Cassandra Cannon: The Pajama Game
This story, written by Heather Skyler, was originally published on UGA Today on May 23, 2024.
When Cassandra Cannon was a new mother, she and her friend, Anne Read Lattimore, decided to start a pajama company.
Both women were spending a lot of time at home with their babies, and they wanted something to wear that was more comfortable but also a little nicer looking than the oversized T-shirts and boxer shorts they often wore around the house.
“All of the pajamas we saw were either the traditional, button down, boxy menswear style or lingerie inspired. We wanted something more comfortable and put together,” says Cannon (BS ’08).
Inspiration hit one day when the two women noticed their infants’ clothes were incredibly soft. “We saw that our babies wore mostly Pima cotton, and we realized it is the softest thing ever and we should make pajamas out of this for adults,” says Cannon.
Two years later, after extensive research, Lake Pajamas launched in 2014. The founders’ idea was to make very soft pajamas with a classic American style and a nautical look. Today, the company is thriving, with its headquarters in Savannah and storefronts in Atlanta and Charleston, South Carolina.
Born and raised in Savannah, Cannon attended the University of Georgia where she majored in biology and psychology, with a tentative plan to go to medical school.
But then she had second thoughts.
Back in Savannah she tried a few other options: an anesthesia assistant graduate program and a year of art classes at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Then she did clerical work for her parents’ industrial contracting business.
In her mid-20s, she decided to apply for medical school and was accepted at Mercer University.
At the same time, she began talking to Anne Read about starting a business. Being a new parent made her realize med school wasn’t the best option now. So, she took a leap of faith in her entrepreneurial skills and started a business with Lattimore.
“We had a product, and we knew our audience, and we were making it for them.” — Cassandra Cannon (BS ’08), co-founder of Lake Pajamas
In the beginning, Cannon and Lattimore didn’t really know how to make clothing. “It’s crazy looking back how we made it all happen. We searched online for suppliers, drawing the designs on paper. We were scrappy that way,” says Cannon.
Cannon provides the creative vision for Lake Pajamas, and Lattimore handles the business side, though during the first four years they each did a little bit of everything, working together from home with their kids running around them. Now they have an office in Savannah with close to 70 employees.
One key to the company’s success is being savvy on social media. “Instagram was fairly new when we started, and it allowed us to connect to an audience inexpensively,” Cannon says. Lake Pajamas has worked with a few influencers, and the company’s pajamas have been seen on celebrities including Jennifer Garner and Jenna Bush Hager.
Lake Pajamas has expanded its clothing line to include dresses, pajamas, men’s robes, and clothes for kids. Cannon, who is married to UGA alumnus Pierce Cannon (BSFCS ’06), now has four kids under 10, and she said they wear the pajamas as do some of their friends.
Cannon says filling a specific niche was also a big part of the company’s success. “We had a product, and we knew our audience, and we were making it for them. It grew organically by word of mouth in a way we didn’t expect.”
Grady’s UGA-alum Writer in Residence has a star-studded resume
Nick Chiles (MFA ’22) has written more books than any other faculty member in the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, so it is no surprise he is their Writer in Residence. Chiles has written over 20 books chronicling Black culture in America, including multiple celebrity memoirs.
He landed at Grady as the Grady Writing Lab coach. At the same time, he joined the MFA Narrative Nonfiction program in the hopes of gaining a full-time faculty role. While going through the program, Chiles continued to teach a writing course.
“I was kind of split in half,” he said. “Half of me was in the building as a student. Half of me was in the building as a faculty member.”
The MFA program has a heavy focus on reading and writing, Chiles shared. Mentors are the key to student success. Graduate students spend a lot of time with their mentor to get feedback and help on projects.
“[Mentors] make the program,” Chiles said.
He took what he learned during the MFA to inform his own classes. He graduated in 2022 and went straight into his new position.
Even as a full-time faculty member, Chiles continues writing. He is currently working on memoirs for Martin Lawrence and Colin Kaepernick. The process of working with these notable figures requires spending a lot of time with them so Chiles can delve into their lives and background.
