LEADING BY EXAMPLE Kate Atwood uses nonprofit experience to showcase Atlanta

from Atlanta Intown - June 2016

by Rough Draft Atlanta: Atlanta Intown, Reporter Newspapers

Real Estate Briefs Parting Shots

By Clare S. Richie

Kate Atwood is showcasing metro Atlanta to the world to attract and retain the next generation of top talent. She joined the Metro Atlanta Chamber last September to lead the new ChooseATL initiative.

“Come to Atlanta, hustle, and people will help you make your mark,” she urges. This is not just Kate Atwood’s message to young people; it’s her story, too. At age 23, Atwood moved to Atlanta from Charlottesville, Va., and made her mark quickly by founding the nationally renowned nonprofit, Kate’s Club.

Millennials, born in the early 1980s to early 2000s, are now the largest cohort in the workforce. This generation is more intentional about where and how they choose to live. It’s up to Atwood to brand the opportunity Atlanta creates for this next generation, as a desirable convergence of industry and culture. To tell young people and young influencers that Atlanta is a hub for tech start-ups, that Georgia is ranked among the top three states for film and entertainment production, and boasts a “cool factor” with the AtlantaBeltLine, Ponce City Market, a thriving arts scene and more.

To begin however, “you need to meet people where they are, and evolve their perceptions,” Atwood explained.“Outside of Atlanta, we have a lot of work to do to become millennials’ top choice to start a career and build a life.”

So, her plan includes activations like the one this spring in Austin, Texas, at “South by Southwest,” one of the world’s largest convenings of film, music and tech. Her team will also look closely at colleges and universities both here in Atlanta to retain talent, as well as in 10 key markets around the U.S.

ChooseATL is also building a presence using digital and social media.

This October, ChooseATL will host its second Ultimate Job Interview Contest – an “Apprentice” meets “Shark Tank” experience, but with landing your first job here in Atlanta as the end prize. This year, the goal is for 1,000 contestants to submit a 90-second video about how to make your mark in Atlanta. The top 10 vote getters, as determined by social media, then create a five-minute pitch on why they should be hired. It culminates with three finalists, who receive an all-expensespaid trip to Atlanta to interview with executives. They also receive two days of VIP treatment throughout the city.

In her personal life, Atwood also leads by example. A few years ago she teamed up with April Trigg on Living by Giving (livingbygiving.com), which shares stories meant to inspire others to seek their charitable path.

“We’ve turned the idea of charity on its head, by giving people permission to ask ‘What’s in it for me’?” Atwood said. For instance, some volunteer to heal while others give to promote a more sustainable future. The idea is that altruism with personal meaning will last and have a bigger impact.

“I feel so grateful that at a young age I was able to tap into how powerful giving can be in my own life – I want to help others know that power, and give them permission to seek the giving that gives back the most to them,” Atwood said.

She’s referring to the impact of Kate’s Club, a nonprofit she founded in 2014, has had on thousands of children and teens facing the loss of a parent or sibling.

“I didn’t talk about my mom’s death for seven years,” Atwood said. She was 12 years old when her mother passed away after a long battle with breast cancer.

Atwood’s father told her after her mother’s death, “Your life is changed, but you can and must charge forward in pursuit of your biggest dreams.”

At 19, as a counselor at a bereavement camp in Virginia, Atwood agreed to share her story with 200 campers. Later that night, a camper told her about losing both parents.

“This is bigger than me,” Kate realized in that moment, adding, “When tragedy happens at a young age, you try to understand why.” One in 20 kids lose a parent before age 18 and there simply aren’t enough support services for them. Atwood discovered her “why” was to help these kids grieve and show them how to move forward.

At 24, she started the club, to provide a place for grieving children to have fun, develop friendships and learn to cope with their loss.

“People got behind Kate’s Club from day one. It struck a need and the community was ready to embrace it,” Atwood remembered. She hosted a bar night and raised $1,200 from 150+ Atlantans who believed in her vision.

Today Kate’s Club provides social and emotional support programs led by professionals and volunteers, such as: therapeutic group activities, outings, summer camp and school collaborations. It serves kids from different social/economic backgrounds, faiths and neighborhoods, “because grief is the ultimate equalizer that unites us through tolerance and compassion,” Atwood said.

In 2010, Atwood felt the nonprofit needed an experienced administrative CEO to take it to next level and worked with the board on a succession plan that has now positioned Kate’s Club as the leading children’s bereavement organization in the region.

