From real estate to publishing to tech, Atlanta’s Black professionals are rewriting the definition of what it means to thrive

Watkins, a native of Macon, Georgia, who now lives in the state capital, has risen above the status quo in his hometown — a place where only a quarter of the population holds bachelor’s degrees, regardless of ethnicity — to occupy a vice presidency at Citizens Bank.

Successful Black professionals are often regarded as anomalies, people who beat the odds to rise above the perceived ill-fated circumstances of America’s Black communities. Yet Atlanta has one of the largest concentrations of Black professionals in the country. Nearly half of the city’s population is Black, according to the 2020 Census, and boasts the highest rate of Black-owned businesses in the United States. South Fulton, a neighboring suburb, is more than 90% Black with around 55% and 40% of their respective populations holding bachelor’s degrees, higher than the national average.

Examples of success aren’t hard to find in the region. Beyond the glamor of movie studios and hip hop music, Atlanta is home to tech experts, public relations gurus and more high-profile pros. It’s even attracting Black professionals from other economic hubs because of its reputation for opportunity.

Technical.ly spoke with five high-income Black professionals from the Big Peach’s metropolitan area to learn how they designed their careers, what keeps them moving forward, and how they define success. To them, thriving means everything from feeling fulfilled in the work they choose to do, to continuously striving for better, to giving back.

These Georgians shared their stories for this latest installment of Thriving, a yearlong reporting series highlighting the lived experiences of people in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee and other comparative cities to understand the opportunities and obstacles along their journeys to economic security and freedom. Here’s what they told us.

Robin Harris: Planning her third act

Robin Harris wakes up each morning and makes a comfortable commute from her bedroom to her home office. Unlike many professionals across the country, the compliance and audit manager began working remotely nearly 15 years ago. Her employer at the time, IBM, had been “outsourcing tech jobs like crazy,” Harris recalled, so she followed the suggestion of a former supervisor to pivot from an analyst position to project management, which later led her to compliance.

The move wouldn’t be Harris’ only professional pivot. She’s also a singer/songwriter and was a member of the R&B band R.J.’s Latest Arrival. Remote and contract work allowed her to periodically take time away from the world of tech to perform onstage.

“I ended up in the world of contracting,” the Lawrenceville resident told Technical.ly. “Every time it was time for me to go on tour, I would leave a contract, and when I came back, I would get another contract.”

The flexibility allowed her to eventually relocate from Michigan to Georgia, where she decided to retire early. The global economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic saw her reintroduction to the workforce shortly after: “COVID came and threw my plans into a sort of chaos,” said Harris, now 62. Taking one more contract role led her to the company she’s with now.

Her current position speaks to her personal definition of success: income potential and a good-for-the-soul work culture.

“A company can pay you and they can give you the titles, but you can’t leave that job feeling stressed every day,” she said. “The work culture has to vibe with who you are as a person.” The warm and energetic environment her employer fosters is easily felt across the 1,500 hundred-mile distance from Denver, where the company is headquartered, to Atlanta.

“I don’t give all this effort because somebody makes me give it. I give it because it makes me feel good.”Robin Harris

Harris is grateful to have a career she loves and didn’t mind ending her retirement to work full-time again. It’s that love and excitement to go to work each day that drives her to continue on in the field.

“I don’t give all this effort because somebody makes me give it,” she said. “I give it because it makes me feel good.”

Harris reflects on both her professional past and future entrepreneurial plans with pride. The next time she retires — for good, this time — she plans to relaunch a business with her husband, Terry Johnson. Their company, Human Potential Project, takes the methodologies of agile project management that Harris has mastered and marries them with personal transformation practices to teach people how to take their own expertise online.

“What we’re doing is so exciting,” said Harris, who is also an ordained interfaith minister. “I love it and I’m also getting certified as a rapid transformation therapist, which is a hybrid therapy for helping people uproot old beliefs and trauma and obliterate them.”

When she’s not working or planning her third act, Harris produces electronic dance music that she hopes will help to positively reprogram people’s brain waves as they work to rewrite their own stories.

Christopher Watkins: Rejecting complacency

Born and raised in Georgia, Christopher Watkins has taken his love for writing and content marketing all the way to a vice presidency with Citizens Financial. A background in finance helped prepare the Macon native for the life and career he enjoys today.

“I started as a banker in the early 2000s in a strategic management training program with another financial institution,” he said. “Four years later, we had the great financial crisis [of 2008] and everything kind of came to a halt.”

Watkins took his time away from banking to move into the digital marketing space, where his love of writing deepened and his advertising skills sharpened. From there, he began making significant strides in social media management and content marketing, but returned to his banking roots when an opportunity opened at another Southeastern-based financial institution.

