Building More Than Homes
Why Atlanta homebuilding visionary John Wieland supports Emory’s important work in ethics and brain health.
Few people have shaped Atlanta as tangibly as John Wieland. Over his decades-long career, he has built more than 30,000 homes — places where hundreds of thousands of Atlantans have lived, loved and created memories. And for more than a decade, Wieland has been helping Emory University protect those memories through his support of the Integrated Memory Care (IMC) program at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.
Wieland’s connection to the IMC began when his wife, Susan, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“My wife’s situation progressed just as Emory was establishing the IMC under Dr. Carolyn Clevenger,” Wieland recalls. “Susan was one of the first to be treated under the integrated memory care model.”
This approach, says Clevenger, professor and clinical director of the IMC, has since set a new national standard for dementia care, now supported by Medicare and Medicaid. Wieland’s financial support enables Emory to extend IMC services to more than 20 senior living communities across metro Atlanta.
Wieland is also a big supporter Emory’s Center for Ethics, an advocacy that grew out of his service chairing the university’s Board of Visitors, which introduces new audiences to the university’s mission. “I got to know Dr. Jim Fowler and then-President James Laney through that appointment, and I went on to chair the Ethics Center Advisory Board for several years when Fowler was the director,” Wieland says.
Later, Fowler and Susan Wieland would share both an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and a doctor, neurologist Allan Levey, the director of the Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Inspired, Wieland made a gift to support research at the center’s annual A Family Affair event.
“Brain health and ethics are my two deep interests at Emory,” Wieland says.
As a builder, Wieland has championed ethical standards for decades. Every prospective employee at a Wieland company must pass a vetted ethics test before being hired — a practice instituted more than 40 years ago. Wieland’s latest gift to the Center for Ethics will fund a faculty fellowship program, offering Emory professors a semester’s leave to pursue ethics-related projects. It will also bolster ethics research across the university, says center director John Lysaker.
Kathy Kinlaw, associate director of the Center for Ethics, has worked with Wieland for years. “This gift will strengthen our collaborative work and engage students in tackling complex ethical issues,” she says.
Wieland is especially passionate about helping young people navigate the flood of information they encounter daily. “It’s vital to teach students how to critically evaluate information and make thoughtful decisions,” he says. “Emory, with its culture of inquiry, is the perfect place for this.”
He adds: “Emory is infusing ethical thought into the curriculum, creating positive behavior patterns. It also offers endless learning opportunities — from visiting the Carlos Museum to attending a Schwartz Center performance. And if you’re lucky like me, you get to serve on committees and boards. It’s important to find your philanthropic niche, and I’ve found mine at Emory.”
