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Board Members elected May 2021

The Alliance Theatre is proud to welcome the following new members to our Board of Directors:

Nichelle Hughley Mayberry
SVP, Retail National Expansion // PNC Bank
Nichelle Hughley Mayberry is a Senior Vice President and Senior Portfolio Owner within PNC’s Retail National Expansion group. Her responsibilities include the ingestion, integration, and exposure of application data to support the customer experience vision for Retail Banking. Prior to joining PNC, she was Deputy CFO, Office of Grants Management, City of Detroit; Former Vice President, Chief Administration Office, Moody’s Investor Services; and Vice President, Finance Division, Goldman Sachs. She was also a past Manager at Ernst & Young and Deloitte. Nichelle has over two decades of experience across private and public sectors with strengths in technology enabled solutions, operational efficiency and controls, business redesign and transformation in fast paced, highly visible environments. Nichelle strongly believes in the notion of giving back and mentors young professionals, serves as a thought leader and member of PNC’s Black Leaders Forum and participates in PNC’s Women’s Business Development Working Group. She previously co-chaired the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force as a Board Trustee of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Nichelle is a graduate of the Tepper Business School Executive Leadership Academy, 2019 and Leadership Detroit, 2017. She was also recognized by the Michigan Chronicle as a 2016 Woman of Excellence honoree. Nichelle received a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Healthcare Administration from the University of Washington.

Jim Kilberg
(Retired) Senior Vice President: Real Estate, Energy and Natural Resources // Weyerhaeuser
Jim Kilberg is a named executive officer and senior real estate executive with 35 years of experience in all facets of real estate and natural resource strategy development and execution. Over the course of his career, Jim has directed small and large-scale development across a broad array of asset classes, outsourcing services in multiple industries, restaurant and retail unit development, and energy & natural resources. Jim’s experience spans urban, suburban and rural markets, and includes: market analysis, transaction management, community engagement/visioning, branding, zoning & entitlement, leasing & marketing, joint venture structuring, acquisitions, dispositions, recreational lease management, mitigation banking, conservation and large-scale master planning. He brings both broad and deep real estate strategic experience through his work on large-scale joint ventures and master plans in all asset classes, as well as economic development, and landscape-level conservation transactions, requiring the lobbying of federal and state agencies.

Jim recently retired as Senior Vice President – Real Estate, Energy & Natural Resources at Weyerhaeuser, a Fortune 300 company with a market cap of $29 billion. Weyerhaeuser is a timber REIT and the largest private land owner in the world with over 13 million acres in 19 U.S. states. Jim oversees all “alternative value” business lines, including: real estate, mitigation banking, conservation, development, recreational lease management, cell towers, billboards, renewables (wind and solar), construction materials, coal, oil & gas and industrial minerals. He currently manages a P & L of over $200 million, which includes 275 internal and outsourced team members. His teams complete more than twenty-five thousand transactions per year and create over $400 million of revenue per year. While EBITDA production has always been a large part of Jim’s responsibility, he’s also been responsible for market planning, employing sophisticated GIS and regression modeling to insure the right strategy, is being employed in the right markets, at the right time; mitigating risk and maximizing employee focus and performance.

Jim has served on the Real Estate Board of Georgia State University, The Alliance Theater in Atlanta, GA, where he sat on the executive committee, the Board of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Arts Council, and the Atlanta Chamber Players. Jim has been a frequent lecturer at the Robinson School of Business at Georgia State University and the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University, and has served as an expert witness. Jim holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis, an MBA from Georgia State University, a Masters in Corporate Real Estate from Corenet, and completed executive MBA work at the Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, where he co-chairs the Large Landowners Forum and he was as a founding member of the Corporate Counsel for the Land Trust Alliance.

Jesse Killings
SVP, Customer Operations, Safety and Technical Training // Southern Company Gas
Jesse Killings is senior vice president, customer operations, safety and technical training for Southern Company Gas. In this role, he is responsible for the company’s customer experience, resource management, safety and technical training operations. Previously, Killings was vice president of operations for Southern Company Gas subsidiaries Atlanta Gas Light and Chattanooga Gas. In that role, he was responsible for ensuring operational excellence for nearly 1 million customers in Georgia and Tennessee. Since joining the company in 1993, Killings held leadership positions in operations, regulatory, safety and training.

Killings is active in the industry and community, taking a special interest in organizations that support career development, leadership and education. He currently serves as chair of the Southern Company Gas Diversity & Inclusion (LEAD) Council, and as a board member of the Technical College Systems of Georgia Foundation and the Georgia Energy & Industrial Consortium. He is a former board member of 100 Black Men of Atlanta and Georgia Chamber Diversity and Inclusion Council.

