The many faces of Savannah entrepreneurship

I was honored again to win Connect Savannah‘s Best Local Columnist in their annual readers’ poll. I have sort of a built-in advantage, even though I freelance for the Savannah Morning News and not Connect itself: I write 156 columns a year.

You can read about all the winners here.

I was also surprised to see that I was the runner-up for the best local blog to winner Jessica Leigh Lebos’ Yo Yenta.

I took a bunch of photos at Connect’s party to launch the issue this past Tuesday evening. I imagined that I would walk around and take a lot of crowd photos, but I became interested in the faces of the winners — happy people talking.

And I became increasingly intrigued by the diversity of the winners. Maybe not all the winners are “entrepreneurs” in the purest sense, but they have all put themselves out there as leaders of Savannah’s culture and economy.

They have taken risks, made decisions that others have questioned, and have succeeded in significant ways.

The list is particularly heavy with small business owners, who are especially important to Savannah’s future.

Since I’ve been writing a column about city life for more than a decade, I know a lot of these folks personally. It’s a unique and lucky position that I’ve found myself in — not everyone has the jobs or the interests to move so freely through so many different circles.

I’m not going to take the time to label all the photos in the attached album, so just enjoy the diverse collection of people who make Savannah go.

If you’ve never viewed one of these galleries, I recommend clicking in the lower right corner to go full-screen, then you can click, drag, scroll, use the directional arrows, etc.