The 2023 CEOs of the Year

Celebrating five leaders who are uplifting their companies — and Memphis.

For more than a decade now, Inside Memphis Business has celebrated CEOs of the Year, recognizing visionaries and executives who go above and beyond to elevate both their companies and their community. And every year, we gather the CEOs at a sponsored awards breakfast to honor them in front of their peers and the community, and hear them speak about their work in Memphis.

Last year, we revised our longstanding format of selecting four winners based on company size. Instead, Inside Memphis Business now looks for five worthy leaders who are going above and beyond for their companies. Memphis is bold, creative, and forward-thinking, and there are so many executives and CEOs who embody those traits as they elevate their teams to the next level.

Throughout our nomination and selection process, we received plenty of outstanding candidates and top-quality executives who hail from a diverse range of industries. This year, our five CEO of the Year winners have demonstrated outstanding leadership and overcome the serious challenges facing their organizations.

Russell Wigginton at the National Civil Rights Museum is laser-focused on preparing the organization, and its mission, for a step onto the national stage. David S. Waddell weathered a fierce financial storm at Waddell & Associates, and has his wealth management firm growing at an unprecedented rate. Sally Jones Heinz at the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association has continued to reduce senior food insecurity through the Meals on Wheels program, and took that fight all the way to the House Rules Committee. Doug Browne has kept the historic Peabody Hotel as a local and national treasure, and constantly works to better Memphis as Greater Memphis Chamber chairman. And Archer Malmo CEO Russ Williams recently led celebrations of the firm’s 70th birthday as an independent agency before transferring ownership of the company into the hands of its 140 employees.

All of our 2023 CEO of the Year winners have done an exceptional job, and we hope to see you at 7:30 a.m. on March 7th at Memphis Botanic Garden to hear from them and to celebrate all they’ve done for Memphis. Those interested can buy tickets here. In the meantime, enjoy our five winners’ stories in the profiles featured on the following pages. Every story and anecdote should fill you with a growing feeling of civic pride. After all, every success they toast is another win for Memphis.

Dr. Russell Wigginton — National Civil Rights Museum

The head of the National Civil Rights Museum prepares the organization to take an assertive step into the national scene.

Every chief executive officer has a job, but not every CEO can be said to have a mission. Certainly not the kind Russell Wigginton is tasked with leading as president of the National Civil Rights Museum. He considers his words carefully in defining the synchronistic missions of man and museum: “How do we lift up the power of the movement and the comprehensive experience of African Americans in this country, and put it in a framework so it’s not just arm’s length for

our country and our world? Whether you were living [during the civil rights movement] or not, you can touch it, you can relate to it, you can be challenged by it … in your life. You have to do more than create beautiful exhibits or have conversations. You have to create space by which people, regardless of background, can be in community and have both a collective and personal experience. You have to live it.”

Having helped create the museum’s first internship program in the late ’90s (during his days as a history professor at Rhodes College), and having served on the NCRM board for more than a decade, Wigginton lived the institution’s mission for a quarter-century before being named president in August 2021. “I spend very little time thinking about the alleged differences we have, across the spectrum,” says Wigginton. “I think more about the commonality.”

Born in Louisville, Wigginton’s roots spring from soil stirred by titans of the civil rights movement. His father graduated from that city’s Central High School with Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay at the time) and later shared a residential suite at Howard University with Stokely Carmichael. “I was an introspective kid,” says Wigginton. “I would play outside, but then I’d stand in the corner, easing in on conversations [with adults]. I loved their stories. I learned so much about their journeys.”

Wigginton started at point guard for the Rhodes basketball team his first two years as an undergrad, but hung up his sneakers as a junior to give more time and energy to his studies (he was a history major) and his role as president of the Black Students Association. A glimpse of his future, and current role with the NCRM, came in January 1987 when Wigginton organized a campus speaker for the first official Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. “Rhodes was still having classes on the holiday,” explains Wigginton, “but we set up the podium right in front of the cafeteria door at lunchtime. We were going to build an audience.”

Fast-forward three-and-a-half decades, and what kind of audience is Wigginton building as a CEO? The NCRM is a relatively small operation (50 employees), but reaches well beyond the Mid-South. “The most important thing for me,” emphasizes Wigginton, “is that our employees treat everybody here with dignity and respect. I don’t talk to them much about their work. If you’re not passionate about your job in a place like this, your peers will likely drive you away. Take personal pride in your responsibilities. I don’t have a deeper message than that.”

