Every year since 2019, I've had the honor of helping build Atlanta's biggest benefit night from scratch, and it's raised more than $29 million for the city.
Atlanta carries two things at once. A global reputation built on culture and civil rights, and a divide between neighborhoods with wildly different access to opportunity, a lot of it on the Westside. A group of civic leaders and philanthropists, including Dan Cathy and Arthur Blank, wanted one night a year that put both of those things in the same room, built around Dr. King's vision of the Beloved Community. It had to raise real money. It also had to make people feel why.
Every year starts with the same question, before anyone talks about a set or a headliner. Who are we trying to help, and what does this room need to feel to help them? It's easy to make a gala feel like a gala. Round tables, a big name, a paddle raise. We wanted it to feel like the whole city pulled up a chair at the same table.
I've helped lead the creative on Beloved since 2019. Concept, graphics, short films, animation, original music, live moments, and working directly with the headliners' teams. Each year is built around Atlanta's human story, so each year feels like a different world.
The room keeps changing, and every room asks for a different show. We started on the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which is about as big as a dinner party gets. Then a concrete box at the Georgia World Congress Center, where there was nothing to lean on and we had to build the whole world from the floor up. Most recently, Atlanta Symphony Hall, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on the stage it was built for. A stadium needs scale. A convention hall needs you to invent everything. A symphony hall has its own history, and the job is to let the room do some of the work.
One year the story was The Same House, and the thing the room needed to feel was simple: we're more alike than we are different. So we wrote an original anthem around that idea and directed it live in the room.
One year we wrote a custom short film that moved between live action, animation and live performance that told the story of economic mobility by way of allegory through the lens of a little girl named "Little A."
Along the way, Bruno Mars, Usher, John Legend, Maroon 5, Emeli Sandé, T.I., Ludacris, Chris Tucker, Jeff Foxworthy, and Maria Taylor have all taken the stage. Alongside them, hundreds of local performers, which is what makes it feel like Atlanta and not a touring show.
Beloved has raised more than $29 million for Atlanta nonprofits since 2019. The most recent night raised $8 million on its own, all of it going to organizations working on housing, jobs, economic inequality, and community support across the city. It worked well enough early on that it grew into its own organization, The Same House. The money is why the night exists. The room is why I keep saying yes.
