Doctors Earl and Felicia Suttle

Similar to a Hollywood movie plot, a chance meeting on the dance floor in the late ‘70s ignited the love story of Dr. Earl Suttle and his wife, Dr. Felicia Mabuza-Suttle. Earl, a high school guidance counselor then, had chaperoned students who traveled from Milwaukee to Minneapolis to perform in a dance festival. While there, he spotted a beautiful woman dancing. “I said, ‘Whoa!’ I’m generally a shy person but something told me to go up and ask her, ‘Where are you from?’ And I started an informal chat with her.”

     He was surprised to discover Felicia hailed from South Africa, and was only in the country on a two-year Visa as traveling was near impossible for black South Africans then under apartheid. She was part of an exchange program teaching dance to children. The two continued to communicate, although in separate states, until Felicia had to return to South Africa. Read More

Harry and Donna Coaxum

To even the casual observer, the Coaxums live a charmed life. Harry Coaxum is vice president and general manager for McDonald’s Atlanta Region while his wife, Donna Bunch Coaxum, is vice president, general counsel and secretary for OSI Industries LLC, an international food manufacturer. The couple and their 11-year-old daughter, Maya, live in a luxury home nestled in a new development in Roswell, and also maintain a Naperville, Ill., residence.

     But it is not where the couple has ended up that joins them. Rather, it is where they started that fuels their marital partnership as high-powered business executives.

     “It’s nice that we’re blessed to own a piece of property like this,” Harry says, surveying their expansive home that features an assemblage of African-American art. “Folks will say ‘Oh you guys are so lucky.’ I say, ‘We’re blessed, because it could be here today and gone tomorrow.’” And if “it” were gone tomorrow, both agree that their “meager beginnings” and spiritual faith gave them tools that would enable them to begin anew. Read More

T. Fitz and Debra Johnson

For the Johnsons, family is a team sport. And their most recent venture is the Atlanta Beat, a women’s professional soccer team, slated to begin its first season in April. “I can hardly contain myself,” says T. Fitz Johnson, the team’s new owner and CEO. ?“I’m so excited about it. We both are.”

     In fact, Fitz and his wife, Debra, and their three children Jordan, Whitney and Fitz Jr. have made picking members for the team a family affair, traveling to draft events together throughout the country. Debra will work with the Atlanta Beat Foundation and also function as an “extended mom” to the players as many are likely to be in their early 20s. Fitz Jr., a high school student, has an office at the team’s headquarters in Kennesaw.

     College students Jordan and Whitney, twin girls, inspired it all as Fitz began coaching them when they started playing soccer as 4-year-olds. And while this new venture may be unpredictable and risky as the first Atlanta Beat team folded in 2003, the Johnsons, a military family, embrace change and risk. Read More