Editor’s Note: These are the honorees of our 40 Under 40 Awards, honoring the rising stars in Atlanta business. We’re rolling out the honorees from youngest to oldest ahead of our Nov. 4 ceremony. For details on other winners, click here.
Our next group of 40 Under 40 honorees are officially in their mid-30s.
The quarter-life crises are coming to an end, and they’re settling into adulthood. They’re confident. (Maybe too confident.) Either way, they have a new, “been there, done that” attitude.
Our mid-30s honorees include C-Suite leaders, restaurant owners and more. Meet them below.
Chronicle editorial staff sorted through about 300 nominations for the 40 Under 40 Awards. We worked with a group of judges that included past honorees. It was led by Martin Fleischmann, a longtime Atlanta tech entrepreneur and founding chair of the 40 Under 40 Alumni group. The newsroom always weighs their feedback and uses it to determine final selections.
After bootstrapping his marketing firm for over 10 years, David Feldman made a splash that caught the attention of 19York, a prominent investor — and many more people.
A contributing author for Forbes, the 34-year-old Feldman is also the USA Today/WSJ bestselling author of “Small by Design: The Entrepreneur’s Guide For Growing Big While Staying Small.” It’s being used as a roadmap for staying intentionally small while growing in revenue and impact without compromising values.
The philosophy comes from his building of 3 Owl, a marketing agency that’s built custom websites and tech platforms for brands including Mellow Mushroom, Great American Cookies and Taco Mac. Since restructuring during the pandemic, 3 Owl has doubled its revenue to a projected $2 million in 2022.
Juan Sebastian Calle has a track record of satisfying sports fans with Big Sky Buckhead and The Silver Dollar Athens, two bars that routinely receive plaudits for game day viewing.
Now, the 35-year-old Calle is working to make a bigger impact on Atlanta’s restaurant scene. He opened Buena Vida Tapas & Sol in 2019, serving Spanish flavors in a prime location along the Atlanta BeltLine’s Eastside Trail. Next on Calle’s agenda is Chicheria, an upscale Mexican restaurant that is on track to open in the next year at The Works mixed-use development on Chattahoochee Avenue.
The creation of Chicheria coincides with the launch of a new restaurant company, TQM Hospitality Group, and Calle intends to open multiple Chicheria locations across metro Atlanta.
Within seven years of practicing law, Amy Cheng has become a leader in Atlanta’s legal community.
Cheng, a litigator at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, is on the board of directors and executive committee for the Atlanta Bar Association. Next year, the 35-year-old is set to become the association’s first Asian American president.
As a member of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association, Cheng advocates and mentors Asian Pacific American lawyers. The graduate of Emory University School of Law is active in multiple other professional and community organizations.
After spending five years in investment banking during which he led QGenda’s private equity investment round, Harrison Hellner was quickly hired as the company’s chief financial officer.
Since then, the 35-year-old has led the company through five acquisitions and a second private equity investment round at a more than a $1 billion dollar enterprise valuation. During that time, he also took on the role of chief customer officer.
Since December 2021, Hellner has been the president of QGenda. Additionally, he helped grow the Cristo Rey Corporate Work Study Program and has partnered with the Kaiser Permanente and QGenda’s employees to raise money for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
Artesius Miller is not easily deterred.
When he set out to start a charter school in Clayton County, his application was denied three times. But his persistence paid off. In 2014, Utopian Academy for the Arts opened as the state’s first charter school specializing in the dramatic, media, and creative arts.
The 35-year-old Miller said his goal was to bring quality school choice options to one of the metro area’s largest counties. Clayton also provided little access to arts education, despite entertainment being one of Georgia’s fastest growing industry sectors.
Television and film productions spent a record $4.4 billion in the state in fiscal 2022, according to the Georgia Film Office. Miller has established partnerships with local arts groups including Trillith Studios and the Georgia Film Academy.
He has also awarded $25,000 in scholarships to students enrolled at dozens of institutions including Yale University, Alvin Ailey Dance Co., and his alma mater, Morehouse College.
Kiana Morris is a trailblazer.
In 2018, Morris became the first associate director for policy and risk management in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s office of science.
Two years later, she was the first African American to serve as director for the CDC’s office of planning, budget and legislation. She led policy, federal advisory committees, and the confidentiality office, among other responsibilities, to ensure compliance in safeguarding sensitive data and mitigating risks.
Today, she is the first ever chief strategy officer for the CDC. At 35, she is the only millennial on the senior leadership team that deployed to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to support the CDC Director’s first overseas visit to meet the president of Zanzibar and prime minister. Her deployment advances the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief and its global HIV/AIDS response.
Mary Bell is focused on justice.
As a multi-racial woman in the LGBTQ community, the 36-year-old Bell has focused on creating a diverse work environment that represents the community she serves.
In 2022, Bell, who’s 17-year career spans across three jurisdictions, helped DeKalb County by expanding the applicant pool to include modern sourcing practices that helped increase the diversity in the office. While supporting 12 judges and leading over 100 employees, she’s carried out projects to increase access to justice, such as digitizing land records and using software that helps jurors get paid more efficiently.
The Kennesaw State University alumni is a board director for the National Association for Court Management and for the Dr. Annise Mabry Foundation, which is focused on improving the opportunities of homeless LGBTQ youth, sex trafficking survivors, and adult learners.
It took Afton Brown just three years to be an indispensable leader at Definition 6. Not just on the accounts team, but across the entire company.
Since her promotion in 2021, the 36-year-old has grown the digital marketing agency’s email marketing revenue by 300% and doubled contracts year over year, building the email team from scratch into a leading digital initiative for the department. It enabled D6 to take on larger enterprise clients, such as Nextdoor and LL Flooring.
She’s risen through the ranks after stops with VMWare and in NCR Corp.’s marketing department. She also serves on the American Marketing Association (AMA Atlanta) board and co-chaired the AMY Awards.
Celebrate the accomplishments of this year’s class of the Metro Atlanta 40 Under 40! We’ll honor 40 rising stars who are scaling the ranks, making a mark in their industries and leading in their communities.
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