Events

Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

Monthly Program Committee Meeting

Contact the Event Chair or the club the make sure this is still taking place.

Each month club members greet the troops at the Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport.  Two shifts of volunteers needed:  10 am - 1 pm and 1 - 4 pm.

This is a Virtual Club Meeting.  CLICK HERE to Register.

James Flannery's mother grew up in an Irish-speaking family in West Clare and her father was a revered seanachie, sean nós singer and traditional musician. Jim’s father was raised on the banks of the River Shannon near the legendary 6^th century monastic community of Clonmacnoise. A deeply committed nationalist, his father fought in the Irish War of Independence. As a singer, he was steeped in the republican ballad tradition that inspired Ireland’s struggle for freedom. Jim traces his lifelong interest in Irish culture and the arts generally to the influence of his parents.

A producer, stage director, singer, scholar and teacher, Jim has an international reputation as a specialist in the dramatic work of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats. His book, W.B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice, is considered the definitive study of Yeats’s aesthetic of and practical work in the theater. As a director, his imaginative stagings of the challenging plays of Yeats have won critical acclaim. From 1989 to 1993 he was the ED of a Yeats International Theatre Festival at the world-famous Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland.

Jim has also achieved distinction as a singer and one of the foremost interpreters of the beautiful art songs of Thomas Moore. His book/recording, Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore, accompanied by the distinguished harper Janet Harbison, is a combined critical and artistic examination of this seminal figure in the history of Irish literature and music. Bill Whelan, the composer of Riverdance, described Jim’s contribution as a singer:

Blessed with a beautiful tenor voice and a remarkable feeling for the subtleties of poetic
language, James Flannery also has the gift of knowing how to reach into what the Irish call uaigneas en chroi – the secret places of the heart.

Winship Professor Emeritus of the Arts and Humanities at Emory, Jim came to Atlanta in 1982 to found the theater program at Emory. In 1989 he founded the W.B. Yeats Foundation, which has produced a regular series of lectures, concerts, poetry readings, symposiums and exhibitions designed to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of Irish culture. His film of A Southern Celtic Christmas Concert won the 2012 Southeastern Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Entertainment and has been featured as a Holiday special on PBS stations across the country for 8 years.

Among his many honors, Jim is the recipient of a Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities for his promotion of the contributions of Ireland to the distinctive culture of the American South. He has a particular commitment to promoting peace and reconciliation among the different communities of Ireland through the arts, in recognition of which the University of Ulster granted him an honorary doctorate. The citation noted that “the quality that informs all of Jim’s academic, creative and performance work is that he translates ideas into action and thereby shows how thrilling an idea can be when it is realized physically.”

In 2020 he received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award of the Government of Ireland for his lifetime achievement as an artist and scholar as well as his efforts as a producer fostering a deeper appreciation of Irish literature, culture and song both in Ireland and the US.

This is a Virtual Club Meeting.  CLICK HERE to Register.

Jim Durrett is President and CEO of The Buckhead Coalition and Executive Director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID). The mission of The Buckhead Coalition, a non-profit membership organization, is to advocate on behalf of the community within the city of Atlanta and metropolitan region; to support the well-being of Buckhead’s residents, businesses and visitors; to convene public and private sector leaders and partner organizations; and to connect Buckhead to other areas of the city and region. The mission of the Buckhead CID is to create and maintain a safe, accessible and livable urban environment in the heart of the Buckhead commercial area in Atlanta. They meet the challenges of growth by investing tax dollars collected from commercial property owners within the district, as well as other funds they leverage from outside the district, to make meaningful improvements in the transportation network and public realm that connect people and places.

Prior to heading up The Buckhead Coalition and the Buckhead CID, Durrett was founding executive director of the Livable Communities Coalition, a not-for-profit organization formed in 2005 to promote smart growth development in the Atlanta region. Prior to that, Durrett served for five years with the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the largest network of cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts in the world, as the first executive director of ULI's Atlanta District Council, and the second district council executive director in the U.S.

In addition, Durrett was with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce as the vice president of environmental affairs and was the senior vice president and chief operating officer of The Georgia Conservancy. Durrett began his professional career as a hydrogeologist in the Atlanta office of Golder Associates, an international geotechnical and environmental engineering consulting firm.

Durrett is actively involved in the community and currently serves on the following boards and councils: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) board of directors (which he chaired in 2011); Biophilic Institute executive board (which he chaired from 2016 through 2019); HUB404 Conservancy board of directors and treasurer; and the Responsible Property Investment Council of ULI (current chairman.)

