Jonathan Winn, president of TEI’s Atlanta Chapter, has a clear plan for the chapter’s immediate future: to better engage members. “Atlanta is so geographically spread out, with a diverse footprint of hubs and business throughout the metro area. Our focus now is to meet the members where they work and live,” he says.
Historically, most of the chapter’s activities have occurred in Cumberland, just northwest of Atlanta. But Winn sees a real opportunity for engagement in areas beyond this hub, such as Buckhead, the third-largest business district within the Atlanta city limits, behind Downtown and Midtown. “We’ve tried to increase our presence there just to make sure our members and the Atlanta tax community overall can find us and know what and when and where we are doing things,” Winn explains.
He adds that engagement also includes doing more to connect on social media, as well as to draw members together for networking and fun. For example, the chapter held an event in late February at Topgolf in Midtown, a regular get-together that Winn notes is very popular.
Building a Tax Team From the Ground Up
Winn also serves as senior director of tax at Vestis. He explains that the corporation, formerly known as Aramark Uniform Services, has been part of Aramark for decades. “When I joined Vestis a few months before the spinoff, it was clear that there was a great culture of people,” he says. “I was also really excited about the corporation’s leadership. They had plans to truly create a culture of working together, building something great, and doing it the right way—making sure that it is all about the people and focusing on the team.”
He says that Vestis gave him the chance to challenge himself professionally. “My role right now as the senior director is to create a tax function from the ground up, which is a huge task,” he says. “A lot of functions were already established, but tax was all housed at the corporate headquarters of Aramark in Philadelphia. I’ve been working directly with these professionals, trying to transition all of the knowledge and all of the processes for tax to me and my team. We will then work to hire people and build out brand-new processes for tax to make sure that we are a well-run department and doing all the things that we need to do to set the department on a solid footing for success.”
The Path to Vestis
Prior to his current position, Winn held tax roles at Dixon Hughes Goodman (now Forvis), TenCate, and, most recently, Watkins Associated Industries.
He says that one of the biggest things that he learned by starting his career at Dixon Hughes Goodman is the importance of good personal relationships. “That means making sure that the people that you are working and surrounding yourself with are aligned with the same vision, that they feel seen and taken care of, so that we can all work together toward a common goal,” he says. “That’s something that I learned early on with some great mentors and I have taken with me.”
A key component of relationship building, Winn says, is ensuring the work is driven toward finding “win-win solutions for ourselves, our teammates, and the companies that we work for. Working with in-house tax, one can really help a company from the inside and help to ensure that they have sound business practices.”
Making the Most of Family Time
Winn spends most of his free time with his family. “I’m the father of three children, ages eleven, eight, and five. My wife and I stay very busy, chasing them around. We all love being together. In the last couple of years, we have taken camping trips and try to get outside and hike when we can,” he says.
Winn, who has been an Atlanta United season ticket holder since the team’s inception in 2017, also notes that his passion for soccer has rubbed off on his children, noting that “my boys—who are the two oldest—are active in a youth league, and the whole family is pretty involved.”
