She is former public relations and publicity director for Bergdorf Goodman, vice president of Calisch Associates, and advertising director at Frances Denny and worked in marketing and public relations for Moet and Chandon.

In addition, Susan has served on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She is a member of the Bedford Garden Club, which was a founding member of the Garden Club of America. She serves on the board of the New York Botanical Garden and on the horticulture committee at Wave Hill, Bronx, New York, and on the board of the Irish Georgian Society.

Her Nantucket garden was archived for the Smithsonian in 2012. She has been working on her “garden by the sea” on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, for twenty years, and began work on a quasi-Japanese garden at her home in Florida three years ago. Susan Burke gardens in multiple locations, beginning 35 years ago with a cottage garden around an 1805 farmhouse in Bedford, New York. Sharon and Joe also have a home and garden in Cashiers, NC, which was included on the 2018 Society of Fellows garden-study tour of Highlands, Cashiers, and Lake Toxaway, NC. She was elected to the board of directors of the Garden Conservancy in June 2020 and became Treasurer in 2021 and Vice-Chair in December 2023. Sharon and her husband, Joe, became members of the Garden Conservancy Society of Fellows in 2018. Foundation.Īn avid gardener as well as traveler, Sharon always happily heads home to her garden on the Tennessee River. Sharon supports the university that made Knoxville her home and has previously held a position on the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees and Board of Directors for the U.T. She has served as board chair for the Knoxville Chamber, Leadership Knoxville, YMCA, United Way, and has also chaired United Way’s annual fundraising campaign. Sharon’s long-standing community commitment includes social service, the arts, economic development, and education. Today, The Trust Company manages over $4.7 billion in assets and employs 100 people across three cities. While still in her twenties, she became the bank’s youngest Senior Vice President then at age thirty-five, founded The Trust Company. After graduating with a Finance degree, she began as a clerk in the Trust Department of Valley Fidelity Bank. His wife, Betty, shares his passion for gardening and is past president of her Garden Club of America club in Atlanta and chairman of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.Īn Atlanta native, Sharon Jones Pryse attended the University of Tennessee and has never considered leaving Knoxville. Among other civic and business honors, he received the 2013 Business Person of the Year Lifetime Achievement award from the Metro Atlanta Chamber and was named to the Atlanta Business Chronicle's list of Most Admired CEOs in 2018. He is the past president of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and a graduate of Washington & Lee University, where he served as a trustee for nearly a decade. He has also held many other leadership positions in his community, including founding president of the Southeastern Horticultural Society and chairman of the board of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, Robert founded the Southern Highlands Reserve, a nationally recognized native plant arboretum and research center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. An inveterate, dirt-under-the-fingernails gardener with a rosarian as his father and Garden Club of America horticulture judge as his mother, Robert’s love of the natural world developed at an early age, hiking, and camping as an Eagle Scout. Robert Balentine, chairman of Balentine, the Atlanta-based wealth management firm, was elected to the Garden Conservancy board of directors in June 2015 and became Vice-Chair in September 2018 and Chair in December 2023. THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers Today, our board of directors is composed of 26 men and women from across the country, led by Courtnay S.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in New York State, The Garden Conservancy was founded in 1989 by renowned plantsman Frank Cabot.

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