From 1998 to 2005, Durrett was a member of the Georgia Environmental Advisory Council, appointed by the Governor to advise the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and the Governor on environmental policy matters. He is a graduate of Leadership Atlanta, the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership, and the Regional Leadership Institute. He chaired the advisory committee for Georgia For a Lifetime, an initiative of the Georgia Council on Aging. He also has served on numerous collaborative committees and task forces working on growth management, affordable housing and environmental issues in the state of Georgia.  Previous non-profit board experience includes 3KEYS; Georgians for Passenger Rail; the Georgia Conservancy; PEDS; the Hambidge Center; and VSA Arts of Georgia.

Durrett attended the Westminster Schools in Atlanta and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in geology from the University of Georgia. He completed post-graduate work in hydrogeology at the University of Texas. He is an Atlanta native and lives in DeKalb County with his wife, Pat. They have two grown sons, James and Ryan.

This is a Virtual Club Meeting.  CLICK HERE to Register.

Rabbi Peter Berg became the fifth senior rabbi of The Temple  in July 2008, serving a  diverse and multi-generational congregation as  spiritual leader. Previously, he served as rabbi of Temple Beth Or in Washington Township, New Jersey and as the Associate Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, he served Congregation Kol Ami in White Plains, New York as a rabbinic intern and at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, Virginia, as its Youth Director. 

A native of Ocean Township, New Jersey, Berg holds a degree in Education and Human Development and Judaic Studies from George Washington University. He earned his M.A. in Hebrew Literature and his rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and Jerusalem, where he was a Steinhardt Fellow. Rabbi Berg also holds a certificate in Chemical Dependency and Spiritual Counseling and is a trained Disaster, Fire, and Police Chaplain.  He serves as a Chaplain for The Georgia State Patrol. 

In 2009, Berg was inducted into the College of Preachers at Morehouse College.  He was a member of the 2012 Leadership Atlanta class and is an active member of the Downtown Atlanta Rotary Club.  He was recently appointed to the Georgia Holocaust Commission by the Governor. 

In 2013, Berg was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of the top 50 most influential rabbis in the United States of America.  In 2016, he was named by Georgia Trend as one of the 100 Most Influential Georgians and in 2019 and 2020 as one of Atlanta’s Most Powerful Leaders.  He has worked on many social issues  and currently serves on numerous boards including The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Rabbi Berg lives in Atlanta with his wife Karen, a teacher and tutor, and their three children. 

The Reverend Doctor Kevin R. Murriel serves as the senior pastor of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Jackson State University, his Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology, and his Doctor of Ministry from Duke University. An insightful preacher, avid reader, and social activist, Murriel’s research focuses on translating the methods of the Civil Rights Movement into a modern strategy for social justice. In 2018, he was appointed by Dean Jan Love as Assistant Professor in the Practice of Practical Theology and Director of the Black Methodist Seminarian’s Program at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.

Murriel is a community leader and faithfully serves on several boards and committees which include, the Andrew and Walter Young Family YMCA, the North Georgia Board of Congregational Development, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Racial Equity Steering Committee.  He is a member of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta and the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2019.

Murriel has received numerous other awards and honors for his servant-leadership.  In 2016, Gammon Theological Seminary named him as the 2016 Emerging Prophetic Leader. In 2018, he was named as one of Emory University’s Forty under Forty and S.C.L.C. Women recognized him with the 2019 Drum Major for Justice Luminary Award recipient. He is the author of Breaking the Color Barrier: A Vision for Church Growth through Racial Reconciliation.

He is married to Dr. Ashleigh Murriel and they are the proud parents of Scarlett Grace and Anderson Blake.

David J. Firestein is the inaugural president and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations (Bush China Foundation) and a founding and current member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.  Prior to joining the Bush China Foundation, he was the founding executive director of The University of Texas at Austin’s (UT) China Public Policy Center and a clinical professor at UT’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. He also served as SVP and Perot Fellow at the EastWest Institute (EWI), where he led the Institute’s track 2 diplomacy work in the areas of U.S.-China relations, East Asian security and U.S.-Russia relations.  He remains one of the longest-serving senior executives in EWI history.

A decorated career U.S. diplomat from 1992–2010, Firestein specialized primarily in U.S.-China relations. Among the honors he garnered were the Secretary of State’s Award for Public Outreach (2006) and the Linguist of the Year Award (1997). He served as an elected member of the Board of Governors of the American Foreign Service Association, the union and professional association of the United States Foreign Service. He also served as the elected president of the large community associations of the U.S. embassies in Beijing and Moscow.

