CEO and Founder, ShareWIK Media
Diana Keough had a busy career as a journalist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and that city’s local NPR station when her husband’s job brought the couple to Atlanta 10 years ago. Instead of starting her career over, she became a long-distance commuter between Atlanta and Cleveland. Her precious free time was dedicated solely to her four sons, Sean, Bret, Tommy and Robby.
“I never missed anything my kids did,” she says. “The state track meet, the tennis tournament, National Honors Society induction— I was there. But after about a year, I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
In 2007, Keough decided to stay in Atlanta full-time and began teaching journalism at Emory University while exploring career options. Her talent for storytelling led her to create ShareWik, a website that disseminates health and wellness content. This year, Healthcare Solution and Services, a division of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., became a shareholder. “So a company I started in my bedroom is now part of a Fortune 100,” Keough says. And even though her unmarried sons now range in age from 20 to 29, they remain the focus of her free time.
“It sounds slightly neurotic, but to get them all to myself, we have to keep coming up with exotic places to take them,” she says with a laugh. “We’ve always been a very physically active family; they’re all tennis players and golfers. I was always in the driveway playing basketball because that’s how you get boys to talk to you.”
Planning the family excursions takes most of the year and ends with memory-making trips that usually last a week to 10 days: an African safari, hiking the Inca trail, a Habitat for Humanity build in Ethiopia. “We love doing stuff like that,” she says. “And I love seeing how much they enjoy it. The safari was particularly special; I could see how deeply touched they were by seeing all the nature, the giraffes. It’s great to see them filled with joy by something so simple. Hiking the Inca trail was great because no one had cell service, and the boys talked openly. It was eight to 10 hours a day of walking, which meant there was enough time for me to hear their hearts, something that doesn’t happen much anymore now that they’re all grown men. It was really special.”
When not planning family outings, the Buckhead resident has smaller-scale ways to relax. “I’m in a book club, I walk the dog every day for a couple of miles. But I’m already thinking about what we should do next summer: Hike a volcano in Guatamala? Climb Kilimanjaro? I’m constantly floating ideas.”
