Magazine's 100 Most Influential Georgians include four from Gville area

Georgia Trend’s 100 Most Influential Georgians for 2025 includes four people from the immediate Gainesville area: Carol Burrell of Gainesville, Steve Gooch (Dahlonega), Russ McMurry (Buford), and Kevin Tanner (Dawsonville).

Burrell is the retiring President & CEO of Northeast Georgia Health System, Gooch serves as Senate Majority Leader in the Georgia General Assembly, McMurry, a former head of the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) office in Gainesville, is GDOT Commissioner, and Tanner serves as Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.

You can read more about these four and what Georgia Trend says in choosing them and find a list and details about each of the 100 here: Georgia Trend : January 2025

About the Author

Ken Stanford is Online News Editor for GLORY 97.5, a position he has held since August 2022.

Ken was born in Moultrie, Georgia, and says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 he wanted to be a “radio announcer.” That dream was realized when he was hired by Moultrie radio station WMTM in 1960 at the age of 15 as a weekend disc jockey. A 1963 graduate of Moultrie (now Colquitt County) High School, he has spent his whole career in Georgia working for stations in Atlanta, Marietta, and Gainesville – most recently as News Director for 40 years at WDUN in Gainesville. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Ken retired in 2011 but came out of retirement last year to help GLORY, on a part-time basis, beef-up its online news presence.

He is the recipient of many Associated Press awards and is a former judge of state and national Associated Press broadcast news contests. In 2005, he was presented with the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2019 was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.

He lives in Gainesville with his wife of 52 years, the former Sandra McKnight of Clio, Alabama, and they have one child, a daughter, Lisa, who lives in Cumming with her family.