The law firm of Weatherly & Dixon PLLC and its partners, James L. Weatherly and Jacqueline B. Dixon, have merged their practices with Lewis Thomason, P.C., says Lisa Ramsay Cole, president and managing shareholder for the statewide firm.

With more than 40 years of legal experience, Weatherly began his career with a focus on criminal law and served as the elected public defender for Nashville 1982-86 before practicing for more than 20 years with the firm of Hollins, Wagster & Yarbrough. His practice now includes criminal defense, family law, personal injury and general civil litigation.

He has been recognized by “Best Lawyers” for 20 years and has been listed in “Super Lawyers” for more than 10 years. Weatherly has served as president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (1986), president of the Nashville Bar Association (1988) and President of the board of directors of the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee (1992-1994).

He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the University of Tennessee College of Law.

Dixon is a trial lawyer with more than 35 years of experience in the areas of family law, wills, estates, probate, personal injury and other types of civil litigation, as well as appellate work. She also is a family law mediator.

Dixon has been recognized as a Nashville Business Journal “Best of the Bar” four times. She is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association. She serves as treasurer of the Tennessee Bar Foundation and vice-chair of the Tennessee Lawyer Assistance Program Commission. She is a founding board member of A Step Ahead Foundation of Middle Tennessee and just completed a two-year term as president.

Dixon earned her J.D. at the University of Tennessee College of Law and holds a degree in business from Carson-Newman University.

GSRM Law adds pair of associates

The law firm of Gullett Sanford Robinson & Martin PLLC has hired Diamond Stewart and Gabrielle Mees Logston to the firm.

Stewart joins the firm as an associate in the litigation and labor and employment sections. Her practice focuses on employment law matters related to discrimination, harassment and retaliation, and providing guidance to HR professionals and drafting contracts, employee handbooks, and policies.

Stewart is a graduate of the Belmont University College of Law, where she was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Belmont Entertainment & Music Law Journal. She also is a graduate of Sewanee: The University of the South.

Logston joins the firm as an associate in the family law section. Her practice focuses on all stages of family law, including complex divorce matters, uncontested divorces, child custody issues, child support modifications and post-divorce matters.

She is a graduate of the Belmont University College of Law. Gabrielle holds a degree in political science from the University of Tennessee.

Fourth Capital hires chief innovation officer

Fourth Capital bank has added Pratt Lewis as executive vice president and its first ever chief innovation officer.

Lewis brings more than 20 years of banking experience to Fourth Capital. He previously served as director of IT strategic projects for Pinnacle Financial Partners, as well as executive vice president and head of the operations & technology group for CapitalMark Bank & Trust in Chattanooga and as vice president and CIO for Guaranty Bank & Trust Co. in Belzoni, Mississippi.

He earned a degree in religion at Sewanee: The University of the South and an MBA at Millsaps College.

SV Design welcomes Architect, designers

Architecture and design firm SV Design has added three new designers: Jeff Senatore as an architect and Natasha Hagan and Lindsey Jeter as interior designers.

Senatore is a licensed architect in the state of Tennessee, NCARB and LEED certified and has over seven years of experience working on interior, ground-up and renovation projects.

He comes to SV Design from STG Design in Nashville, where he was a project architect. Before that, he was a project architect at DMR Architects in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, where he primarily worked on corporate interior projects.

He earned his bachelor of architecture with a minor in environmental and sustainable studies from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Hagan most recently worked as a designer at AI Corporate Interiors, where she supported office design projects, selecting furniture and finishes and helping with project proposals. Before that, she was a design coordinator at Ethan Allen and assisted the interior design team in planning, designing and furnishing residential projects.

She graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in interior design.

Jeter has worked as an interior design intern with SV Design for the past three years and is now joining the team full time. She will be a member of the multifamily and corporate project teams.

She earned a degree in French and world business from the University of Tennessee and another for interior design from Belmont University.

Brockman named to PRSA executive committee

McNeely Brockman Public Relations partner Kelly Brockman was recently appointed to the 2022 executive committee of the Public Relations Society of America Counselors Academy.

