Columbus and the Valley Magazine

09/24/2025

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about where to grab the latest issue of our magazine 👀 But here’s the easiest way to never miss a thing: Subscribe! 📨💌 That’s right—for just $22 a year “happy mail” can be delivered straight to your mailbox 6 times a year. Stay inspired, stay connected, and never skip an issue again.

You have one week left to subscribe to be guaranteed a copy of our upcoming Holiday issue. ✅

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09/24/2025

We love seeing our past 5 under 40 leaders continue to make Columbus a great place to live!

09/23/2025

Rising Star Spotlight: Brittany Po***ck

PROFESSION
RN MSN, Founder and Lead Aesthetic Clinician at Toxcology Regenerative Aesthetics and Wellness
EDUCATION
Chattahoochee Valley Community College, Chamberlain University
FAMILY
Husband Justin, Sons Kaden and Lexton

With over 13 years in nursing and a passion for helping others look and feel their best, I transitioned from acute rehabilitation to aesthetics to offer results-driven, regenerative treatments. My mission is to provide personalized, holistic care that enhances natural beauty and confidence. Opening Toxcology allowed me to combine my clinical expertise with my entrepreneurial spirit, creating a space where clients receive innovative, science-backed treatments. My husband is the backbone of my business, and it is truly a family affair with my mom working alongside me as our front desk receptionist. Family and faith are my foundation, and their unwavering support has made everything I’ve achieved possible.

See more Rising Stars here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/26

09/22/2025

Sow it Grows: Force Quit

When this magazine first approached me about writing a gardening column, two things made me hesitate.

First, I wanted to skew what I wrote about growing food much more than growing pretty things. It’s true that, as human beings, we need beauty to fully enjoy our lives—that’s the whole “pursuit of happiness” clause from the Declaration of Independence. But try going without food and you’ll realize in a few weeks’ time, on your deathbed, why the founding fathers listed “life” first. Columbus in particular is rife with pockets of places where residents simply don’t have easy access to fresh food. (Or happiness. Or, some would argue, liberty. But I digress.)

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/57

09/19/2025

5 Under 40 Spotlight: Allen Whitley
Senior VP-Investments
Synovus Securities, Inc.

“It was a tough time coming out of college,” Allen Whitley remembers. He definitely has a gift for understatement: Earning his bachelor’s degree in finance in December 2009 put him smack in the middle of one of the worst job markets in America’s history. Fortunately, he could count on his hometown of Columbus to provide shelter from the storm—and a starting point for what has become a very successful career.

Now a senior VP of investments with the Sexton Wade Whitley Group at Synovus Securities, Whitley got his start in the management associate program of what was then Columbus Bank & Trust. Not only did the program expose him to many different aspects of the bank’s business, it also provided early experience in managing a bank branch. By 2015 he had received an offer to move to Synovus’ private wealth management unit, achieving a significant career goal in the process.

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/20

09/18/2025

5 Under 40 Spotlight: Shane McDougall
Executive Director
Spring Harbor at Green Island

If you’d told 18-year-old Shane McDougall that one day he’d be back in his hometown of Columbus running a senior living facility, he might have been less than thrilled. But the path he’s taken since then has taught him that the best opportunities are often the ones you least expect.

“There have been so many people who saw things in me that I didn’t see yet,” says McDougall, who since 2021 has been the executive director of Spring Harbor at Green Island, a senior facility in the Piedmont Healthcare network. “I never thought in a million years I’d be sitting where I’m sitting, and I’m beyond thankful to those mentors who took the time to say, ‘Hey, I think you should be involved in this’ or ‘I think we can build off this.’ They would open up doors for me that I probably would not have walked into for a very long time.”

