Turner Business

A recent post here at Turner Business explains how the recent Pinnacle Financial-Synovus merger may impact Greater Columbus, Georgia. That post draws heavily from Tyson Begly's column in the latest issue of Columbus & the Valley magazine. A recent report by Caitlin Mullen of  BankingDive  adds more information about the merger to Begly's column. Mullen's report covers the highlights of an investor conference about the merger that Pinnacle CEO Terry Turner and Synovus CEO Kevin Blair attended. Turner, 70, and Blair, 54, informed conference attendees that they agreed up front that Blair would be CEO of the combined company, and that there would not be any flip-flopping of CEOs in the future, which was the ill-advised practice established by Truist after it was formed by a 2019 merger between BB&T and Sun Trust. Turner and Bradley also decided the merged entity would use Pinnacle’s go-to-market and incentive compensation models, as well as its branding, and the core ...

[Inspired by the forward-thinking former Harvard University President Derek Bok, Thinking out of the Bok is an occasional forum for the presentation of ideas about higher education. This entry is provided by a management scholar.] According to a recent report by Sara Weissman for Inside Higher Ed , the microcredential landscape is currently referred to in academic circles as the "wild west." With tens of thousands of certificate providers, both online and face-to-face, now in operation, she writes that academic accrediting agencies are stepping in to bring some order and to branch out into a new market. The New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) are two prominent accreditors that have begun examining the quality of certificate program providers. In preparing do so, Weissman reports that the first of these organizations spent two years developing a program quality rubric and, according to Weissman, tested it on a cohort of ...

The TSYS School held another successful mock interview event for its cybersecurity Nexus students last Friday. Faculty servicing the program  were honored to welcome more than 30 professionals from 18 companies and organizations in the region. These include Aflac, Americold Logistics, Ankerpak, Columbus Consolidated Government, Columbus State University, Columbus Water Works, Maneuver Center of Excellence, Global Payments, Lightspeed Datalinks, Maximus, NextGen Healthcare, Nexus Pain Center, Optiv, Project Management Institute, Synovus, TrollEye Security, TSYS and Western Governors University.

On February 3, 2025, U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14196 titled “A Plan for Establishing a United States Sovereign Wealth Fund.” The announcement, conducted before a worldwide television and internet audience, sent people around globe scrambling for an explanation of “sovereign wealth fund,” as evidenced by Google Trends data on the day of the announcement.  Many of the internet searches described above likely led to Investopedia , which defines a sovereign wealth fund as a state-owned investment fund comprised of money and other assets emanating from a variety of sources and used for a variety of purposes. New research by Center for Economic Education Director  Frank Mixon and the University of New Haven's Kamal Upadhyaya asserts that, at the time of the announcement, most Americans did not know that  the U.S. is home to more than 20 domestic sovereign wealth funds, with the first being the Texas Permanent School Fund, which was established in 1...

Monday will be a big day for Madison Henderson , as the Turner College alum will begin her professional career as the Turner College's new Recruiting and Engagement Specialist. Profiled on the pages of Turner Business about 10 months ago, Madison graduated from the Turner College with a BBA in marketing in December of 2024. During her undergraduate studies, Madison served as  Vice President of Communications for the CSU Marketing Club and as a Turner College Student Ambassador. Congratulations Madison and welcome aboard.

Recent news about the merger between Nashville-based Pinnacle Financial Partners and Columbus-based Synovus has left many in the local community uncertain about the impact of the merger in Greater Columbus. Fortunately, the "Valley  Business Insider" column by Tyson Begly that appears in the latest issue of Columbus & the Valley magazine addresses this uncertainty. Begly is currently the CFO at Highline,  a fiber broadband company based in West Point, Georgia, that employs over 270 professionals and serves rural communities in six states.   He holds an undergraduate degree in software engineering from Auburn University and an MBA from Duke University, along with certificates in business law and fintech from the University of California-Berkeley and New York University. The crux of Begly's column is that the Columbus community should be cautiously optimistic about the merger, as Kevin Blair, the current President/CEO of Synovus, is scheduled to be the CEO of the combi...

The Turner College is well represented among the Columbus Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Columbus Class of 2026. Among the class is Will Heard , a CPA and partner at Robinson, Grimes & Company. Heard earned an undergraduate degree from Berry College and an MBA from the Turner College.   Another Turner College alum among the Class of 2026 is Ralph King , the Business and Community Development Manager at Liberty Utilities. King has held his current position since 2017, prior to which he was a sales representative for Foley Materials. King is a graduate of Hardaway High School in Columbus. Next is Renee Lambert , an Employee Experience Consultant at Aflac. Lamber earned two degrees from the Turner College - a BBA in management with a concentration is human resources in 2014, and an MS in organizational leadership in 2015. During her graduate studies, Lambert held a graduate assistantship that focused on  assisting business students with business courses and career developme...