Counselors Academy is a national professional interest section of PRSA that focuses on the business of agency PR. Its entrepreneurial members are owners or senior managers of leading independent firms in the U.S. and Canada. The Counselors Academy’s programs foster networking, mentoring and learning.

Brockman is a 20-year public relations veteran of agency, government and nonprofit work. She founded MBPR with her father, Mark McNeely, in June 2018 with a focus on high-level strategic communications, media relations and crisis communications. MBPR was spun out of MP&F Strategic Communications, the state’s largest independent, locally owned public relations and communications firm, founded by McNeely.

Also at MBPR, Honor Garrett has been promoted to account executive. Garrett joined MBPR in May 2020 and has served as an assistant account executive since July.

Garrett has served as the main contact for various clients, managed client social media accounts, facilitated media relations efforts, created graphic design projects, conducted various research projects, worked alongside the team on community engagement efforts, and helped in training and managing the staff’s intern and account assistant.

Before joining the MBPR team, Garrett served as a communications intern at MP&F Strategic Communications and as an account assistant at The Callaway in Nashville. She is a University of Georgia graduate with a degree in consumer journalism with an emphasis in advertising and a certificate in new media studies.

Scharp tapped for VP of marketing for Nelson

Thomas Nelson has named Brian Scharp vice president of marketing for Nelson Books, a nonfiction imprint.

Scharp is an experienced publishing professional with 25-plus years of marketing experience, having served as the vice president of marketing for Zondervan Bibles and senior vice president of global marketing for Our Daily Bread Ministries.

While at Zondervan, his marketing campaigns earned an Effie Award. At Our Daily Bread Ministries, he directed the successful transition of the organization from traditional print and broadcast to a digital organization with more than 10 million members on social, email, web and mobile channels.

Halls Chophouse names executive chef

Halls Chophouse has named Chef Chris Von Egger as executive chef of its Nashville restaurant, slated to open at Broadwest in the coming weeks.

A graduate of Orlando Culinary Academy, Von Egger has more than 25 years of experience in the food and beverage industry in restaurants and steakhouses throughout the Southeast and along the East Coast. He has worked for Morton’s Steakhouse in Orlando, eventually working his way through their Sous Chef program in Tysons Corner, Virginia, before being named executive chef of the Morton’s in Annapolis, Maryland, and Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood.

He spent nine years as executive chef of STATS Brewpub and Max’s Coal Oven Pizzeria, both in Atlanta, before relocating to Nashville to open Chef Ford Fry’s Superica in the Gulch.

Halls Chophouse has been named the No. 3 U.S. Fine Dining Restaurant – its second consecutive year in the top three – and the Best Brunch Spot in the U.S. by Tripadvisor in its 2021 Travelers’ Choice “Best of the Best” Restaurants awards.

Davis elected to Scenic America board

Marge Davis of Mount Juliet has been elected to the board of directors of the national environmental nonprofit Scenic America.

Davis is a founding member of Scenic Tennessee, which was formed in 1987. She became the organization’s president in 2011.

Under Marge’s leadership, Scenic Tennessee has attracted nearly $200,000 in grants and is currently preparing to host Scenic America’s 2022 Scenic Symposium in Nashville in October.

Most recently, the all-volunteer organization worked alongside its Scenic Knoxville partner to help stop a bill in the Tennessee state legislature that would have enabled even more digital billboards to be constructed along the state’s roadways.

Originally from Maine, Davis earned her B.A. from Bates College in English and her Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. She taught at Vanderbilt and the University of Wisconsin before pursuing writing and editing full time.

Davis profiled many Tennessee businesses’ conservation efforts as an editor for the Waste Reduction Assistance Program of the University of Tennessee Center for Industrial Services and also wrote for several Tennessee environmental organizations.

She was twice named the Conservation Communicator of the Year by the Tennessee Wildlife Federation and is currently updating her 1997 book, Sportsmen United, a history of the conservation movement in Tennessee.

She is also an executive board member of the national Container Recycling Institute and a former member of the Governor’s Advisory Council for Keep Tennessee Beautiful.