“I’ve always been around creating content in some form or fashion, but the difference has always been the industry I’ve been writing in,” the now-Atlantan told Technical.ly.

He focused solely on social media at that institution and helped guide them from the dark days of internet ambiguity to having a solid and recognizable digital footprint — and he did it as a team of one.

Today, Watkins is the vice president of B2B content and social media content at Citizens Financial. He works remotely for the Boston-based bank but travels frequently. As a husband and a father, his family guides his decision-making as he rises through the ranks of content marketing management.

The ascent has come “all through grit and just not being complacent in one place,” said Watkins, 42. “I’ve always been one to look for the opportunities that are going to benefit my career path and also my family.”

He credits his refusal to accept complacency with driving his career forward.

After working solo for years to create social media for various brands and companies, he chose to leave his comfort zone and lead a team of social media managers.

“Yes, I would consider myself a success. There’s always further to go.”Christopher Watkins

“Sometimes, you see people who do the same thing over and over again, and are not really interested in moving to the next level,” he said. “I think, in my particular case, coming from a background where I haven’t been responsible for teams, it was definitely a change for me to step outside of that to become a people manager.”

Watkins defines success as “growth and constant learning,” but believes that money is only part of the equation. Instead, he chooses to measure achievement along the lines of happiness and recognition for a job well done.

“My company does a great job of recognizing people who are helping push different ideas forward,” he said, pointing out that he’s in a unique position as a Black man leading a team at a major financial institution. Watkins also counts himself as fortunate to report directly to a Black woman. “I can count on one hand how many times people listened to my feedback at my last job, but people at Citizens have really poured into me with good training and feedback opportunities to be able to get to the next level.”

When asked if he considered himself to be successful, Watkins pauses to thoughtfully consider the question before answering.

“Yes, I would consider myself a success,” he said. “There’s always further to go. I also want to pour that into the people who are on my team. That’s really what it’s all about.”

Alysia Pennington: Advocating for the underserved

When Alysia Pennington sees a need she can fill, she jumps at the opportunity to help. The Lawrenceville resident has a heart for helping others and does just that as a real estate agent, investor and financial coach.

“I’m one of those folks who has a servant spirit,” Pennington, 44, told Technical.ly. “I’m helping folks who want to get into home ownership to bridge that financial gap.”

After working in corporate finance and for nonprofits for almost 20 years, Pennington has merged her two passions and now works as a real estate agent specializing in assisting unhoused persons move beyond shelters and temporary residences to realize their dreams of home ownership.

“I’m very thankful because my mother and grandmother always talked to me about finances so I had a good relationship with money growing up,” Pennington said. “I was mindful of my budget [from a young age] because I liked to shop.” Her mother offered an incentive of matching the young Pennington’s shopping budget so she could enjoy her trips to the mall.

Those early experiences with budgeting sparked an interest in finance that led Pennington to enter the field in accounts payable/receivable after earning a degree in business administration. She rose the ranks quickly: “Once I met my career goal of being a director of finance, I said, ‘OK, now what?’”

Pennington confesses that she doesn’t enjoy feeling stagnant and was ready for another growth opportunity once she met her first goal. She took her skills to nonprofit work and chose to pursue another passion: helping others.

“It brings me great joy to know that I have touched lives.”Alysia Pennington

“I was in nonprofit [work] for about 15 years,” she said. “It brings me great joy to know that I have touched lives and, when people tell me I’m an inspiration, it makes me feel good to know that I can be someone to give them hope.”

As she looks to the future, Pennington says she has “big dreams and big goals” and is eager to take her financial coaching to the next level. She plans to launch a business that helps unhoused persons with their finances and to create pathways to sustainable home ownership through housing them in her own multi-unit building until they’re ready to purchase their own properties.

This is the kind of work that defines her idea of success.

“It’s about being an advocate for the underserved,” she said — “making an impact and affecting the lives of those who want things and don’t necessarily have the resources or know how to get the resources to make those dreams a reality.”

Pennington lives each day by the motto “carpe diem.”

“They always say ‘play chess and not checkers,’ so I’m trying to put myself in position,” she said. “When you look at people like Bill Gates and Bezos, they didn’t get to where they are by playing small.”

Jimond Abston: Content in his career

For Jimond Abston, thriving isn’t about the money he makes or the titles he earns as much as it’s about the life he’s living.

“When you meet the crossroad where you’re no longer just doing things to survive, but you’re actually enjoying life, then you’re successful,” Abston, 36 told Technical.ly. “It’s not necessarily about if you’re making enough money, because you’ll always want more money, but if you’re literally happy doing what you’re doing.”

