People Profiles

REALTOR HELPS MAKE HILTON HEAD FEEL LIKE HOME

Question. What is the most significant accomplishment of your career thus far?

Answer. Never giving up. I've experienced some serious adversity in my business and personal life. Hasn't everyone? Complacency was not an option. What could have been a scary time became an amazing opportunity. I feel like I take that energy, enthusiasm and work ethic to my clients. And I hope I've taught that to my four children.

When Donna Taylor’s son, Evan, cut himself with a knife and needed seven stitches, she knew she had to help the Culinary Institute of America student get back into the kitchen.

“I hurt for him, watching him bandage and glove (his wound) and have to go to work and rub that knife blade again,” she said of her son. “I was trying to find something to protect his hand so that he could keep working.”

It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention. That’s not always the case in the automotive industry, where invention is often the byproduct of vanity, such as fancy trim packages or tires that look good but do nothing to improve the ride.

Elongator is the exception, conceived 20 years ago in Bluffton by a guy who knew his pickup wasn’t doing the job like it should.

Mike Monroney might not be a household name. But his legacy is written on every car window at every new car dealership across the country. The late Oklahoma senator wrote and sponsored the Automobile Information Disclosure Act of 1958, requiring that every new car carry a window sticker showing every option it carries, every feature and every bell and whistle bolted onto it at the factory. While most of us refer to it as a window sticker, the real gearheads call it by the name that honors that legacy: a Monroney label.

Charles Wohl is the Don Ryan Center for Innovation’s new vice president of innovation, leading the business incubator and entrepreneurial ventures, and he came to Bluffton both to step back and to shake things up.

“On my bucket list was to move back to a coastal environment,” he said on why he took the job and moved to the Lowcountry from Texas last summer. But it’s a sure bet he’s not going to kick back and take it easy.

Winter in the Lowcountry might not bring with it the snow and harsh weather that other parts of the country experience, but it does bring fewer bugs to the area — though the sand fleas seem impervious to all but the harshest weather conditions.

It’s a nice break from spring and summer, when the area is swarming with mosquitos and no-see-ums, and fire ants, cockroaches and mole crickets come out to ruin your outdoor spaces and give everyone a bad case of the creepy crawlies.

4M METALS IS HELPING DEFINE THE LOWCOUNTRY LOOK.

You’ve seen the shirts. They’re everywhere. Stamped across the front: “Got Metal?” Across the back is the stylish, angular logo of 4M Metals. When it comes to popular T-shirts, it’s second only to the brightly colored shirts for a certain canine-based seafood restaurant. As far as getting the 4M Metals name out, it’s a stroke of marketing genius. 

FOR HILTON HEAD COUPLE, SUCCESS RUNS IN THE FAMILY

For Myla Lerner, it’s always been about the domino theory: Connect with creative, smart, energetic people and obstacles will fall down, one after another.

“I’m not shy,” said Lerner, an award-winning Broadway producer and president of the board of Lean Ensemble Theater, a performing arts company on Hilton Head Island. “When we first got here, we knew hardly anyone, so I made some connections.”

HARDSCAPE COMPANY PAVES THE WAY FOR FAMILY TO BECOME REALITY TV STARS

At first glance, the Currys seems like any Lowcountry family, but they aren’t your average next-door neighbor. For starters, the family runs a local multimillion-dollar business. They also happen to be the Lowcountry’s newest reality TV stars.