The East Lake Foundation announces the promotion and a role change for two current members of its team.

• Catherine Woodling has been promoted from Director of Marketing and Communications to Deputy Executive Director. This promotion recognizes the role Woodling has been serving across the East Lake Initiative and in the community above and beyond her marketing and communications responsibilities for the last several years.
• Dwayne Watkins, currently serving as the Foundation’s Data Manager, will now serve as its Impact and Engagement Manager. This new role better defines the broader outreach and engagement work he has been doing with the Foundation’s Resident and Community Support Program (RCSP), beyond capturing data and recognizes the skills he’s gained as he completes his Masters in Public Health from The George Washington University later this summer.

As announced last month, East Lake Foundation President and CEO Daniel (Danny) Shoy, Jr., will be leaving his role at the Foundation on January 31 after serving the East Lake community for 12 impactful years. On February 14, he will rejoin The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation as its new Managing Director of Youth Development, leading the Blank Family Foundation’s and Blank Family of Businesses’ impact on youth in Georgia and Montana.

Woodling will lead the Foundation while the East Lake Foundation’s Board of Directors works to identify an Executive Director. The Board of Directors is undertaking a focused search for an Executive Director, supported by Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group (NPAG). The Board of Directors expects to name an Executive Director as early as March 2022.

About the East Lake Foundation
Founded in 1995 by developer and philanthropist Tom Cousins, the East Lake Foundation collaborates with public and private organizations to provide tools and equitable opportunities that enable Atlanta’s East Lake residents to build a better future through its integrated model for community revitalization.

The East Lake model includes cradle-to-college education at Drew Charter School and its early learning partners (Atlanta Speech School, the East Lake Family YMCA, and Sheltering Arms East Lake); mixed-income housing at The Villages of East Lake; and community wellness through its Resident and Community Support Program and partners’ programs including The First Tee® of Metro Atlanta at the Charlie Yates Course, Start:ME East Lake, a micro-entrepreneurship program with Emory University, and the East Lake YMCA’s East Lake Healthy Connections. This approach to building a strong community not only helps break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, but also creates a place where people of all ages and incomes choose to live.

The redevelopment of East Lake has become a national model for integrated and holistic community redevelopment in 27 additional neighborhoods across the country through Purpose Built Communities. For more information, please visit www.eastlakefoundation.org.

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