Roy Bahl is Regents Professor of Economics emeritus, and Founding Dean of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Previously he held positions at Syracuse University and at the International Monetary Fund. He has published extensively in the area of public finance and has served as an advisor to international agencies and countries all over the world.

Dianne Wisner currently serves as a member of the Board of the Andrew Young Foundation.

In 2019 the offices of James A. Howard, III MD were closed by the administrator, Dianne Wisner. Dr. Howard had been caring for patient needs for fifty years. He was a physician on call at numerous Atlanta hospitals with his primary medical offices recently moved to Alpharetta, Georgia.

Dianne had formerly served on staff of GoodWorks, International. At GoodWorks, Dianne traveled to Angola as the primary administrator for assistance with the Cabinda Educational Project, a task undertaken at the request of His Excellence Jose Tati, Provincial Governor, Cabinda Republic of Angola. With the support of The Cabinda Association, including Sonangol, Chevron, Agip and Elf oil companies, Dianne traveled to Angola with a number of Atlanta based professional educators. The team was assembled by GoodWorks International, LLC. to include “educational professionals with an interest in sharing their skills and experience.”

The project continued for more than six months, culminating with a 14 day mission by experienced Atlanta education advisors traveling to Angola for meetings and on-site visits.

Despite all potential wealth of Angola due to the vast reservoirs of oil and rich diamond mines, there was at that time economic instability, civil conflict and fighting in the countryside. The Cabinda Education group working with Dianne found efforts to provide schooling for children of Angola suffered due to the political conditions in the country with conditions such as poor and poorly trained teachers, inadequate facilities and resources. Recommendations included an increase of teachers, funding of salaries and training for teachers, adequate facilities and resources, and the government having a commitment to improve education for all of Angola’s children.

In order to provide a reliable assessment on the educational needs of children in country, for evaluation by Chevron who had an interest in the populous due to deep water oil wells with limited access only from Angola. Angola residents, especially children, suffered from multi-years of war while the President’s ‘ex-first’ daughter was Africa’s richest woman who was eventually charged with fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. Our investigation found the children of Angola had extremely limited access to an education: only a few facilities were used for schools and those that were used as schools had requirements that were difficult to meet: only certain items of clothing were allowed to be worn, once the desk were filled, the waiting children were turned away, teachers would not always show up, Donated items such as desk top computers were found stacked outside, rain soaked and broken. We saw no supplies in the classrooms other than a few desk.

Dianne traveled with a Chevron representative by helicopter to report to the Governor of one of the Angola provinces recognized for the number of diamond mines in the area. The Governor who was supporting the Education Project listened to the interpreter’s message from Dianne and offered to consider supporters with any changes in the educational system.

Formerly, Dianne had worked for Andrew Young at the Atlanta offices of the AOC, challenged with the goal of winning the bid for Atlanta to host the Olympics.

After accompanying the Bid committee to Japan where Atlanta was selected to host the Olympics, she worked on staff with Ambassador Young and was instrumental in having financial support for a Olympic Aid, an effort to raise resources for providing books and educational products to children around the globe, a project supported by UNICEF International and designated as Olympic Aid. She helped in soliciting $1million for the project.

Prior to moving to Atlanta and volunteering at the Atlanta Olympic Committee offices Dianne was a news reporter for the Hartford Courant, in Hartford, Connecticut, the oldest continuing daily newspaper in the country.

Dianne had moved to Farmington, Connecticut from Los Gatos, California where she graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Political Science while also working for the Jimmy Carter for President campaign at the Santa Clara Country Democratic headquarters in San Jose. She also co-chaired the Susanne Wilson campaign for a second term on the San Jose City Council which won in a landslide.

Dianne had moved with her family to the town of Los Gatos in Santa Clara County from Allentown Pennsylvania.

In Allentown, Dianne volunteered at Confront, one of the earliest non-residential drug rehabilitation facilities in the country. She was soon hired full time and was then honored as ‘Woman of the Year’ by the city of Allentown for her work with adolescents and their families. This, although she had absolutely no experience with drug use or adolescents. On leaving to move to California where she would continue her studies she donated the amount she had been paid back to the organization.

In 1964, after graduating from high school at Richmond Academy in Augusta, Georgia, she worked at WRDW Radio as account manager and occasionally helped providing voice overs for commercials for sponsors.

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