An honor for one of our ow.
Titan 100, a program that recognizes the top 100 CEOs and C-level executives in the area, has named Joanne Hayes one of its 2026 honorees. The founder, CEO and publisher of Simply Buckhead and a three-decade veteran of the publishing industry, Hayes created the magazine in 2010 through her company, ValueStream Media Group, for readers in Buckhead, Brookhaven, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Chamblee and the Upper Westside.
“I was shocked when I received the call [in November 2025] that I had been nominated and was thrilled to make the first cut,” she says. “The application process was intense. We were given a series of essay-length questions outlining our company’s goals and business philosophies.”
Two months later, Hayes was notified that she was among the 100 inductees from both the public and private sectors whose combined companies generate more than $91.7 billion in annual revenue and employ over 534,000 across the region. “They recognized me as an entrepreneurial CEO with a distinct operating philosophy,” she says. “One question was about radical integrity. That jumped out at me because it is so much of what we practice at Simply Buckhead, which is authentic journalism, not ‘pay for play.’”
The awards ceremony was held on May 7 at the Delta Flight Museum.
Hayes’ career in advertising began in 1996 when she landed a position at Southern Rhode Island Newspapers and helped launch its fifth newspaper, the Coventry Courier. Within a few years she became the top salesperson for the company and managed both the Courier and The East Greenwich Pendulum, her hometown newspaper. Twelve years later, Hayes was approached by Providence Media Inc., now named Hey Rhody Media, that owned a small group of magazines, and was tasked with helping launch SO Rhode Island. It grew to 100 pages in less than 2 years and is still publishing today.
Shortly thereafter, Hayes met her future husband, Sonny, who was vice president of operations for Honeywell and managed more than 20 plants all over the world. In 2010, the couple married and moved to Atlanta to be closer to his sons. For a time, she continued to travel back and forth to Rhode Island but decided to create a slick new lifestyle magazine in her new hometown. Brainstorming at a round table luncheon met with enthusiasm, but it came with a caveat: The group felt she needed to meet with then-Buckhead Coalition Founding President and former Mayor Sam Massell to get his approval before moving forward. “He not only thought it was a great idea, but Sam became one of the greatest mentors in my lifetime and a very dear friend,” she says.
Hayes’ vision for Simply Buckhead was to make it both informative for readers and affordable for advertisers. “If you had told me 20 years ago that we would be at the point we are now, I probably would have laughed,” she says. “I never anticipated it would be this exciting and that we’d still be growing our distribution that now reaches 440 locations with a circulation of 24,000.”
In 2025, the magazine began distributing at all nine Delta Sky Clubs at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Readers can also find the magazines at every corporate hangar at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport and at PS ATL, the luxury private terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson.
“At the heart of the publication is our mission to support nonprofits including the nsoro Educational Foundation that focuses on foster youth; Cure Childhood Cancer’s Quiet Heroes, a gala that honors the mothers and caregivers of children with cancer; Fashion A Cure; A Cure in Our Lifetime; Open Hand Atlanta and others,” says Hayes. The inclusion as a Titan 100 proves that her entrepreneurship and philanthropic spirit are making a difference.
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PHOTO: Alexandra Zak