“Dredging all that stuff up, I think, is unexpectedly painful and emotional for a lot of them in ways that they weren’t expecting,” he said. “And so, there’s a lot of tears, often when I’m going through their family history. I mean, everybody has some pain in their background, in their story.”
Chiles spends months with the celebrities he writes about.
He is also working on a book to chronicle the history of Black comedy in America. He spent the summer doing research, starting as far back as the 1840s with minstrel performers.
“It’s pretty much the history of comedy in the US, because Black people were so integral in forming the idea of what American comedy would look like,” Chiles said.
Chiles won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 as part of an investigative reporting team for New York Newsday. He teaches multiple writing classes at Grady, including feature and memoir writing. Before coming to UGA, Chiles earned his BA at Yale University. He spent time teaching at both Princeton and Columbia.
Throughout his career, Chiles was a reporter for New York Newsday, the Dallas Morning News and the Star-Ledger of New Jersey. He also wrote for the magazines Essence and Ebony, The Atlantic and The Christian Science Monitor.
Service builds a vision for driving change
This story, written by Alan Flurry, was originally published on the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences website on June 25, 2024.
UGA Trustee Becky Winkler (AB ’98) believes everyone has a narrative. You just need to keep it pointed in the right direction.
“My dad was a Jamaican immigrant and he taught me the secret to the meaning of life is it’s all made up,” Winkler said. “Raised by an immigrant, I was taught to question things that other people consider normal.”
That cogent advice has led Winkler to chart her own circuitous path that, in retrospect, appears rather direct, if not deliberate. After graduating from UGA with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from DePaul University. While still attending graduate school, she coached mid-level managers at Advocate Healthcare, now the third-largest non-profit healthcare system in the U.S. After completing her Ph.D. in 2004, Winkler began coaching C-suite leaders.
“Not that I really knew what I was doing back then, I was 26 years old,” she said. “But it’s been 20 years that I’ve been coaching C-suite individuals. And I love it because I get to extend my dad’s wisdom to help other people – what is the narrative in your head that’s serving you? What is the narrative in your head that’s not serving you? Do you even realize you have a narrative? And that you can change it?”
Winkler’s narrative was influenced early by her parents and later by her exposure to a wide array of UGA experiences as an undergraduate. She earned a minor in Mandarin Chinese, a certificate in women’s studies, and spent time in the geology-anthropology summer field study program. Winkler says she would have added Classics to her psychology degree and fit right in with many double-majors in Franklin today.
Becky Winkler at the 2024 Tony Awards (PHOTO: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences)
“My first quarter, there was so much freedom and I could take whatever. Dr. Haas was my advisor, so I was just taking what I loved,” she said. “I signed up for astronomy, music, and then Chinese. And I was like, ‘what am I supposed to do with this?’ And he said, ‘sing Chinese to the stars, of course!’ and I was like ‘Oh, I’m going to like this place!'”
“I went as far as I could with these degrees, at the time,” Winkler added. “There was no major in Chinese, and the women’s studies program was only accredited as a certificate. It shows how UGA continues to evolve in the programs it offers.”
Winkler returned to UGA in 2024 to deliver the psychology department’s convocation address and serve as a judge for the Three-Minute Thesis competition.
Her company, Department 732c, named in homage to Winkler’s grandmother, Florence, a secretary for more than 20 years in an iconic retail corporation, reflects her own aspirations and resilience. Her experience, direct approach and humanistic outlook combine to guide clients, from the executives of corporate America to start-ups and nonprofits. The sense that Winkler’s skills, intuition and training created the conditions for her own dream job quickly becomes unmistakable.
“You can’t coach somebody unless they want to do it. One of the only things that coaching and therapy have in common is that importance of chemistry. I’m quite upfront about it – if you don’t think that you’ll have a good time working with me, I’m more than happy to refer them to someone else,” she said. “And by the way, if you’re too busy, then you’re not going to do the work and it’s going to be a waste of your time and your organization’s money.”
