Last year was our inaugural class of Biz New Orleans New & Notables and it was so well received that we decided to make it an annual feature.
In our first year I was part of a team of three that wrote the features on the honorees, but this year I decided to take on all the interviews and write-ups myself. It was a big job, but in doing so I got to speak with each of our 13 winners one-on-one and dive a little deeper into where they came from, how they got to where they are at now and what they have planned for the future.
In this issue, we honor locals passionate about making their hometown stronger, like Terrebonne Parish native Arlanda Williams, who’s been leading Delgado Community College’s workforce development efforts for just over six months; and native New Orleanian Timothy Nickel, the man behind what will someday be the new flyover we’ll all be using to get to and from our new airport. And then there’s Kenner-native Cathy Alfonso, who is bringing her youthful enthusiasm and love for community involvement to the St. Bernard Chamber of Commerce as its new CEO.
There’s also the stories of those who dared to take a leap, like Beezie Landry, whose willingness to take a chance on what he loves to do in a market he wasn’t sure would support it, has paid off with a leadership position in a whole new division for Stirling Properties. Then there’s Randy Gervais, who, while a high school senior at Archbishop Rummel just three years ago, developed a simple business idea that quickly became more successful than he ever imagined; and Jonathan Tate, an architect whose innovative thinking and willingness to step outside of his traditional job description has brought a pocket of much-needed affordability to our housing market.
There’s also those dedicated to the health and safety of our youngest citizens, like Ben Luzynski, who developed a new app to keep our children safe from sex offenders, and John Nickens IV, the man charged with bringing Children’s Hospital New Orleans into the future.
We’ve got professionals trying to grab more of a market share in New Orleans, like Jessica Inman with Lyft; those expanding their reach even further from our region, like Gas Pump TV’s Werlien Prosperie III; and those championing our region’s benefits, like Scott Niemeyer, founder of Deep South Studios
.
We also honor the people behind some of the year’s biggest deals, like Republic National Distributing’s $12.5 billion merger, led by CEO Tom Cole, and the largest tech project ever to come to Louisiana, DXC Technology New Orleans’ Digital Transformation Center, led by the center’s director, Terrell Boynton.
Each one of these incredible professionals is working to make our region stronger in their own way and I am honored to share a bit of all of our conversations here.
On that note, if you’d like to have a conversation with them too, please hold Wednesday, July 11 on your calendar and plan on joining us for hors d’oeuvres and drinks after work to mix and mingle with this year’s honorees at Felicity Church (1220 Felicity St.) down by Coliseum Park. I assure you it will be an inspiring evening.
Happy Reading,
Kimberley Singletary
Managing Editor
Kimberley@BizNewOrleans.com