How does the NCRM improve? How does Wigginton expand its impact? “I’m a historian by training,” he says, “but I spend most of my time thinking about the future. This is the time for us to make an assertive step into the national space. We do that in areas where we are distinctive. We have a voice, a platform, and a responsibility to lead in education, arts and culture, and economic empowerment. We aim to work with national partners to accent our voice at a time when it’s noisy in our world. A place like ours, when we speak boldly, with facts and data, the noise can temper itself, and we can be heard.” — Frank Murtaugh

David S. Waddell — Waddell & Associates

Focusing on the human aspects of finance has poised the firm for continued growth.

David Waddell has a simple dream: He wants to be able to spend more time on his boat. It’s a fitting goal, as his parents, Duke and Clara, first came up with the idea for their company while living on a boat in Ocean Ridge, Florida. But it’s also a tough reality to achieve for the busy CEO of wealth management firm Waddell & Associates (W&A), who splits time working with clients; managing teams in Memphis, Nashville, and a small satellite office in Aspen; and overseeing

the company’s growth. But keeping sight of the dream helps keep his eye on the prize. And Waddell isn’t the only one at the office with a specific dream.

“Everyone at the office made a little photographic cutout of what they were striving for and put it on their desk,” he says. “Karen down the hall from me wants to own a castle in Europe, which isn’t as expensive as you might think, so she’s got a picture of a castle. Teresa next door wants to spend a month in Ireland, for example. So we all did this, and the firm came together and we all thought about how we make these dreams achievable for each individual.”

Having these goals keeps Waddell and his team focused on the future, but that kind of approach extends beyond those in his employ. He thinks of his company as a relationship business, with a client-centric approach, rather than simply one of transactions. And their work handling portfolios goes well beyond simply analyzing numbers on a page. “We do so much more than that,” he says. “We view wealth more comprehensively than just numbers; it’s about setting a visible goal, rather than growing a number. It’s about getting to that specific moment of satisfaction. What are our clients aiming for, and how do we tailor our approach so they can hit their specific targets?”

W&A uses all the connections at their disposal to help clients, even those outside the world of finance and economics. If a client needs a new doctor, the team looks for one they can recommend; if one is looking to purchase a new boat, they’ll put out feelers to boat brokers in their network. “It’s a vast ecosystem we’ve built up that comes to bear on client relationships,” he says, “more so than your typical salesperson or financial advisor.”

Focusing on the human aspect has led W&A to great success since Waddell took over the family business in 2004 from his parents. And with the company recently seeing considerable growth, he’s excited for the third generation of company leaders to help propel the business forward. “We brought Sean Gould into the partnership last year, representing generation three at the company. You have to grow partnerships with intentionality. They’re people who go into battle with you, who you trust your kids with, invite over to Thanksgiving dinners.”

With additional leadership power, the firm seeks to embrace more innovation. “We’re bolstering our mastery of investments and financial planning,” says Waddell. “We’re looking to add rockstar brokers in all our markets, and we’re thinking about a COO search.” Waddell also plans to utilize open architecture platforms (which enable investment firms to offer both in-house and third-party products and services) to help fully optimize costs for clients, such as insurance premiums, debt, and other expenses. Getting those under one umbrella will help grow the balance sheet for clients, and the firm is ready to embrace new technology that will let it break into spaces it hasn’t occupied before.

And despite a rollercoaster couple of years due to Covid and an economic downturn, the company is now experiencing its fastest rate of growth ever. “For many of us, it unfortunately wasn’t our first recession. So 2022 was kind of for playing defense, mitigating losses. Now, the market is more vulnerable, and it’s time to go on the offensive. We’ll have negotiating power, we’ve got the technology, and we’ve got the client appetite for it. At W&A we’ve got the right employees and the right culture, and we’re ready to keep growing.” — Samuel X. Cicci

Sally Jones Heinz — MIFA

Tackling food insecurity among seniors on both the hyperlocal and national stages is one of her priorities.