The Atlanta resident works as an account manager for a leading international tech company and has been with the firm for almost nine years. Although remote work is an option, he prefers the in-person connection that comes from going to his office each day.

Abston moved to Atlanta after living in New York for several years, where he worked in retail. He purposefully sought a career with a company with which he was familiar and felt a natural alignment.

“I knew that I had a good, strong background in connecting with people,” he said.

It wasn’t long before Abston realized he was organically merging his love of interaction with people and his sales knowledge. The awareness led him to seek another position within the company that would allow him to bring his passions for business and consumer management together, while keeping tech at the forefront. He accepted a promotion as a business pro soon after.

In the time since he moved into the account management role, Abston had to seriously consider if continuously climbing the rungs of a corporate ladder was for him.

“Leaders and mentors often ask, ‘What’s next?’” he said. “Especially when you’ve been in a certain role for a long time. They want you to grow somewhere. Fortunately, I work for a company that gives me that opportunity.”

Abston is content where he is — for now.

“You don’t have to start your own business in order to feel like you’re ‘somebody.'”Jimond Abston

Instead of taking typical career growth opportunities that lead to more responsibilities, more people to manage and, yes, more money, Abston has chosen to take advantage of one of his company’s most coveted benefits: free education.

“I realized I don’t want to change roles right now,” he said. “I’d rather go back to school and deepen my knowledge so I can go further than I am right now.”

Abston, who already holds a degree in arts, entertainment and media management from Chicago’s Columbia College, will begin pursuit of a cyber engineering degree next month. It’s the chance to watch businesses learn how to use tech tools to help them succeed that drives his feelings about his own success.

“With my knowledge and expertise in technology, and my understanding of business growth and structure, it’s really great to find a solution to a major problem or a major pain point and be able to see them thrive off of that,” he said — “no pun intended.”

Abston finds fulfillment in his career through the people he meets and recently came to a newfound appreciation for his accomplishments and freedom, financial and otherwise.

“It felt like I had control for the first time,” he said. “Oftentimes, people make you think you have to go further or be an entrepreneur. Some people do really well with a career and you don’t have to start your own business in order to feel like you’re ‘somebody.’”

Nakita Davis: Inspiring other women

Dedicating each day to what you love and loving who you serve are the hallmarks of a successful life, according to Nakita Davis. The public relations maven, publisher and author claims more than 20 bestselling credits to her name and has helped more than 300 women to do the same over the past four years.

“My trademark is, ‘Queen, it’s time to play your royal position,’” the 38-year-old owner of Jesus Coffee and Prayer Christian Publishing House told Technical.ly. She named the company after her first successful book, released in 2018.

Growing up, her family wasn’t financially wealthy: “I come from very humble beginnings,” said the wife and mom of two. “My mother and my stepdad were janitors.” But they were rich in faith. Now an ordained minister with an honorary doctorate in theology, her belief in God is so foundational to her life that she is dedicated to serving other high-achieving women of faith.

She inherited her work ethic from her parents and got her first job in fast food at age 14. Davis drew on her grit and her beliefs when, around age 19, her family ran out of money to pay for college. Instead of giving up or giving in to embarrassment, she enrolled in a local community college and, once again, worked in fast food in order to pay her tuition.

A newspaper classified ad led her to corporate sales as Davis continued to work toward her undergraduate degree.

“Who sees a job in the paper?” she questions with a good-natured chuckle, giving gratitude to God for connecting her with the company she’d work with for the next 15 years.

Davis moved to Atlanta in 2019 with her family and chose to end her corporate sales career shortly after. She’d risen in the corporate ranks enough to choose the city she wanted to work from, so she wanted to be in a location that best supported her husband and children. Davis’ husband works in music and their daughter has an interest in the entertainment industry, too.

“God told us Atlanta was our land of milk and honey.”Nakita Davis

“God told us Atlanta was our land of milk and honey,” the Charlotte, North Carolina native said. “It can’t just be the certificate on your wall, it has to be that you’re actually doing the thing that you’re called to do.”

The publisher spoke to Technical.ly as she prepares to return to Africa for her second annual Women Win #AfricanExplosion event in Accra, Ghana. She sounded excited as she described the journey that was first delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “but not denied.” As she talked about the long flights and energetic, international interactions to come, Davis pointed to the adage “money won’t make you happy” that people often quote.

“Well I say, ‘I’d like to try and see,’” she said, laughing. “Success is waking up every day knowing that I’m making an impact.”

Davis believes that everyone has a million-dollar idea. It’s her mission to help women bring those ideas to life.

“It’s a perfect time for me to be in service to others because I feel like I’m at my prime,” she said. “I, to the best of my ability, live my life to inspire other women.”