It’s a level of honesty and clarity that executives across the corporate world respond to, listen to, and learn from.
And when the chemistry is there and the client is willing, how does she know the process is working?
“It’s quantitative and qualitative and you pick your north star of where you want to be. I’m a big believer in measuring outcomes so generally, it’s a six-month engagement, sometimes people extend for different reasons,” she said.
Winkler has worked with one client for two years.
“On the day that we were finishing, I said ‘look at this great progress,’ because we measured that day against what we focused on at the start. I give people an online tool to say, here are the three factors that relate to their goals. How would you rate them now, and what’s your advice to this person, where have you seen him grow and change the most, what should they still focus on going forward? And from that you see the change scores, and that’s how you know it’s working.”
Winkler’s enthusiasm for the stages of improvement, increased competence and performance, stem from a simple but strident outlook. “I actually took a quote attributed to C.S. Lewis that comes back again and again in our work: ‘Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.’ I love it because the work can be so incremental and you can get frustrated by the whole ‘levels of competence’ paradigm. But I love seeing people succeed, getting to know them and sharing these intimate experiences of personal growth.”
That love of shared success has become a driving force in Winkler’s activism and philanthropy. A veteran of the non-profit sector, she served on the Atlanta Beltline committee and on the board of EMBRACE (founded in 2018 to repurpose used medical equipment to people around the world).
“I’ve always been very active, but my time as KIPP board chair in Charlotte (Knowledge is Power Program), which focuses on kids in underserved communities who need better public schools, basically, really galvanized my vision to help see kids to and through college, career, and higher expectations,” she said.
“The Outsiders” producers and company (PHOTO: Getty Images)
Winkler’s philanthropic involvement with UGA began through Dorothé Otemann, director of development for the honors program, which is now known as the Morehead Honors College.
“I call her my umbilical cord to the university because she taught me how I can use my resources to drive change,” said Winkler, who created a scholarship at UGA in honor of her father, another at DePaul to honor her mother, and sponsored a room in the honors college named for Otemann. She’s currently on track to complete an endowed chair in the Institute of Women’s Studies in 2027.
In addition to her philanthropic efforts in higher education, Winkler’s support for the arts extends to investing in the Broadway play “The Outsiders,” winner of the 2024 Tony Award for Best New Musical.
“It’s exciting, trying to figure how to use your time, treasure, and power to drive the change you know is needed in the world,” she said.
Blake Witmer is following in her father’s footsteps
This story, written by Heather Skyler, was originally published on UGA Today on June 14, 2024.
Two UGA Orientation leaders from the same family, 29 years apart.
Every year, approximately 8,000 students and 12,000 family members come to the University of Georgia for Orientation. The job of introducing these groups to campus is a coveted position, and over 100 students apply to be orientation leaders every year. Only 20 are selected.
This summer, rising junior Blake Witmer ’26 earned one of those spots, stepping into the same role her father, Craig Witmer (BSED ’96), had in 1995.
Craig Witmer (second from right) with three of his fellow 1995 orientation leaders. (PHOTO: Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
The new orientation leaders are each assigned a number, and each number has an adjective attached, from “Wild 1” to “Timeless 20.”
“When my dad was here, there were only 10 leaders and there were no adjectives,” Blake explained. “They just sat them down and told them their number. Now it’s a big deal. They even have number reveal day.”
Blake Witmer and her father, Craig Witmer, make a six with their hands beside Herty Fountain. Each of them were number “Saucy Six” as orientation leaders. (PHOTO: Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
Blake was thrilled to discover that she would be “Saucy 6,” the same number her father had. When she found out, she called her dad, who was excited about the connection. Last summer’s number six, Cole Broomberg, was there with her when she made the call.
“Your number from last year becomes your mentor,” she explained. “Cole texts me every day to check in. He’s my number dad. I call him Papa.”
Blake grew up in Grayson. Both of her parents and her older sister attended UGA, and all three of them are teachers. When it came time for Blake to apply to college, she was determined to go somewhere else and “break the cycle.”
