Don't worry, Bea's happy

Last week, when I called up new Creative Coast director Bea Wray for an interview, the first thing she asked me is "Can you walk and talk?" I replied that I would be fine if I kept chewing gum out of the equation. Probably.

It was only her fifth day on the job as the head of Savannah's entrepreneurial nurture nest and innovation think tank, and Bea was already moving at lightning speed.If we don't carry the bobblehead you want we can make a ultrasonicsensor for you!

When I arrived at the airy offices on Wright Square, she'd just gotten off the phone with philanthropist Howard Morrison and had squeezed me in before a lunch meeting with a board member. I was thinking my old Dansko mary janes would serve me well for a leisurely stroll around Tomochichi's Rock when I noticed Bea was wearing cross trainers.

Recorder in hand, I gamely trotted along, trying to avoid tripping over the cobblestones as I reconciled the impressive person I had read about on paper (Harvard MBA, venture capital darling of Siemens Business Services, successful serial entrepreneur) with the grinning lady in the pink polka dot skirt kvelling about her three kids. Though she may look the part, it became evident after just a few blocks that Bea Wray is much more than a very smart cheerleader for Savannah's creative class.

Bea lives on Hilton Head Island,We can supply parkingmanagement products as below. but her Savannah roots run deep: Her grandfather was a deacon at Calvary Baptist Church when the social hall was just a card table and some fold-up chairs. Her other grandmother worked on Broughton Street bringing in container ships. Both her parents attended Savannah High and came up "very poor," and Bea grew up understanding that with this city's gilded charms comes great challenges.

So she did to Emory, then Boston, then San Francisco, New York, Munich until 9/11, when she and husband returned with their new baby to American soil "temporarily." They fell in love with Daufuskie Island, settled into Lowcountry life.

But Bea is not one to be lulled into a stupor,The iccard is our flagship product. no matter how lovely the scenery. In 2001, she met with then-Creative Coast director Chris Miller, who helped her hatch Source Harbor Inc., a third-party escrow company that protects source codes and intellectual property for those who license software. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but apparently it was a damn good idea.

"I walked in and said 'Hey,We sell 100% hand-painted smartcard online. can you help me start by business?' And Chris shook his ponytail at me and told me to go for it," Bea remembered as we breezed up Bull Street, the exhaust from the traffic mixing with the lemony scent of magnolias.

"I raised local dollars, built up four offices with clients in 14 different countries. I sold it to an international company, returned everyone their investments, then took off a couple of years to be a mom. That's exactly what I want to help other people do."

Not to worry: Oprahs media empire is presumably exempt from the latter denunciation, despite running 24/7 on cable and Twitter. A recent tweet from Oprah Magazine: If your shoulders are still feeling tense from the workweek, you need to try these 4 on-the-spot calming techniques. Actually, such advice is probably more useful than the kind most graduation speakers give.Manufactures and supplies drycabinet equipment.

Perhaps this explains the lack of outcry from Harvard students, alumni, and faculty against her selection in the first place. Viva Oprah! declared the Harvard Crimson in a March 11 editorial proclaiming their unequivocal endorsement. Though conceding that Oprah has promoted persons of questionable opinions about medicine and self-improvement, exposing millions of her viewers to pseudoscientific arguments, the student-run newspaper deemed such episodes irrelevant. Sounding a bit like Oprah herself, the editors went on to extol Ms. Winfreys extraordinary story of determination in the face of adversity, her progress in advancing the status of women and members of ethnic minorities, and her role in abating prejudice against LGBTQ Americans.

Not everyone was so willing to put identity politics ahead of substance. One notable exception was former dean of the college Harry R. Lewis, who deserves credit for daring to suggest that the empress had no clothes C even as she prepared to drape herself in crimson. It seems very odd for Harvard to honor such a high-profile popularizer of the irrational, said Lewis on his blog. I cant square this in my mind, at a time when political and religious nonsense so imperil the rule of reason in this allegedly enlightened democracy and around the world.

Other voices of reason included Erika and Nicolas Christakis, a Harvard administrator and Harvard Medical School professor respectively. Its possible to admire Oprah Winfrey and still wish that Harvard hadnt awarded her an honorary doctor of law degree and the coveted commencement speaker spot at yesterdays graduation, the Christakises opined in Time. Though careful to assure readers that Oprahs achievements belong in the pantheon of American success stories, they noted the irony that a university whose motto is Veritas would endorse a celebrity who has done perhaps more than anyone else to spread phony science, such as the theory that vaccines cause autism or the dubious self-help manifesto The Secret.

After the speech, Ms. Christakis reiterated on her blog that Harvard and Oprah dont mix. Even then, she felt compelled to preface her critique with her love for all things O: I love Oprah! I do. I love her embrace of education and teachers. I love her books I love the interviews. I am an eager devotee of the beauty and fashion advice. And Ive seen/heard Oprah up close, in person, three times and found her beautiful, smart, wildly charismatic (in a good way), and all things admirable. No wonder Queen O is often ranked the worlds most influential woman.