Writer: Gabriela Enamorado
4 min read March 2023 — As a region often at the forefront of social and equitable change, Atlanta stands out as a beacon of strong and diverse leadership. Invest: highlights a few of the region’s most prominent and well-regarded female leaders who are striving to make a difference in their communities and the overall economy.
One example of this leadership is Dr. Helene Gayle, president of Spelman College, a historically Black women’s liberal arts college. Throughout her career, Dr. Gayle has championed for racial and gender equity. Recently, Dr. Gayle was awarded the Shaw-Hardy Taylor Achievement Award by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute for her racial and gender equity work.
Dr. Gayle is the eleventh president of Spelman College, but before she took that role was already making a name for herself in fighting for equity and ensuring the empowerment of women and girls.
For a decade, Dr. Gayle served as the President and CEO of the humanitarian organization, CARE. With CARE, she made efforts to bring change to poor communities across the world. “As a physician whose career has spanned public health, global poverty alleviation and community economic development, I am committed to using my skills to help contribute to greater social justice and equity in our country and our world,” said Dr. Gayle in a press release.
At Spelman, she does not take her role as president of the top HBCU in the country lightly. She has been working to ensure that the Black women who choose to get their education at Spelman College are prepared for what the workforce, and life in general, has to offer.
“We not only teach but also mentor young women,” Dr. Gayle told Focus: earlier in the year. “We also provide courses that help young women of African descent appreciate their culture and learn about the contribution of Black women in this country and around the world.”
Another female leader that is making change in Atlanta is equity and health advocate Karen Hatcher, immediate past president of the Atlanta Realtors Association (ARA). She is currently the CEO and Head Broker of Sovereign Realty and Management.
Hatcher has dedicated her time to using her real estate expertise to help others gain wealth through real estate and land ownership. She makes sure that clients who have the American dream of homeownership will be able to see that dream actualized. Hatcher was the first Black woman to lead ARA, 112 years after its founding, and during her time as president, she worked to ensure that ARA embraced inclusion, stating on her website that “as a leader, I operate with a keen focus on innate fairness – a mindset led by the beauty of Inclusion.”
During her time as president, she made alliances with multicultural organizations to achieve these goals and made sure members of ARA became diversified.
“In a city that’s ~50% African American, less than 30% of our membership was African American, and even less than that for Hispanic and Asian members,” Hatcher told Focus:. “We want to be more inclusive to represent all our members, whether it’s geographic, age brackets, the type of real estate sold, or size of brokerages, to name a few. In the past year, we also had our most diverse board ever elected, including the first Hispanic board member. We created a memorandum of understanding with all multicultural groups in the city, so their appointed representatives now have a voting seat on our board. It gives our advocacy far more equity in all real estate initiatives.”
Within the public sector in the Atlanta MSA, there are multiple examples of strong female leadership. In Clayton County, Mayor Angelyne Butler is striving for continued growth in the City of Forest Park. Mayor Butler, herself a graduate of Spelman College where she majored in Political Science, was elected Mayor of Forest Park in 2017, becoming the first Black mayor of the city. As highlighted by her bio, her early career in government encouraged her to take this path of making change, when she found that community members were struggling with low median income, high unemployment rates and limited housing. To make needed change, she found herself in charge of the largest city in Clayton County and was re-elected in 2021.
Under Mayor Butler’s leadership, Forest Park has blossomed. It has been supportive to a growing entertainment hub as the entertainment industry continues to flourish in Atlanta.
“Forest Park is now home to BlueStar Studios,” Butler told Focus: “The company made the announcement in 2022 that they would open a 53-acre, state-of-the-art television and film production campus with 18 sound stages. The first phase of the studio is expected to open in the summer. The campus will support hundreds of production crew throughout metro Atlanta.”
For achieving equity in her city, Butler focused on affordable housing and homeownership in Forest Park.
“Housing is going to be a huge focus over the next few years,” Butler told Focus: “ I say “progress” a lot and when you hear it, you think of forward momentum, but it’s also an acronym for me; P.R.O.G.R.E.S.S. stands for Political Restoration, Opportunity and Growth for Residential, Economic, and Social Success. Forest Park has a very high rental population, and some of the renters have barriers that make home affordability challenging. Some landlords take advantage of that and subsequently, these people are living in very substandard conditions. That’s why we’re implementing our Residential Renter Dwelling Unit Inspection Program, which will require certain investors to register their property with the city.”