Orientation leader Blake Witmer greets freshman students and parents at orientation check in at Tate Grand Hall. (PHOTO: Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
She was considering a small, prestigious college in upstate New York, but after attending the UGA game against Coastal Carolina with her sister, Hayden, who lived on campus at the time, Blake had a change of heart.
“I liked how big campus was. I thought I wanted to go to a smaller school because my high school was big, but once I was here visiting, I liked that aspect. On a tour of UGA, my guide said, ‘You can make a big school small, but you can’t make a small school big.’ I really liked that.”
Craig Witmer (Bottom row, second from left) with the 1995 orientation leaders. (PHOTO: Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
After receiving early admission and the Zell Miller Scholarship, Blake committed to UGA, and she’s been deeply involved in campus life ever since she arrived. During her first year, she joined a student government First-Year Program.
“It really tuned in my love for mentorship. Specifically for the first-year experience, which I think is such a unique time in a college career,” she said, adding that the program helped her learn how to get students excited and involved during their first year of college, which was perfect training for being an OL.
Despite changing her mind about coming to UGA and despite her love of mentoring, she plans to break the family cycle of becoming a teacher. As a public relations major in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, she likes the idea of possibly going into publishing. Currently, she works for a local fashion and culture magazine called Strike, writing articles and acting as blog director.
Portrait of Craig Witmer, former orientation leader, and daughter Blake Witmer, current orientation leader, in front of the Arch. (PHOTO: Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
But right now, most of her time involves introducing students to UGA. New student orientation began May 30 and there are 17 first-year sessions before school begins in August. Each group attends two days of orientation, which starts with a silly song and dance number performed by all 20 orientation leaders. Then small groups tour campus, learn about UGA’s social media accounts from the Division of Marketing and Communications, play games, and eat dinner in the dining hall before watching the OLs perform skits. Finally, they spend the evening at Ramsey signing up for student organizations and choosing from activities like a silent disco or board games.
Craig Witmer said a lot has changed about the job since his time at UGA, but he thinks there are more commonalities than differences. “The biggest similarity is the ability to share a love of UGA with so many people,” he said.
Blake said her favorite part of the job is getting to meet the students. “It’s such a fulfilling experience. I can see why people stay in higher ed. There’s nothing like it. Getting to be a part of that for the whole summer is going to be great.”
Alumna joins trailblazing collective to make an impact
Danelle Faust (BBA ’95) draws on her own UGA experiences to support future generations through a new, women-led initiative.
Lisa Sarajian is living la vie en rose
A passion for the arts led Lisa to study abroad. Now, she helps Bulldogs who want to do the same.
When Lisa Sarajian (BBA ’82) was a student, Athens felt imbued with a certain kind of magic. The city’s music scene was reaching its peak with the emergence of beloved bands like R.E.M., Pylon and the B-52s. As a freshman, Lisa spent her time after classes listening to bands play on Legion Field, exploring the growing downtown area and taking walks through UGA’s beautiful historic North Campus.
An international business major with a passion for the arts, Lisa loved immersing herself in Athens’ cultural scene. She could frequently be found wandering the galleries of the Georgia Museum of Art and attending free classical music concerts on North Campus. Music was at the center of life in Athens and the sound of live concerts spilled out onto sidewalks everywhere… on campus, downtown and in public parks.
“I just found there was always something fun to do,” Lisa said.
Lisa’s favorite Saturday afternoon activity was going to film screenings. A native of Marietta, Georgia, she hadn’t had as much access to the arts as she had wanted to growing up, and the thriving cultural scene she had become a part of was absolutely invigorating for her. Moving out of the suburbs to live in Athens opened up her world.
“It was my first introduction to foreign and independent films,” she said. “I would take some French classes and go to a French film festival.”
When Lisa learned about an opportunity to study abroad in France for the summer of 1979, she was thrilled. The trip, which focused on the arts, led her to Normandy, Paris and the Loire Valley.
