‘Foot on the gas’

Decisive Moment Event Photojournalism, PGA Tour Superstore

In many ways, Jill Spiegel seemed destined to spend her working life in Metro Detroit after she graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in advertising, pursuing a career somehow connected to the car business.

After all, she had grown up in Orchard Lake Village, a suburb some 25 miles northwest of the Motor City. Her father T.J. Young ran North American Paint for the Ford Motor Co., and her two brothers also held jobs in the automobile industry. Surely Spiegel could apply what she had learned in college to a position with, say, one of the many advertising agencies in Detroit touting the vehicles Ford, Chrysler and General Motors made. Or maybe even procure a job with one of the automakers themselves.

But Spiegel had other ideas, and within a week of graduation, she moved to Atlanta, where one of her three sisters lived. Soon after, Spiegel joined what...