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/24

09/17/2025

We’ve teamed up with our great friends at Steeplechase at Callaway Gardens to bring you the ultimate itinerary for race day you won’t want to miss! ✨

Whether you're a local or a visitor, here’s what this year's race director, Carolyn Bettin, mapped out to make the most of your time: https://isu.pub/Dta1EqX

Get Your Tickets Now!
Steeplechase at Callaway Gardens
November 15, 2025 • Gates open at 9 a.m.
Buy at SteeplechaseAtCallaway.com

09/16/2025

5 Under 40 Spotlight: Ryan Willoughby
CEO
Jordan Vocational High School

History and heritage abound in Columbus, from the revitalized cotton mills downtown to the National Infantry Museum, Springer Opera House and beyond. But even some lifelong Columbus residents might not know there’s a milestone of national significance tucked away on Howard Avenue in the Rose Hill Heights neighborhood—Jordan Vocational High School, the first public vocational high school in the United States.
Ryan Willoughby takes immense pride in that history—as both a member of Jordan’s class of 2003 and for the past two years, the school’s CEO. Willoughby is responsible for building connections with the business community and ensuring that Jordan’s graduates meet the expectations of those potential employers. “We’re focused on developing the workforce for today and tomorrow,” he says.
That mission has taken on greater significance—and a higher profile—as the skyrocketing costs of traditional four-year colleges have prompted educational leaders to examine alternatives that might better meet students’ needs, and to some extent, reevaluate the purpose of public education itself.

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/16

09/15/2025

A Diamond in the Rough

Approaching its 75th birthday, the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley is needed now more than ever

On the wall of United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley’s (UWCV) conference room is a quote by legendary late Columbus businessman and philanthropist William Bradley (“Bill”) Turner: “Leadership is an opportunity for service, not an opportunity for power.”

“I think it’s an important statement that we need to do things for the right reasons and do the right things for the community,” Ben Moser, UWCV’s President & CEO, replies when asked to reflect on what stalwart servant leader Turner’s message means to him. “The United Way’s role is to provide a voice for those who don’t have one in the community and advocate for issues that are unseen by a lot of folks.”
Speaking with Columbus & The Valley soon after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C., Moser explains he was in the nation’s capital to advocate for 211, a United Way initiative he describes as “a vital resource for people to call and connect with the help they need in a real time.” It’s recently helped a female caller escape a dangerous domestic situation as well as avoid eviction for a family when a desperate father called 211 in tears.

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/37

09/12/2025

5 Under 40 Spotlight: Denise DuBois Phelan
Director of Membership and Marketing
East Alabama Chamber of Commerce

There was another guy who came on two weeks after me, "Denise Dubois Phelan said of the start of her career at the Phenix Citizen newspaper (now The Citizen of East Alabama). “I was showing him around, and he said, ‘How long have you been here?’ I said, ‘Two weeks.’ He said, ‘Oh? Because you act like you run the place!’"

Just five years later, Phelan was actually running the place. In an industry where the title of “editor/publisher” is something most people have to work for decades to achieve, she’d earned it at just 25. Between her media experience and her current position as director of membership and marketing for the East Alabama Chamber of Commerce, she has never lacked for reminders of how special her community is.

“Honestly, I fell in love with telling stories about the community,” Phelan said. “After 17 years, I figured out that I had written between 7,000 and 7,500 articles, but it’s because people allowed me into their lives. I think God gifts us with certain abilities, and he gave me the ability to love on people, relate to them, listen to them and share their stories. I don’t think you get any better than that in your career.”

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/22

09/11/2025

09/10/2025

5 Under 40 Spotlight: Anthony Montgomery, Jr.
REALTOR®
Coldwell Banker/Kennon, Parker, Duncan & Davis

The COVID pandemic of 2021–22 i s something nobody would choose to relive, but as Columbus realtor Anthony Montgomery can attest, sometimes even the worst circumstances can produce something positive.

Montgomery was working as a budget analyst in the city of Columbus’ finance department when the pandemic hit—and the Federal Reserve, attempting to stabilize the flailing economy, sent interest rates plummeting. “It got down to two or three percent, and I said, ‘Gosh, I think I want to buy a property,’” he recalls. With a little help from his parents, he bought a house and began renting it to tenants.

He liked the passive income coming in, but Montgomery—who remembers watching the “Kennon & Parker Home Show” as a child with his mom—liked the idea of investing in property even more. By October 2021, he had his real estate license, and today he’s a REALTOR® with Coldwell Banker/Kennon, Parker, Duncan & Davis in Columbus.

Read more here: https://issuu.com/columbusandthevalley.com/docs/september_october_2025_columbus_the_valley/18