She still serves on the Kate’s Club Board of Advisors and is most proud of its enduring culture. “From the beginning, I wanted Kate’s Club to be this inviting and warm place where young survivors of grief can feel more alive, less alone and begin to believe in their dreams again in spite of tragic loss. If you give kids the environment to build an optimistic, inclusive and empowering culture, even in the face of adversity, it’s exactly what they will do.”

Trio finds success with online housecleaning startup

By Shandra Hill Smith

When Intown resident Sarah Anne Smith went on a search for a housekeeping company in Atlanta, she turned to the Internet. That’s where she discovered Hux (hux. com), a housecleaning services marketplace. Through Hux, an Atlanta startup, you can find and book house cleaners online; this includes receiving a price up front and paying online as well.

Smith was living in a one-bedroom, one-bath space when she first turned to Hux, and continued with the company once she moved to a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in Virginia-Highland.

Smith says she felt relieved to learn of Hux after getting bogged down by various requirements of some other housekeeping companies.

“A lot of them had sort of this big process where you had to fill out a form and request a quote, and then a lot of companies required you to have an initial cleaning and you had to sign up for recurring cleanings on their schedule,” Smith said.

For Smith, a biweekly schedule with Hux works best for now, allowing her to free up some of her time to handle other responsibilities.

That’s exactly what co-founders Stanley Vergilis, James Loper and AJ Alix, who launched Hux in 2014, had in mind.

“Business is scaling really quickly,” said Vergilis. “We’re growing at about 20 percent month over month. Almost all of our business is word of mouth.”

A $20,000 angel investment from Adam Mangone helped to give life to Hux. Vergilis says that investment grew to $1.5 million in revenue.

“The only way you can grow that fast is if you have a product people are really raving about,” he added.

The growth didn’t stop there, as Hux also closed a $1.25 million seed investment from venture capitalist Tim Draper and Dau Global of Atlanta.

In April, Hux expanded to the Charlotte market and has plans for future growth in cities such as Miami and Austin. Hux also would like to broaden to include other service market categories such as handyman, painting, lawn care services and tutoring. The owners started with cleaning, as it is the “biggest local service market,” said Vergilis.

The idea for Hux came about from prior experiences of the trio, whom were each working independently, while attending Georgia Tech. Both Vergilis and Alix were tutoring, while Loper provided technology repair, including fixing cracks on computers and phones.

Hux aims to empower local service providers to get away from having to work for others, but instead to create, manage and grow their own micro-businesses as a solo provider.

“This means flexibility, better pay and recognition for their hard work,” said Vergilis. “With these tools, local service providers have a real opportunity to grow and realize their potential.”

Since there is no company overhead, Hux customers are able to pay less, while service providers make more of a profit.

Sarah Anne Smith is definitely sold.

“I love them,” she said. “I haven’t really found any other service provider who has matched them as far as customer service [and] availability. I’ve spoken with the cofounders personally, and that’s been wonderful. I think it’s a great company for busy professionals, young people on the go and people who don’t need to be locked into sort of your traditional contract for cleaning services. I refer them to everyone who asks me about it. I think they’re modernizing the service industry.”

Coda project marks major expansion of Tech Square

Officials with Midtown Alliance are describing Coda Tech Square, a 750,000-square-foot mixed-use building with office space, research labs, retail and data center, as a “blockbuster project.”

Recently liberated from its working title of “High Performance Computing Center,” the Coda Tech Square is a joint project between Portman Holdings and Georgia Tech that will mark a major expansion of the Tech Square area around Spring and 5th streets in Midtown.

Coda brings together a top-tier research university, corporate partners with application needs for high-performance computing, faculty and researchers, students and entrepreneurs, computer network and infrastructure providers and many others. With proximity to broadband fiber running under Spring Street and advanced computing hardware in the data center, the facility is literally on the cutting edge of technology.

The approach to designing the Coda plaza is to create a space where entrepreneurs can “interact and collide in order to strike up new partnerships.” Initial plans include landscaping and $2.5 million allocated to public art, seating and other amenities. Parking will also be located under the plaza and a first-of-its-kind elevator system will decrease wait times.

Also on the site is the historic 1928 Crum & Forster building, which will be reimagined as a club and chef-driven restaurant.

With an investment approaching $360 million, this project almost matches the $380 million invested to build Tech Square’s first phase more than 10 years ago. This eight-block Tech Square campus will soon total 3 million square feet of commercial space and more than $1 billion of development, including the new NCR world headquarters under development at Spring and 8th streets and Tech Square Labs.

Invest Atlanta’s CEO Eloisa Klementich projects that by 2019, the number of people working in Tech Square could quadruple to 12,000 workers.