Alumni Notes

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Martha Lou Riddle recently published a book titled Who Turned on the Lights in Attalla, a compilation of stories about life in Attalla, Alabama, from the 1920s to 1940s, written by 17 authors.

William L. Goggans has been appointed chairman of the East Jefferson General Hospital Board of Directors. Goggans has served on the board since 1996, including two terms as secretary, in 2000 and 2001.

Goggans was a vice president of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, where he was responsible for a 10-state area and approximately 4,000 employees before retiring in 1995. He was also chairman and chief executive officer of Metropolitan Life General Agency.

East Jefferson General is a 450-bed, community-owned, not-for-profit hospital located in Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. It was the first hospital in Louisiana to achieve Magnet status for excellence in nursing services by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

N. Lee Cooper is a shareholder and chair of the litigation and arbitration practice groups of the firm of Maynard, Cooper & Gale PC, which received the 2004 Pro Bono Award at the Alabama State Bar Association’s annual conference

Robert C. Walthall is included in the 2004–05 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Mitzi Coogler has been admitted as a shareholder at Michael H. Echols & Associates in Tuscaloosa.

Sonja Murdock Kearsey Jernagan recently married Louis R. Jernagan (1969).

Gary Osborn has been named general sales manager of Legacy Pontiac-GMC in Eutaw, Alabama. Osborn has been in the automobile sales business for 22 years.

Rick Stephens has been named president of Pacific Casual LLC, a company specializing in lawn and garden accessories in various product categories from Asia as well as from the United States. Stephens has held executive management positions with WinsLoew Furniture and BJI over his 18 years in the industry.

John M. Williams has been appointed managing director at Morgan Keegan & Company in Birmingham.

Robert E. Milam Jr. (M.B.A. 1999) has been named manager of special assets at Regions Financial Corporation. Milam joins Regions from SouthTrust Bank in Birmingham, where he was senior vice president of corporate special assets.

Vicki Alley Denmark has been named vice president and general manager of Southern Progress.

Ralph C. Herden Jr. is a Realtor with Metro Brokers/GMAC Real Estate in Atlanta.

Tom Adams has joined Mentor Capital Management, a fee-only financial planning firm in Elmhurst, Illinois, as a financial planning consultant after 21 years in the accounting profession.

Barry J. Goss has been promoted to assistant general manager of finance at the Birmingham Water Works Board.

John E. Hagefstration Jr. is included in the 2004–05 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Mark A. Hickman (M.A. 1984, M.B.A. 1989) has been appointed secretary-treasurer of the National Chicken Council.

Carl N. Kennedy has been promoted to comptroller and vice president of Delphi Canada Inc.

Pamela A. Chandler is president of BRAWCO Inc., which recently observed its 20th anniversary and received the Safety Training and Evaluation Process Award and the Accredited Quality Contractor Award from the Associated Builders and Contractors of Alabama.

J. Paul Compton Jr. is included in the 2004–05 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Mary Elizabeth Hinds Bean has been promoted to group sales manager/vice president with AmSouth Bank in Nashville, Tennessee.

L. Susan Doss is included in the 2004–05 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Steven D. Garrett recently was appointed to the President’s Advisory Council of American Express Financial Advisors.

Richard O. Hughes has been promoted to executive vice president, securitization manager, treasury division, at Compass Bank in Birmingham.

Michael Allen Greene has accepted a position with the University Medical Center in Tuscaloosa as director of billing and coding compliance.

Susanne Hunt (M.B.A.) got married and moved to Germany.

Michael W. Lammons has been promoted to assurance partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Atlanta.

Ray Thornton has been named information services manager at Gulf States Paper Corporation. Thornton, who earned his M.B.A. from Samford in 2000, and wife April (HES, 1990) also have a new daughter, Reagan Catherine, born in August. She joins her sister, Ansley, 8. April is events program assistant for the business school.

John Baschab and Jon Piot have announced the release of their second book, The Professional Services Firm Bible, published by John Wiley & Sons. The book is a comprehensive analysis of the intricacies of managing a professional services firm. Subject matter includes governance, organizational structure, compensation, and sales management, along with other essential topics. The Professional Services Firm Bible is the second book written by Baschab and Piot for Wiley. They are partners at Impact Innovations Group, a Dallas-based information technology–consulting firm. The book follows the successful Executive’s Guide to Information Technology, which was on Amazon.com’s list of top 25 business books. Impact Innovations Group provides IT optimization and outsourcing services to large- and mid-market companies. Impact Innovations has offices in Dallas and Atlanta.

Richard E. Anthony Jr. recently passed the third level of the Certified Financial Analyst exam.

David A. Mason recently graduated from the graduate school of banking at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Jimmy Ray Mauldin (M.B.A., 2002) recently returned to the United States after a diplomatic assignment in Ghana, West Africa, and will begin a position as a diplomatic junior officer with the State Department.

Reginald J. Walker has been named a partner in the Minneapolis office of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Stephen C. Schaaf has been installed as a member and director of Warren, Averett, Kimbrough & Marino. The largest privately owned public accounting firm in the Birmingham metropolitan area, Warren, Averett, Kimbrough & Marino LLC is a full-service certified public accounting firm.

