TO PREPARE LEADERS

In Statesboro, Savannah and Hinesville we’re training the next generation of Coastal Empire leaders

We believe everything’s a little brighter down here in Southeast Georgia. The sun. The coast. The future.

At Georgia Southern University, we’re serious about one thing — preparing students in Southeast Georgia to get them ready to lead Southeast Georgia into a brighter, better tomorrow.

Coached by world-class faculty and working hand in hand with local businesses and industries, we’re transforming Southeast Georgia, the state and beyond:

✹ More than $1 billion in economic impact

✹ A Top 10 Military Friendly School in the nation (VIQTORY)

✹ Research focused on community and regional impact

✹ A leading producer of health care workers in Georgia

✹ A study abroad campus in Wexford, Ireland

✹ 48,000+ student community service hours in 2022

We’re ready to power growth in our region. Ready to produce leaders. Ready to make a difference.

Because READY is what we do. GeorgiaSouthern.edu

Hala Moddelmog is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Woodruff Arts Center. Moddelmog has spent 30 years in president and CEO roles and has served as a corporate director for four NYSE companies and a Carlyle Group private portfolio company board. Her career has been spent almost entirely in Atlanta.

Hala Moddelmog

John Guydon was born in Compton, CA in 1983. Determined to have a better life, John’s parents moved his family to OC. At 7 years-old, he came to the conclusion that Santa Claus was “either racist or didn’t exist”. This led him down a 3-decade long journey to learn more about the connection between race and money, which ultimately ended up fueling his lifelong passion for the connection between mindset and performance.

Moddelmog became the Arts Center CEO in September 2020 after serving for six years as the first female President and CEO of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, where she represented more than 15 Fortune 500 companies in the country’s eighth largest metro. Prior to that role, Moddelmog was President of Atlanta-based Arby’s Restaurant Group, then a division of the Wendy’s Arby’s group, where she dramatically improved the company’s financial performance, tripling net income.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Woodruff Arts Center

Previously, Moddelmog served as President and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest breast cancer organization. Under her leadership, Komen achieved its first 4-Star Charity Navigator rating. From 1995–2004, Moddelmog served as the first female president of an international QSR chain at Church’s Chicken, leading the brand through a complete transformation.

Moddelmog has spent nearly a decade serving in volunteer leadership at the Arts Center. She served on the Woodruff Arts Center Board of Trustees from 2011–2017 and has served on the Woodruff Governing Board since 2017. Concurrently she also served on the Alliance Theatre Board of Directors from 2011–2020 and led the Alliance Theatre Board as co-chair from 2017–2019.

Moddelmog currently serves as a director on the boards of FleetCor Technologies (NYSE:FLT) and Lamb Weston (NYSE:LW). Her service in Atlanta’s nonprofit community currently includes the Board of Trustees of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and on the Executive Committee of Midtown Alliance.

Moddelmog lives in Ansley Park with her husband, Steve. They have two adult children, two sons-in-law, a granddaughter, and a grandson.

At age 10, John developed his own strategy to overcome a severe stutter. He started a business selling candy in the 7th grade to pay for lunch and football cleats, eventually going on to play Division I football at The U and earning a Broadcast Production degree from the school of journalism.

In 2005, tired of the constraints of the traditional corporate world, he left to start his own business. He created a commercial text message platform called Duffled that allows businesses and organizations to text customers using a commercial short code. It’s known as the most powerful SMS marketing software.

In 2012, he sold the company which still runs today, and set his sights on a new problem to solve. After the 2012 kidnapping and murder of a young girl just blocks from her home, John discovered that the Amber Alert system is over a decade old and takes hours to be deployed.

He decided to create something better and launched “The Lassy Project”, software that gives parents and guardians the ability to notify an entire local community about a missing child inseconds, not hours.

The Lassy Project was the first all-black founding team to be accepted into the single largest technology accelerator program in the world: Techstars. His involvement with Techstars launched John into the big leagues, leading to an exclusive invite to spend a week on Necker Island with Richard Branson and top entrepreneurs from around the world.

In 2014, John founded Startups Illustrated, which helps companies raise rounds of funding and gain acceptance into top-tier accelerators. It focuses specifically on empowering underserved communities, encouraging participation and success in the innovation economy by partnering with local students, economic development organizations, corporations, and accelerators to deliver entrepreneurship training programs and boot camps.

Through his experience coaching nearly 200 entrepreneurs from all around the world;John discovered that many of the things holding people back (not just entrepreneurs) are 100% within their control. Family, finances, tragedy, even racism, don’t stand a chance against your mindset.