“It was such a transformative experience for me,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to bust out at some point and see the world and broaden my horizons and I would not have had that opportunity otherwise.”
After graduating from UGA, Lisa went on to her first job, a role in finance she gained with the help of UGA’s career services department, now centralized in the Career Center. She worked in a few different jobs in the finance and advertising industry before moving to New York City to start her job at Standard & Poor’s, where she worked for almost three decades.
Lisa remembers her study abroad trip as one of the most meaningful experiences of her time at UGA, but she also understood firsthand how finances could be an obstacle for students hoping to study abroad. She had been unable to work a summer job that year, which was an important source of support through her time at UGA.
Lisa wanted to make it possible for more students to have a life-changing experience abroad like she did, so she created a study abroad scholarship.
“I was drawn to this opportunity as a way to give back and to give other people that opportunity as well, particularly kids who would not otherwise have the means to travel,” she said.
After her retirement in 2015, Lisa went back to school, earning certificates in gardening through the New York Botanical Garden and studying French. Today, she lives on the Upper West Side of New York City. She is a board member and consultant for various nonprofits in her area, including The Trust for Public Land, and an active member of the West Side Community Garden, where she maintains a plot. She stays connected to her friends from UGA with regular lunch dates, and she returns to France as often as she can.
Honoring the past and present
When brainstorming the perfect gift for a loved one, not many people may think of naming a scholarship in that person’s honor. Bob Miller (AB ’64), however, has made a tradition of commemorating life’s big moments by giving back.
When his wife’s father passed, Bob decided to give to the University of Georgia to begin that legacy. “Mary Helen was the apple of her father’s eye, so I wanted to make sure she could remember him in a way that was meaningful to us both,” Bob explained. It was this reasoning that led Bob to establish the Charles M. Hicks Scholarship Fund–named after Mary Helen’s beloved father–during the holiday season of 1981 as a gift to her. The Charles M. Hicks Scholarship fund supports students in the Morehead Honors College, a program that had a profound impact on Bob during his own time at UGA.
Established in 1960, the Honors College–known as the Honors Program before 2021–counted Bob Miller as a student in its very first cohort. The experience was transformational for him; by participating in smaller classes and fostering deeper connections among students and faculty, the Honors College ignited a lifelong love of learning in Bob.
Bob Miller takes a break while hiking in Dartmoor, England.
“It just blew my mind,” Bob said. “I couldn’t get over how much more I enjoyed going to class after joining the program. It was a fascinating learning experience,” he continued. “The Honors Program made me a student; I wouldn’t have created a scholarship today if it weren’t for my experience in the Honors Program.”
Bob’s university experience was one he wanted to share with future generations of students, regardless of their circumstances. Establishing several need-based scholarships in Mary Helen’s name was the logical next step in Bob’s giving journey with the university. “I loved the idea of not letting a good student fall between the cracks because they lack the financial means to attend or didn’t want to borrow and be stuck in debt,” Bob explained.
“We shouldn’t fail to fulfill the potential of students who would eventually become an asset to this state,” he said. “It’s important for us to try to keep the very best of human capital in Georgia by offering as many students as we can the opportunity to attend the state’s flagship university.”
The Charles M. Hicks Scholarship fund has helped many students make the most of their time at UGA by supporting scholarships through the Morehead Honors College. Still, Bob would like to see more growth in the fund as well as in two need-based Georgia Commitment Scholarships Bob created and named after his wife, Mary Helen, in August 2023 to celebrate the couple’s 60th anniversary.
“In my lifetime, I want to see the Hicks scholarship valued at $1 million and for there to be four Mary Helen Miller scholarships–one for each year she was at the university,” Bob explained. Supporting these scholarships has become a point of pride for Bob, an appropriate way for him to celebrate the past but also allow future generations of students to have the same transformative experiences at the university that he did.
One of the recipients of the Charles M. Hicks Scholarship, Nicole Moreno ’25, reflected on her own life-changing immersive learning experience that she was only able to embark on with the assistance of that scholarship.
