Jeanne Simkins Hollis is the founder, President and CEO of Multi-Energy Group, LLC. Ms. Simkins Hollis is an attorney and businesswoman with over 30 years of experience in law, business and complex program management. She has represented a vast array of multinational clients in the banking, corporate, education, transportation and energy/utility sectors, and has served as a partner with several major law firms, specializing in corporate and international business transactions and regulatory matters. Ms. Simkins Hollis has been in the energy, management and water-wastewater business since 1997, having managed numerous projects in these sectors for municipal as well as private sector clients. She has extensive experience in program, project, and asset management, having represented Fortune 500 companies in the management of various aspects of their operations. She has an extensive background in planning and managing cross-functional business operations and has structured public and private partnerships and strategic alliances with major utilities and corporations. Ms. Simkins Hollis has also represented numerous corporations and public sector entities in regulatory matters. Ms. Simkins Hollis is a member of the bar in the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. In addition to her degree from North Carolina Central School of Law, Ms. Simkins Hollis has a Masters of Law (LL.M.) in International Law from Georgetown University School of Law. Ms. Simkins Hollis serves on several non-profit boards and formerly chaired the City of Atlanta Zoning Review Board. Chris Simkins is an award winning news correspondent and documentary producer with the international news organization Voice of America in Washington, DC. In his 35 year journalism career, Chris worked as a general assignment radio and television reporter in Massachusetts, North Carolina and New York. He lived in Hong Kong for four years as VOA's East Asia Pacific Correspondent covering regional news and the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. For the last 20 years, Chris has served as a multi media journalist covering the Black community, including protests in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore. He spent two years reporting across the country on the opioid abuse crisis and produced a 15 part documentary series in 2018. Last year, he was the lead reporter for VOA's Virginia 1619 project commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans brought to colonial Virginia, marking the beginning of more than two centuries of slavery in America. This year, Chris has covered the impact of the coronavirus on Black Americans and racial injustice demonstrations following the death of George Floyd. Currently he is covering the 2020 Presidential Election concentrating on voting rights issues. After working as a deadline reporter for twenty-seven years (including a seven-year stint as White House Correspondent during the Clinton years), veteran journalist and author Deborah Mathis studied under a Shorenstein Fellowship at Harvard, taught at Northwestern University's prestigious Medill School of Journalism, was Communications Director at the Public Justice Foundation, wrote a weekly column for BlackAmericaWeb.com, and is the author of several books, including Yet A Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home, What God Can Do, Sole Sisters: the Joys and Pains of Single Black Women, In the Arena (with Julius Hollis) and Unlucky Number: The Murder of Lottery Winner Abraham Shakespeare (with Gregory Todd Smith).