Firestein is the author or co-author of three books on China, including two China-published Chinese-language best-sellers, as well as a large number of China-focused monographs, policy reports and articles. As a writer, he broke new ground in a number of ways: in the mid-1990s, he became the first foreign citizen to have a regular column in a People’s Republic of China newspaper and the first foreign diplomat to publish an original book in the country, among other milestones. He is a prolific public speaker and frequent commentator in the U.S. and Chinese media. The Voice of America’s Mandarin Service wrote in 2016 that Firestein is “one of the world’s best non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese”; early in his career, he interpreted for dozens of top-level U.S. and Chinese leaders and officials. 

Since he left the State Department, Firestein produced path-breaking Capitol Hill testimony, thought leadership and scholarship on a wide range of topics, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, U.S.-China trade, the role of national exceptionalism as a driver of major international conflict, the value of government, U.S. public diplomacy in the wake of 9/11, and the use of contemporary country music as presidential campaign communication. Numerous incumbent and former U.S secretaries of state and national security advisors from both sides of the partisan aisle – along with multiple other incumbent and former U.S. Cabinet members, members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. combatant commanders and other prominent U.S. figures – have lauded Firestein’s contributions and achievements in the area of U.S.-China relations. In recent years, he has been invited to brief significant swaths of the U.S. investment community, including via the 20-20 Investment Association and the Pacific Pension & Investment Institute which together represent well over $30 trillion under management, on China and U.S.-China relations.

Firestein currently serves on the boards of directors or advisors of over a dozen foreign affairs-focused, business-focused, China-focused, and Texas-focused U.S. non-profit organizations. And he is a member of the founding, and current, board of directors of the U.S. Heartland–China Association, where he serves as the inaugural chairman of the policy committee.

A native and current resident of Austin, Firestein holds a bachelor’s from Georgetown University and two master’s degrees from UT, as well as various advanced training certifications from the National Foreign Affairs Training Center of the U.S. Department of State.

Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

A native of Rhode Island, Bill Andrade came south to attend Wake Forest University, where he helped lead the Demon Deacons to a NCAA Championship in golf. He became a professional golfer shortly after his graduation from college. He has won 4 PGA Tour tournaments and 3 PGA Tour Champion tournaments. He has been featured in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings and continues to play on the PGA Champions Tour. 

He and fellow PGA Tour professional Brad Faxon received the Golf Writers of America's 1999 Charlie Bartlett Award for their "unselfish contributions to society", and the American Heart Association's 2002 Gold Heart Award in recognition of their charity efforts. Also in 2002, Andrade and Faxon were named winners of the 2002 Ambassadors of Golf Award. Together, they run Billy Andrade/Brad Faxon Charities for Children, Inc., a non-profit organization that has donated millions to needy children in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Since 1999, Andrade and Faxon have also served as hosts of the CVS Charity Classic, an annual tournament whose proceeds benefit the two players' charity. Every fall Andrade and PGA Tour player Stewart Cink co-host the East Lake Invitational held at East Lake Golf Club which helps to benefit the East Lake Foundation. 

Billy and his wife, Jody, have a son and a daughter, and split their time between Atlanta on Rhode Island. His interests include family, sports and cooking. He’ll talk about his golfing career, his charitable work and will also comment on the 85^th Masters Tournament, which will have just been completed. 

Monthly Program Committee Meeting

Pat Mitchell is a lifelong advocate for women and girls. At every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, leveraging the power of media as a journalist, an Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated producer to tell women’s stories and increase the representation of women onscreen and off. Transitioning to an executive role, she became the president of CNN Productions, and the first woman president and CEO of PBS and the Paley Center for Media. Today, her commitment to connect and strengthen a global community of women leaders continues as a conference curator, advisor and mentor.

In partnership with TED, Mitchell launched TEDWomen in 2010 and is its editorial director, curator and host. She is also a speaker and curator for the annual Women Working for the World forum in Bogota, Colombia, the Her Village conference in Beijing, and co-chairs the US board of Women of the World (WOW). She partners with the Rockefeller Foundation to curate, convene and host Connected Women Leaders (CWL) forums, focused on collective problem solving among women leaders in government and civil society.

In 2014, the Women’s Media Center honored Mitchell with its first-annual Lifetime Achievement Award, now named in her honor to commend other women whose media careers advance the representation of women. Recognized by Hollywood Reporter as one of the most powerful women in media, Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women” and Huffington Post’s list of “Powerful Women Over 50,” Mitchell also received the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Leadership. She was a contributor to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, and wrote the introduction to the book and museum exhibition, 130 Women of Impact in 30 Countries. In 2016, she received a Congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women’s History Advisory Council, and in 2019 was named to the Gender Equality Top 100 list of women leaders by Apolitical.