Nicole Moreno ’25 was able to embark on her own travels thanks to the Hicks scholarship.
“When I first started looking into a year abroad, I was almost discouraged by the cost of it all,” Nicole said. “My experience studying abroad is one I will never forget, and I am so eternally grateful to the Honors College and its donors for putting their faith in me to venture out, grow, explore, and change the world.”
From the Bob Millers to the Nicole Morenos, the Morehead Honors College at UGA offers many students learning opportunities that can help shape their future and ignite their passions. When students like Bob and Nicole become alumni, those experiences can inspire them to give back so that current and future students are able to access similar opportunities, continuing a cycle of cascading impact for generations to come.
UGA alumna opens doors to the arts
Susan Sherman (ABJ ’82) surrounds herself with beautiful things. She is an art collector, co-founder of the experiential retail startup MERCH and a former classically trained dancer, but one of her favorite ways to experience art is simply by wearing it.
Susan has loved fashion since her days as a dancer, when she would spend the time before performances exploring the production behind her costumes. She described her entry into fashion as a consumer first–she loved shopping and style, and she often flipped her new clothes inside out after buying them so she could examine their seams and stitching.
“I was always looking at how things were made,” she said.
She is the chair and co-founder of the Saint Louis Fashion Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which seeks to bring back St. Louis’s fashion industry, once second only to New York’s Garment District. The group, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, uplifts young designers and emerging brands and promotes fashion education and outreach in the city.
The late Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley (seated at left) with Susan Sherman and members of the inaugural class of the Saint Louis Fashion Fund’s Incubator Program, in 2017.
“We have a city that has fashion in its DNA,” Susan said. “It’s all about increasing job opportunities, economic development, recruiting fashion brands to come back and rebuilding the ecosystem we had around the turn of the century.”
Susan’s role in the Saint Louis Fashion Fund has positioned her to be one of St. Louis’ leading voices in the industry and given her opportunities to connect students and up-and-coming designers with resources they need to succeed.
Susan has extended her support to UGA students, sponsoring a series of spring break trips for students in the Lamar Dodd School of Art to St. Louis, Dallas and New York. There, they met with people in the fashion, art, and design industries–touring art galleries, studios and museums, visiting Diane von Furstenberg’s atelier and exploring fashion and design incubator programs.
Susan Sherman with legendary fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg at the Saint Louis Fashion Fund’s 2022 “Speaking of Fashion” talk at Washington University in St. Louis.
Susan not only funds these trips but also actively participates in them to experience the arts alongside UGA students. She and her husband, David, ride along on the bus with students and offer their expertise and insights, getting to know them and arranging access to institutions and people throughout the trip.
Susan said she loves being around students, especially those interested in fashion and the arts, because she’s energized by their creativity and innovation.
“There are so many different ways to produce and make and create,” she said. “I learn more from young people than my peers. They’re the ones who really have their ears to the ground of the industry and understand how it’s changing.”
Susan and a friend pose for a graduation photo in 1982 in front of the Kappa Alpha Theta house on Milledge Ave.
Susan began her career as a public relations associate for the Atlanta Ballet and worked in broadcast journalism in Atlanta, Paris, and St. Louis before fully immersing herself in the world of fashion. As a UGA student studying broadcast journalism, Susan held the highly selective Georgia Lawmakers internship reporting on the state legislature with her classmate Deborah Roberts (ABJ ’82), a current anchor on ABC News.
Connecting with undergraduate students through sponsoring experiential learning opportunities is just one of the ways that Susan has remained involved with UGA since graduation. She served on the UGA Foundation Board of Trustees, gives to UGA, attends football games and is on a committee for the renovation of her sorority’s house, Kappa Alpha Theta.
Above all, Susan hopes her personal efforts and active philanthropy can introduce more students to the diverse range of career paths and opportunities available to them in the arts.
“When you get to be my age, you have a lot of connections and you’re just trying to open doors and opportunities for young people,” she said. “I’ve always liked the underdawgs. D-A-W-G-S, mind you.”
