Emily Acker (Hillside) – Sponsor – Brenda Smith (12/04/2025)

Emily Acker joined Hillside to serve as President and CEO in August 2014. As one of Atlanta’s first charitable
organizations, today Hillside employs 250 professionals offering an array of intensive psychiatric treatment programs and community-based services for children and adolescents.
A native of Texas, Emily earned her BA in psychology from the University of the South – Sewanee and a MS in Healthcare Administration from Central Michigan University. She began her work in child and adolescent treatment services at Inner Harbour in Douglasville, Georgia. When Inner Harbour was acquired by Youth Villages, she helped lead the transition in Georgia and assisted in a subsequent acquisition in Massachusetts.

Today, Emily is active in the Kiwanis Club of Atlanta, is an alumnus of Leadership Atlanta Class of 2019, and attended Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management in 2019.  Emily and her husband are the parents of three very kind young adults and has a perfectly wonderful grandbaby, Lily Roux.