David R. Sher has been installed as 2005 chairman of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Board.

David W. Williams has been promoted to vice president of credit operations at Spiller Associated Furniture Stores Inc.

Lana Jacobson Blackmon has been promoted to operational risk manager in Regions Financial Corporation’s Enterprise Risk Management support group. She has been with Regions 10 years and has worked in the company’s internal audit, trust retirement services, and internal consulting groups.

William David Leach has accepted a position as MQSeries administrator with ACS State Healthcare Solutions in Atlanta.

Michael Brett Richards has been promoted to senior accounting manager at Southern Progress Corporation.

Kerry L. Foster completed his M.T.A. program last summer and has accepted a position as tax services supervisor with Jackson Thornton, a CPA firm located in Montgomery, Alabama.

Gary Johnson (M.A. 1997) has been promoted to regional marketing manager at Southern Accents, a division of Southern Progress. He joined Southern Progress in 1999 as business manager for Southern Accents and Coastal Living and in 2002 was promoted to special markets manager for Oxmoor House. In his new position he will manage sales and marketing efforts for the magazine in the 16-state southern region.

Paul C. Pinkerton has joined Mississippi State Hospital’s Human Resources Department.

E. Bryan Finison Jr. (M.B.A.) of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is a partner in the regional accounting and consulting firm of Tidwell DeWitt LLC, with offices in Atlanta, Birmingham, and Tuscaloosa. He and his wife, Lee Carmichael Finison (1996), have two sons, Speed Keltner and Trey.

A. Ezell Webb has been promoted to assistant controller of The Drummond Company, headquartered in the Liberty Park Urban Center in Birmingham.

Andrew Scott Brislin has accepted the position of loan originator at The Mortgage Source Inc. for the Eastern Shore/Mobile area.

Anne H. Lovette recently passed the third level of the Certified Financial Analyst exam.

Julia Leach Martin has been promoted to assistant corporate information risk officer in Regions Financial Corporation’s corporate information security department. She will be responsible for vendor management, security awareness training, and internal assessments related to the evaluation of how the company’s business units and automated systems protect customer information as mandated by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. She has been with Regions since 1998.

Brandon LaBresh has joined Pritchett-Moore Inc. in Tuscaloosa as an insurance agent.

Katherine Moak has been named customer satisfaction manager at High Cotton. Her duties include driving the scheduling of projects and jobs and monitoring the overall satisfaction of High Cotton’s clients. She joined High Cotton in June 2004 with experience in management, publishing, and direct marketing. High Cotton employs more than 100 people in its 133,000-square-foot facility in Trussville, Alabama, processing more than 90 million pieces of mail annually.

Brian Funkhouser is employed as a Citation Market research analyst for Gantt Aviation in San Antonio, Texas.

Holly Irene Posey (M.A. management, 2001) has accepted the position of manager of human resources for James Monroe Bank in Arlington, Virginia.

Kandi Owens has been promoted to associate brand manager for Dial Bar Soap. She moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, two years ago to join the personal care division of The Dial Corporation.

Louisa T. Williams (M.B.A. 2004) has accepted the position of development specialist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In this role, she is responsible for fundraising through individual charitable contributions and estate planning. The National Gallery of Art, located on the National Mall, houses one of the world’s finest collections of western European painting and sculpture, spanning the 13th century to the present, as well as American art from colonial to contemporary times.

Jason Quinn of Northport has been promoted to rental sales representative with Penske. He and his wife, Heather (2001), had their first child, Jackson Samuel, last October.

Christopher James Steiskal has graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mississippi School of Law and is an associate at the law firm of Mitchell, McNutt & Sams, P.A., in the Tupelo, Mississippi, office.

Joseph G. Walker has passed the third level of the Certified Financial Analyst exam.

Qiming Wang (M.A.) has passed the third level of the Certified Financial Analyst exam.

Samuel Maxwell Brewster has recently accepted a position as export documentation coordinator for Louis Dreyfus Export Atlanta, a subsidiary of the multinational corporation Louis Dreyfus, with headquarters in Paris, France. Louis Dreyfus Export Atlanta is a commodity trading company with export sales worldwide.

Steven Lowery has been promoted to regional sales manager for Aaron’s Sales and Lease Ownership.

Anthony Lee Raycroft has joined Barfield Murphy Shank & Smith PC as staff accountant.

Andrew M. Austin recently joined Hardman, Guess, Frost & Cummings as a staff accountant in Birmingham.

Jerry Christopher Black has been promoted to branch manager of the Ted Lansing Corporation.

Mary Reid Fisher has received the Chairman’s Club Award from New South Federal Bank.

Joe Fulmer has joined Re/MAX Partner in Columbus, Mississippi, as a Realtor specializing in land development.

Lindsey Jordan has recently accepted a position with The University of Alabama as an admissions counselor in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Mark Roberts has been named the alumni chapter representative for the University of Alabama National Alumni Association.

Eric Rogers (M.B.A.) has taken a position with Eason, Graham, and Sandner Commercial Real Estate in the office leasing and brokerage division.