As the first African-American president of the Buckhead Business Association, Lolita Browning Jackson says she has plans to diversify the group by getting more men on board as officers and more ethnicities, including African-Americans, involved.
A 500-member-plus organization, BBA dates back to 1951 and is made up of business and community leaders, entrepreneurs and corporations. BBA holds weekly breakfast meetings on Thursdays and quarterly luncheons, along with monthly socials.
A 2003 graduate of BBA’s nine-month Leadership Buckhead program, Jackson has represented her employer, Georgia Power, on BBA’s board of directors since 2007. She also volunteered with the organization’s education alliance.
Jackson, 41, recently discussed her new position and her role at Georgia Power, as manager of external affairs.
Q: Can you share some of your planned strategies as BBA president?
A: I really want to help [our] foundation grow. We’re promoting a new program — Bucks on the Street — to businesses and retailers in the community. The idea is to rent or auction a buck, a [deer] character created by local artists, with the proceeds going to the foundation. I really want to help grow the membership and grow the foundation dollars and corporate support, as well as [make] sure that we stay aware of things that are going on in the city, and become an advocate.
Q: What else is new?
A: In 2010, under my proposal, we joined the Georgia Chamber. The Georgia Chamber is well-known for its lobbying at the Capitol. I thought we should be a group that looks out and takes more of a stand on what’s happening in the community. We do that, particularly around streetscape plans and that kind of thing, working closely with the Buckhead Coalition and the Buckhead CID [Community Improvement District].
Q. Tell us about your work at Georgia Power.
A: I work in our Metro East region doing external affairs. I work closely with elected officials such as the Atlanta City Council, the Fulton County Commission and several Atlanta-area state legislators serving as a liaison to Georgia Power should they or their constituents need our assistance with anything from power outages to trees on power lines.
I also represent Georgia Power in several community and nonprofit organizations such as the Atlanta Community Food Bank as a member of the advisory board, the Concerned Black Clergy as co-chair of the Energy and Environmental Committee and on the board for the Center for the Visually Impaired.
Q. How do you balance everything: volunteering, your role at Georgia Power and personal obligations?
A: Let me thank my husband for just being a tremendous support at home. That’s one way I balance it. Having a job — the management at Georgia Power — and the team that I work with, just being able to get help from them and have their support as well.
Q: What would you attribute mostly to having prepared you for the multiple hats you wear?
A: My dad died when I was in elementary school. My oldest two siblings were in college, and my mother had an 18-month-old, and it’s nine of us. After he died, we moved — we were outside of Chicago — and she started her own business; we moved to Tennessee. I watched her in her business. I watched her send all of us to college. I watched her do more than manage. And I think it built in me a certain kind of resilience to really not let anything feel like anything is a burden. If she can move on, after losing a husband who kind of took care of everything, and send her kids to college, watch us all grow — if she can do all that, there’s nothing that I can’t do.
Q. You drew again on that strength during your time in the Leadership Buckhead program?
A. I went through the Leadership Buckhead program in 2002-2003. Nearing the end of our first gathering, which is an overnight retreat that kicks off the program, I received a call from family informing me that my mother had a stroke. Realizing that this was a bad stroke, my siblings and I made the decision that we would take care of her and we moved her to Atlanta. So, while going through the program I also shared the responsibility of taking care of my mother as she recovered and worked on trying to walk again.
Ironically, the weekend after my mom had the stroke, I met my husband. Going through Leadership Buckhead helped me to focus on the changes that were taking place in my life — learning to balance my career and community activities and take care of my mom, while also enjoying a new relationship with the man I would later marry.
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