JEREMY SMITH

STORY: H.M. Cauley

with people yelling and pulling hair; it’s not!” Smith says. “The last episode I did talked about the Buckhead shuttle. Another filmed Atlanta Fashion Week. Then we throw some real estate into it.”

The show has become a marketing tool that showcases Smith’s personality as much as properties.

“We filmed a penthouse at the W Atlanta Downtown, and it ended up selling pretty quickly,” he says. “But it’s just as much a unique way of marketing myself.”

The show was recently nominated for a local Emmy for outstanding achievement in a magazine program. And he’s on track to earn the Atlanta Realtors Association’s Phoenix Award, given to agents who have been top producers for 10 years. In 2022, the company’s team tallied more than $36 million in sales.

When he’s not showing and selling properties, Smith gets away from it all at his house on Lake Allatoona with his partner, 11Alive reporter and anchor Cody Alcorn.

“I literally sit on the deck and do nothing, absolutely nothing,” he says. n jeremysmith.evatlanta.com

@jeremy.k.smith

Kelli Ferrell grew up assisting her mom and grandmother (“Nana”) in the kitchen, making sweet and savory delights such as fried chicken, banana bread and lemon meringue pie. Little did the Buckhead resident know until well into her adult life she’d be taking those recipes and turning them into cookbooks and Nana’s Chicken-N-Waffles, a breakfast and lunch restaurant serving up Southern comfort foods with an existing location in McDonough and one slated to open in Buckhead by the end of 2023.

“My passion is really for people: seeing them happy, connecting through food and through shared experiences,” Ferrell says.

Her journey to restaurateur didn’t start in the food industry. Originally from Maryland, she first landed in Atlanta in 2003 to study fashion merchandising and design at Bauder College, which was located in the basement level of Phipps Plaza.

“It was fabulous. I went to school with amazing designers. [Fashion designer] Sergio Hudson was a classmate and good friend,” Ferrell says.

Straight out of college in the early 2000s, she worked for Teresa Caldwell, rapper Bow Wow’s mom, and helped her open a boutique in Atlantic Station. Then Ferrell returned home to Maryland to start a store of her own, which shuttered in 2009 due to the recession.

As a mom to four girls, now 16, 10 and 7-year-old twins, Ferrell’s priorities were changing, too. She decided to change course and began vision boarding her new restaurant concept. The first Nana’s Chicken-N-Waffles launched in 2016.

“Opening was one of those things that I call YouTube and Google University. I had no knowledge of the restaurant industry and was self-taught,” Ferrell says.

Today, Ferrell calls herself a “fashion foodie” for bringing her style into her work. For instance, her cookbook Kooking with Kelli is presented like a fashion book. It comes in a box with red type that says, “Let’s Eat!” and features a fashionable Ferrell wearing some of her favorite labels such as Christian Louboutin, Alice & Olivia and The Vault By Sacha. “I wanted the book to represent who I am and be an