Four Berry College graduates were recently named 2016 distinguished alumni.
Tricia Steele, a 2009 alum, received the Alumni Entrepreneurial Spirit Award. Steele, founder and CEO of SAI Digital, has grown her company from home-based freelancing to an incorporated team of full-time employees. Founded as a digital agency, the company has evolved into a boutique technology firm providing web application development services, with a specialty within healthcare, manufacturing and financial services. She is also a founding member of 7hills Makerspace in downtown Rome, which was named one of America’s Most Beautiful Makerspaces by Make Magazine.
Chris Hayes, a 2004 alum, received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award. Hayes began his career at the Floyd County Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) and FaithBridge Foster Care. As a regional director for Northwest Georgia for Bethany Christian Services, he meets with legislators and county, regional and state DFCS directors about community based approaches to care and has helped change the way the state of Georgia approaches foster care and adoption. He has written manuals, policies and procedures for use in helping foster families, foster children, and adoptive and biological families of foster children. Through policy change and relationships with leaders, churches and communities in 12 counties in the metro Atlanta area, he strives to transform communities and to change the perception of the child welfare industry.
Berry Trustee Roger W. Lusby III, a 1979 alum, earned the Distinguished Achievement Award. Lusby is an expert in the area of tax accounting and estate planning and heads the Alpharetta, Georgia office of Frazier & Deeter, LLC.
He has been honored seven times as a “Five Star Wealth Manager” by Atlanta Magazine and was recently recognized as a “Top 10 CPA in Georgia for 2015” by the National Academy of Public Accounting Professionals. He is also chairman of the Berry College Planned Giving Council and chairman of the Berry College Audit Committee.
The Distinguished Service Award went to Joy Bernice Ogle Whaley, a retired nurse and volunteer with more than 50 years of service to public health in Georgia and beyond. Whaley’s career has included work at hospitals in Georgia and Tennessee and the Whitfield County (Ga.) Health Department, where she was lead public health nurse, women’s health nurse practitioner and nurse manager before her retirement in 1999. Her volunteer activities include work with the North Georgia Medical Reserve Corps and the Dalton Teen Resource Center. She has also served as an advocate for children and families in Whitfield County Juvenile Court. As a member of Berry’s Carpet Capitol Alumni Chapter she works on Make a Difference Day each year and is a volunteer with the Whitfield County Health Department. She is a 1953 Berry alum.
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Written by Public Relations