Growing up in Memphis, Sally Jones Heinz was familiar with the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA). Her father taught at Rhodes College, where a fellow faculty member’s spouse — her best friend’s mother — recruited other spouses to volunteer with the organization that provided meals to food-insecure seniors and assisted vulnerable families in crisis. “Because it was the 1970s, the volunteers were mostly women, who were really yearning for something

impactful to do,” Heinz recalls. “They came to MIFA and just started all kinds of amazing programs.”

Decades later, in 2007, once Heinz was around the age these women were when they started volunteering, she, too, would find herself building on MIFA’s legacy as vice president of development. At the time, Heinz’s parents were aging. “I was at that point where I was thinking about what caretaking was going to look like for them and what their lives were going to look like,” she says. “And so the mission of MIFA — supporting the independence of seniors — felt really attractive for me.” By 2011, she was named president and CEO of the nonprofit.

Currently, MIFA offers basic interventions to prevent homelessness for Shelby County families, for instance, by providing utility, rent, and mortgage assistance for those who have lost income or experienced a recent crisis. But perhaps MIFA’s most well-known program is Meals on Wheels, which started in 1975 and delivered meals to almost 4,000 seniors in 2022, with hopes to grow this year both in terms of impact and the number of clients served.

Last year, the West End Home Foundation awarded MIFA a grant to provide 50 of its Meals on Wheels clients with tablets outfitted for older individuals to bridge the digital divide that can isolate them. In general, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, technological innovation has helped smooth day-to-day operations within the nonprofit, including tracking meal deliveries and administering emergency assistance applications online. “We’ve learned that to really continue to be impactful in our community, we have to be strategic and innovative,” Heinz says. “And the pandemic certainly gave us a crash course in that.

“I think back to that experience, now that we’re maybe emerging from the pandemic, and I feel like one of the reasons MIFA was so strong was that we kept our mission as our North Star. And so there was really never a question. We all just did it.”

And that work didn’t go unnoticed. In 2021, U.S. Representative Jim McGovern from Massachusetts invited Heinz to testify before the House Rules Committee about food insecurity among seniors. This meeting ultimately led, in 2022, to the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, which created a framework for ending hunger by 2030.

“Hunger shouldn’t continue to be the problem of the size that it is and in a country like the United States,” Heinz says. “Memphis, until last year, was ranked [by The State of Senior Hunger] as having the highest rate of food insecurity for seniors of any large metropolitan area. Now, we’re number three [at a rate of 11.4 percent].”

While innovation is emphasized in the coming years’ strategic plan to change that figure, delivering meals and offering a bit of company remain at the core of the nonprofit, and the results continue to be positive, with clients reporting feeling stronger, eating healthier, and living independently longer.

“I try to get out and deliver when I can because there’s nothing else that reminds you of the importance of the work in the same way,” Heinz says. “There are very few volunteer opportunities that give you the chance to really engage with someone else. It’s so elegantly simple that sometimes you have to remind people that so many [positive effects] can be layered into that delivery.” — Abigail Morici

Doug Browne — Peabody Hotels and Resorts

Browne keeps the internationally renowned Peabody Memphis a fun place for employees, guests, and even dogs and ducks.

You can’t tell the story of Douglas Browne without mentioning Tango. As general manager of The Peabody, Browne strives to make the hotel a fun place for employees to work as well as a fine destination for guests. His beloved dog, Tango, gets along with everyone, takes meetings, and is content to hang out with his duck chew toy (but he doesn’t mess with the live ducks in the lobby).

It’s a sign of leadership that Browne wants the environment at The Peabody to be inviting to workers as well as visitors — all of whom keep the storied hotel at the top of many hospitality lists. And the first thing he’ll tell you is that growing and sustaining an organization means paying attention to his team. “You’re only as good as the people that surround you, and this is hard for some people,” he says. “Sometimes it’s even hard for me listening to those people because they’re not always going to tell you what you want to hear.”

But the team has been crucial to keeping The Peabody successful, whether through normal times or through a pandemic. “We kept our leadership team intact during Covid,” he says, “and we are seeing it pay off when other hotels around the country are suffering. We’re actually thriving.”

The Peabody kept its sales team together, as well as conference services and marketing. “We came out of Covid ready to go, whereas a lot of hotels had to rebuild.” Even so, the pandemic meant The Peabody had to replace about 400 employees. But welcoming them into the culture and training them were greatly helped by having stable leadership. And, Browne is quick to note, the ducks never stopped marching.

