Athens, Ga. – The chief financial officer of Viacom, the president of Macon-based Bibb Distributing Company and a client executive for Savannah-based Seacrest Partners will be honored by the University of Georgia Terry College of Business at its 2012 Alumni Awards and Gala on April 28 at the InterContinental Hotel in Buckhead.
Two of the graduates-Jimmy Barge and Brother Stewart-are being chosen to receive the college’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Matt Stinchcomb will receive the college’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award. All three were honored for their career achievements and community service.
The Terry College has been presenting its alumni awards since 1964. The college’s Alumni Board of Directors hosts the spring gala, which in the past five years has raised more than $1.2 million for the college.
Information about the award winners is as follows:
Barge, a 1978 summa cum laude graduate of the Terry College, is responsible for Viacom’s financial reporting and planning, the accounting, tax and treasury functions, as well as the company’s information technology activities. Viacom is the fifth largest media conglomerate in the world, with Internet and television properties that represent 170 channels serving 600 million homes in more than 160 countries.
Prior to joining Viacom in January 2008, where he also has served as executive vice president and controller, Barge was a senior vice president and controller for Time Warner. He joined Time Warner in 1995 as assistant controller. Prior to that, Barge spent almost 17 years with public accounting firm Ernst & Young.
Barge’s E&Y career began in Atlanta in 1978 and included an exchange program in London, a five-year stint back in Atlanta, a two-year fellowship at the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. and time in Los Angeles, where he worked on E&Y’s Warner Brothers account and caught the eye of the studio’s parent company Time Warner. While working on E&Y’s Coca-Cola account, Barge was involved in the acquisition of The Coca-Cola Bottling Company. In 1996, as controller for Time Warner, he helped consummate the $6 billion acquisition of Turner Broadcasting.
Barge is treasurer and a board member of both the Ad Council and the United Neighborhood Houses of New York. He also serves on the board of the Scholastic Corporation. His Terry College involvement includes service as an alumni board member and as a lecturer in the Terry Leadership Speaker Series.
Stewart, a 1974 graduate of the Terry College, is president of Macon-based Bibb Distributing Company, which is one of the most successful Anheuser-Busch distributorships in the U.S.
The Stewart family’s success story goes back several generations. Brother’s great-grandfather, Broadus Lawton Willingham, and later his grandfather, Broadus E. Willingham, operated the second-largest cotton mill in Macon. The chain of command was broken in 1956 when Brother’s father, Wynburn Stewart Sr., elected to go into the beer business. In 1968, Brother’s father bought out his partners, and in 1974 Brother moved up from the warehouse to the managerial side of the business, working side by side with his father.
Bibb Distributing enjoys a dominant market share in its 15-country distribution area. Stewart is heavily involved in civic organizations, including Goodwill Industries and the United Way. He donated a recycling center to the Boys and Girls Club, which gives local youths experience in running a business, and the club keeps the profits.
Stewart is an emeritus member of the Terry Alumni Board. He chaired the college’s campaign steering committee during the Archway to Excellence Campaign, is a member of the Terry Dean’s Advisory Council, and his two children also are Terry graduates.
Stinchcomb, a 1998 summa cum laude graduate of the Terry College, is a client executive for Savannah-based Seacrest Partners in the company’s Atlanta office. Seacrest Partners serves as a risk management adviser, insurance broker and employee benefits consultant for clients throughout the U.S.
Stinchcomb is one of the most decorated student athletes in UGA history, having been named an All-American for his exploits both on the football field and in the classroom. As an offensive lineman at Georgia, Stinchcomb was a consensus All-America first-team selection in 1998 and a two-time All-American in 1997-1998. He also was named to the SEC First Team All-Decade Team for the 1990s. He was honored with the NCAA Top Eight Award, and he was a Lombardi Award finalist. A first-round NFL draft choice of the Oakland Raiders, Stinchcomb later played in the Super Bowl as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Stinchcomb, who was a standout student athlete at Parkview High School in suburban Atlanta, made a perfect 4.0 in all but two of his grading periods at UGA, graduating in three and a half years with an overall GPA of 3.96. He was the 1998 Academic All-American of the Year, a Burger King Scholar Athlete of the Year and a two-time Academic All-America first team member. In recognition of his extensive mentoring and volunteer activities, he was twice named to the American Football Coaches National Good Works Team. In 2009, Stinchcomb was named an SEC “Living Legend” and inducted into UGA’s Circle of Honor, which is the highest distinction a student athlete can achieve.
Stinchcomb is the president and founder of the Stinchcomb Family Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization that supports public children’s charities. Together with his brother Jon, a former Georgia star and NFL lineman for the New Orleans Saints, and former Georgia quarterback David Greene, Stinchcomb hosts “Countdown to Kickoff,” an annual children’s charity event held at UGA. Greene, who also earned a business degree from the Terry College, is a colleague of Stinchcomb’s at Seacrest Partners, which was ranked in the top 20 on the most recent “Bulldog 100” list of the fastest-growing UGA-owned and operated businesses.
The Terry College of Business Alumni Board of Directors selects alumni award winners from nominations submitted to the board. Information on awards criteria and the nomination process is available at www.terry.uga.edu/alumni/awards.
##
