Meet the Team

Michal manages relationships with the publication’s annual partners and works to build community through purposeful, well-executed events. 

Michal began her career in education, teaching in Taipei, Taiwan. Prior to joining Global Atlanta, Michal taught Economics and Social Issues at a local Atlanta high school. She earned a master’s degree from Georgia Tech in Global Media and Cultures with a concentration in Mandarin Chinese and received her bachelor’s from The University of Texas at Austin in History. 

She is Taiwanese American, an avid Atlanta Braves fan and a Texas native. 

Phil spent his early years in journalism on local newspapers in Macon and Milledgeville, Ga., then spent time with various financial and banking publications. He returned from a stint as a correspondent in France in the early 1990s with an idea for a publication that would reveal Atlanta’s ties with the global economy. This was before the Olympics had put Atlanta on the world map — when “global” was a foreign concept rather than the buzzword it has become today. 

A fluent French speaker and lifelong Francophile, Phil founded the Agio Press Inc. in 1991 and started publishing The Global Business Reporter, a bi-monthly newsletter, with the help of his late wife, Vicki Bolton.

In February 1993, he moved the print newsletter to fax, starting the GlobalFax news service, which was in operation until 2005. Phil later launched the Global Atlanta website and email newsletter, which has evolved into the full scale news website of today. He retired from day-to-day operations in 2019.

Phil has been recognized often for his service to the international community, including such accolades as:

• Governor’s International Award, 2006
• President’s E Award for Export Service, 2014
• TAG International Business Society Community Service Award, 2015
• Metro Atlanta Chamber’s Global Impact Award, 2017
• Distinguished alumnus at Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Honorary alumnus at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business

…and many more.

Phil lives in Avondale Estates with his new rat terrier puppy, Milou.

After more than two decades of reporting for Global Atlanta at local events, contributing articles from locations around the world and ghostwriting for sponsors, Leigh has now come full circle to manage sponsored content at Global Atlanta. The Global Atlanta Studio creates articles and multimedia that highlight our annual partners’ international expertise and thought leadership.

Now a PR, communications and journalism professional, Leigh came to Global Atlanta as an international affairs and political geography academic straight out of graduate school in the year 2000 – when the publication was still called GlobalFax and distributed by fax machine. Under the tutelage of then-publisher and president Phil Bolton, Leigh became a journalist. She has been dedicated to Global Atlanta ever since in one form or another, whether as an editor, reporter, writer or reader, because she believes in its power to connect people across borders and within local communities. 

Leigh earned her master’s and almost Ph.D. in Political Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder and her bachelor’s in International Affairs with a minor in Spanish at Georgia Tech. She is the mother of a bilingual and bicultural son born in Uruguay and wife to a Colombian-born Georgia executive, whom she met in her early days with Global Atlanta when she interviewed him for an article.

Ema maintains Global Atlanta’s international calendar and job postings, ensuring that a diverse range of international events in the Atlanta community are always up to date.

She earned her Bachelor’s of Science degree in International Affairs and Modern Languages with a Spanish concentration from Georgia Tech. During her time there, she studied the intersection between entertainment, politics, and economic development in Uruguay and Argentina. 

Ema is half-Japanese, born and raised in Georgia, and designs merchandise for local indie musicians in her free time.