/.
P.S. Â I just got an email from her saying it’s been a bit of a culture shock in some ways, but a feeling of home and complete ease in others. Â I feel as though I have lived here forever.
Yay! Amanda, Â thanks for letting us living vicariously through you. Â Enjoy the Adventure!
