Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Award

2026 Award Recipient

Lori George

Fortune 500 Board Director and Nominating & Governance Chair, Shake Shack

Independent Board Director, Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED, Inc.

Retired Executive,
The Coca-Cola Company

2026 Keynote Speaker

Dottie Pepper

PGA Tour Announcer for
CBS Sports, 17-time LPGA Tour winner, two-time major champion, and Bestselling Author

About the Award

The Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Award, launched by OnBoard in 2003, is conferred annually to the board member who has served as an outstanding role model for advancing the mission of increasing the number of women in executive leadership and on corporate boards.

Nominees must currently serve on a Georgia for-profit company board (public or private) or be a Georgia resident serving on an out-of-state for-profit company board. Further qualifications include an overall commitment to professional excellence, outstanding achievement in their business profession or in community leadership, supporting those in realizing their full potential, and advocating to increase gender parity on corporate boards. Presented by OnBoard’s Premier Partner KPMG, the award is celebrated annually with our flagship November event.

The award is named in honor of Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans, one of the first women to serve as a director of a major American corporation. In 1934, she was appointed to the board of directors of The Coca-Cola Company, a position she held for nearly 20 years.

2025 Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Award Dinner

Past Award Winners

Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED, Shake Shack

Lori George currently serves as an independent director on the boards of Shake Shack and Coca-Cola Bottling Company, UNITED (CCBCU). She chairs Shake Shack’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and serves on its Compensation Committee. She sits on CCBCU’s Audit Committee. She previously served on the board of Pioneer Natural Resources prior to its acquisition by ExxonMobil in May 2024. She served on its Health, Safety and Environment and Compensation and Leadership Development Committees.

She is the former Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Officer for The Coca-Cola Company. During her tenure, Coca-Cola set bold public goals, including being 50% led by women and mirroring its markets by 2030, built a more inclusive culture, launched the first-ever global pay equity analysis, and tied executive pay to progress on DEI. She was with the company for 20 years, having spent most of them in a variety of roles with increasing responsibility within public affairs and communications. Prior to leading DEI, she led community and stakeholder relations for its North America operations.

Lori has 40 years of public affairs, global issues communications, shareowner affairs, community giving, stakeholder engagement, social impact, public relations, media relations, and DEI expertise. Prior to Coca-Cola, she led her own public relations consultancy, was a vice president at Porter/Novelli, a top public relations agency, a senior public affairs specialist for the District of Columbia government and served as a faculty member for three colleges and universities.

An internationally recognized, in-demand speaker and advocate for diverse leadership, Lori has served on more than 20 corporate, nonprofit, and government boards, including the NAACP Foundation (current), Arete Executive Women of Influence (current), Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. (former chair), United Way of Greater Atlanta, and The Coca-Cola Foundation.

She is a faculty member of the National Association of Corporate Director’s Board Advisory Services, Co-Chair of the Executive Leadership Council’s Advocacy Committee, member of OnBoard’s Advisory Council, International Women’s Forum, Extraordinary Women on Boards, Black Women on Boards, Rotary Club of Atlanta, and Leadership Atlanta.

Among her numerous awards are the Chairman’s Circle Leadership Award from the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Order of the Phoenix Award, Georgia PRSA Hall of Fame Inductee, Alumni Award for Distinguished Postgraduate Achievement from Howard University, Atlanta Business League’s Top 100 Black Women of Influence, and the Academy of Women Achievers’ YWCA of Greater Atlanta.

Lori is a graduate of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Director’s Consortium and Harvard Business School’s Executive Leadership Experience Program. She holds a B.A. in Public Relations from Howard University and an M.A. in Public Communications from American University. Based in Atlanta, she is an ordained minister, enthusiastic mentor, and avid traveler.