2022 Business Excellence Winner: Emerald Anderson-Ford of CRED

While growing up in Atlanta, Ga., Emerald spent weekends helping to feed the homeless population and visited prisons and detention centers. She majored in philosophy at Georgia Southern University, where she began to understand the gaps in the education system and those stuck in carceral and poverty cycles. Emerald served as a co-founder of the City Year Office of Equity, later serving as the managing director of diversity and equity strategy. She founded Communities Reaching for Equity and Diversity (CRED), an equity consulting group, specializing in abolition and Black liberation work with multiple school districts, police departments, and other government and nonprofit entities.