Mitchell is active with many nonprofit organizations, serving as the chair of the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Women’s Media Center. She is a founding member of the VDAY movement and on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the Woodruff Arts Center. She is also an advisor to Participant Media and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mitchell is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a master's degree in English literature and several honorary doctorate degrees. She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World. She and her husband, Scott Seydel, live in Atlanta and have six children and 13 grandchildren.

Quarterly Meeting of the Kiwanis Foundation Investment Committee

Rob Brawner is the Executive Director for the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership. Leveraging the Partnership’s staff and consultants, and working closely with the Board of Directors and other stakeholders, Rob leads the Partnership in its broad-based, collaborative focus on ensuring the promise of stronger communities and equitable, sustainable benefit to the 45 Atlanta BeltLine neighborhoods and beyond. His responsibilities include the development and implementation of the Partnership’s strategic plan, as well as capital and operational fundraising – and stewardship of the private and philanthropic funds that support of the construction of the project.

Prior to joining the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership, Rob built his operations and management expertise during an eight year career at McMaster-Carr, which included roles as Director of Sales and Marketing and Director of Physical Distribution. He graduated with honors from Princeton University in 1996 with a degree in Economics and two NCAA National Championships in lacrosse. He received his MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in 2006.

Rob has been actively engaged with many local non-profit organizations since moving to Atlanta in 1996. He enjoys living, working, exercising, and playing on the Atlanta BeltLine.

Quarterly Meeting of the Kiwanis Foundation of Atlanta Trustees

Steve Gottlieb was part of Atlanta Legal Aid’s first summer student class in 1968.  After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969, he received a Reginald Heber Smith fellowship to work at Legal Aid as a new lawyer.  In the next five years, he handled a wide range of cases, developing expertise in consumer protection issues, and managed three of Atlanta Legal Aid’s offices.  He then managed the Savannah Office of the Georgia Legal Services Program. In 1977, he returned to Atlanta as the Deputy Direct of Atlanta Legal Aid. He became its Executive Director three years later in 1980 and is among the longest serving legal aid directors in the country. 

Steve has weathered at least three major funding storms during his tenure and has overseen a diversification of revenue sources that has permitted Atlanta Legal Aid to continue its core functions in good times and bad.  In addition to its five core areas of practice—family law, housing, healthcare, consumer finance and government benefits—Steve has presided over the development of numerous special programs.  He inherited the still-thriving Senior Citizens Law Project and encouraged the institution and growth of other new programs including the Disability Integration Project (which litigated the seminal Olmstead case), the Home Defense Program, the Health Law Unit (formerly the AIDS/ALS & Cancer Initiative), the Hispanic Outreach Project, the Grandparent/Relative Caregiver Project, the Georgia Senior Legal Hotline, and the Health Law Partnership (a medical-legal collaborative with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Georgia State’s College of Law). For his leadership, Steve has received numerous state and local awards and has been recognized by the American Bar Association and the National Legal Aid and Defender Program for his work.

Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

Laura Turner Seydel works with and supports organizations that address urgent challenges affecting the health, functionality and vitality of our life support system: our air, water, land, food, biodiversity and climate.

As chair of the Captain Planet Foundation, Laura guides the organization in its mission to empower and engage youth to become environmental stewards through hands-on experiential projects. She is a passionate board member of the Children & Nature Network, which helps children grow up realizing the many benefits that exposure to nature provides. 

She fights for the health of our children as co-founder and chair of Mothers and Others for Clean Air, working to improve air quality for at-risk populations.

She serves on the board of Project Drawdown, which focuses on measuring the top scalable solutions to address global warming. Laura also works to address the extinction crisis as a Patron of Nature with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.   

Laura co-founded Chattahoochee Riverkeeper to help protect the drinking water of more than 5 million Georgians. Laura works to achieve the same safe-water mission internationally as a board trustee for Waterkeeper Alliance (the consortium of over 300 waterkeeper groups worldwide).

To leverage and protect important environmental policies that protect the air, water, land and especially climate, Laura serves as vice chair of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.

Additional organizations she serves include the Turner Foundation, United Nations Foundation, Nuclear Threat Initiative, JST Foundation and the Turner Endangered Species Fund. She is a member of Atlanta Rotary, and she serves on the Carter Center Board of Councilors and on the advisory board for the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.  

She lives with her husband, Rutherford, in Atlanta in the first LEED-certified gold residence in the United States. They have three children.