Browne started at The Peabody 20 years ago and faced immediate challenges. “We needed to completely redo the hotel,” he says. “The guest rooms were tired, the lobby was tired. Everything had really been run down. Tunica had just opened, and a lot of our staff left to go there.”

He jumped on the challenges and fell in love with Memphis after his career had taken him to properties around the country, plus the Caribbean and Mexico. He’d expected to move on after two or three years, as was common for hotel executives, but Browne soon realized he was where he wanted to be. He was getting support from hotel owners Belz Enterprises, and Downtown was gathering steam with more people moving in and more restaurants adding to the appeal.

Soon enough, Browne was getting more and more attached to the city. He’s chairman of the board of the Greater Memphis Chamber, and has long associations with Memphis in May, the Liberty Bowl, the Orpheum, and other boards. And The Peabody is constantly upgrading, nowadays with a $2.5 million elevator modernization, a $10 million rooms renovation, and an upcoming new restaurant, the Peabody Diner.

It’s his mission (and Tango’s) to keep the landmark hotel vital in coming years. “We like calling ourself the South’s Grand Hotel,” Browne says. “We’re staying true to our roots. And it’s important that we create memories. There is a Memphis feel and a sense of place. There’s quality and luxury and you really feel the history of it.” — Jon W. Sparks

Russ Williams — Archer Malmo

The CEO maintains a successful independent ad agency — that in 2022, was sold to its employees— through creativity, humility, and adaptability.

Champagne corks popped and streamers streamed in 2022 at Archer Malmo, as the agency celebrated its 70th anniversary as an independent entity. The firm has continued to excel throughout its history, becoming a major player in the Memphis market, and boasting another team in Austin alongside remote workers nationwide. Russ Williams, CEO, has been a significant force behind that sustained success, though he won’t say so. The now two-time CEO of the Year award-winner told Inside Memphis Business in his original 2016 profile that an agency’s high achievement comes from “filling your team with a truckload of intellectual horsepower … they line up to tell me how the world is changing and how we have to adapt.”

Seven years on, and Williams’ message remains largely the same. “Our product here at Archer Malmo is our talent,” he says. “You’ve got lots of creative people working together. You create this culture and this process where all these talented people can collaborate and execute great ideas, where the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts.”

Recognizing the importance of his employees isn’t just lip service for Williams. In the summer of 2022, he and the agency’s other owners decided to double down and transfer ownership to their 140 employees through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). That decision kept the focus firmly on cultivating a good workplace culture, and also helps maintain the agency’s autonomy going forward.

“It’s a firm stake in the ground to remain fiercely independent,” says Williams. “Employees, as owners of the company, have a greater sense of belonging, influence, and opportunity. And it helps to attract and retain talent.”

It’s a big change for the agency, but adaptability is a cornerstone of Williams’ tenure at Archer Malmo. Their line of work, he says, is very dynamic and volatile during the best of times; firms risk closure or acquisitions if they aren’t consistently at the top of their game. “There aren’t many agencies of our size that have been independent for so long,” he says. “It’s a challenge, and this new path only helps make us more durable.” It also, adds Williams, helps the firm chart a course under new leadership.

“I think what I, and previous leaders at Archer Malmo, have done is look at themselves as stewards of the business,” he says. “It was successful before I came along, and will remain so after I step down. As our ownership group gets older, we do have to think about that leadership transition when the time comes.”

While nothing is set in stone, Williams says he plans to step down as CEO in the next couple of years and transition into a role as CFO. “That generational transition isn’t an overnight thing, and I’d really like to continue working for this company that I love. But it’s beginning to feel like the sunset is approaching for my generation here and the opportunities we’ve had to lead, and it’s time for the sun to shine on new generations.”

Until then, Archer Malmo will continue to diligently and creatively serve their clients, just as they’ve done for 70 years and counting. And if new trends and technology shake up the landscape over the next decade, don’t bet against the agency. “If you wake up every day thinking you have all the answers, it’s a struggle to survive and prosper,” says Williams. “I think humility, adaptability, and openness to change will always be key factors in leadership here at Archer Malmo.” — Samuel X. Cicci