In addition, he is an active member of the American Association of Blacks in Energy, and he has worked with boards and education-related committees of organizations such as Fulton Education Foundation, South Fulton Chamber of Commerce, Boys & Girls Club and United Way.

A native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Killings earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Tuskegee University. He is a graduate of Leadership Georgia, Leadership Atlanta and Leadership Coweta.

Killings resides in Atlanta and is the proud father of two children.

Kerri Sauer
Vice President of Transformation // Fannie Mae
Kerri Sauer (She/Her/Hers) is a Global Technology Leader and Catalyst for Change known for a keen focus on delivery, execution, transformation, and change management. Sauer currently serves at the Officer level as the Vice President of Transformation for Fannie Mae, the leading source of mortgage financing in the United States. In her role as the head of Transformation at Fannie Mae, Kerri is responsible for the design and execution of their Digital Transformation Roadmap, support and oversight for cross-functional program management, ongoing maturation and expansion of the Enterprise Operating Model and training strategy, as well as the DevSecOps and Agile Practices, including the Agile Center of Excellence. She has 20 years of experience in Consulting, IT, and the Financial Services & FinTech industries. Prior to Fannie Mae, Sauer ran the Agile Center of Excellence at Truist Bank (SunTrust & BB&T), and previously worked with North Highland and Elavon. Kerri has a reputation for being the go-to leader to engage for impact, regardless of the situation and believes in bringing your whole self to work and any situation. Because of this philosophy, Sauer has a significant track record of building high performing and engaged leadership teams that have an immediate effect on the entire organization.

Kerri is also a highly engaged community leader within Atlanta, serving on non-profit boards, volunteering, and advocating on behalf of various causes, and is particularly known for being a STEAM champion (don’t forget the A!). She currently serves as a Board Member of Hands On Atlanta and a member of the Advisory Council for Chris180. Her other community leadership includes WIT (Women in Technology), UNCF Atlanta, Out Front Theatre Company – Atlanta’s only LGBTQIA+ theatre (founding Board Member, former President and Chairwoman of the Board and subsequent Advisory Board member), Girls Inc. of Atlanta, and Theatre Emory. She is a member of the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2017 and has been selected to be a member of the Leadership Cobb Class of 2021-2022.  

Dana Weeks Ugwonali
CEO // MedTrans Go
Dana Weeks Ugwonali is the Chief Executive Officer at MedTrans Go, a tech-enabled healthcare start-up based in Atlanta. An experienced professional with a demonstrated history of working in business, management, and marketing, she has held leadership positions at AT&T and Pfizer and in other innovative entrepreneurial ventures. In 2016, she assisted in co-founding the Black Angel Tech Foundation, created to support and increase the number of underrepresented minorities in technology. Her talents and skills include being an astute, creative and culturally aware innovator and leader. She is also a Board member of several public and private companies.

Weeks Ugwonali earned a BA in Anthropology: Social Sciences from Stanford University, graduating with Honors and a concentration in African Studies. She was a student athlete, running Varsity Track & Field, and served as a program coordinator for the Black Community Services Center. After graduating, she volunteered in the Peace Corps in the Cape Verde Islands, lending her advocacy and creative skills to the local Portuguese-speaking African community. She later attended Columbia Business School, obtaining an MBA in Marketing and Management. While at both universities, she exhibited commitment to the student body and institution, presiding as Senior Class President and Student Body President, respectively.

At her alma mater, Stanford University, Weeks Ugwonali has held and presently holds numerous leadership positions. Currently she co-chairs the Stanford LEAD (Lifelong Engagement and Advocacy for Development) Council and is a member of the Humanities & Sciences Council, and the Treasurer of the Stanford Club of Georgia. Recently, she has lent her voice as a member of the President’s Campaign Planning Task Force, and the Provost’ IDEAL (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in a Learning Environment) Kitchen Cabinet. Weeks Ugwonali is also a member of and continues to actively contribute her energy and advocacy skills to the Stanford National Black Alumni Association (SNBAA) and the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club (SAPAAC).

Other community work in which Weeks Ugwonali is and has been fully engaged includes being a Founding Member of the Columbia Business School Women’s Circle, Treasurer of the Atlanta Chapter of Jack and Jill, Atlanta Public Schools Jackson GO Team Community Representative and a Trustee and Chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at the Westminster Schools.

Weeks Ugwonali is married to Dr. Obi Ugwonali and has three children.

 

To see our full Board of Directors listing and learn more about Board leadership, visit alliancetheatre.org/board

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