Donoho Welcomes New Members to Board of Directors

The Donoho School is pleased to announce the addition of two new board members to our Board of Directors. Dale Benton and Kari Payne have accepted their recent appointments to the Donoho School Board. We are so fortunate to receive such qualified individuals to serve our school.

Dale Benton was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended college on a baseball scholarship in southern Alabama in 1989. He met his wife of 25 years, Victoria, while in college. He then attended Kennesaw State College as an education major and also began working in the car business in 1992. He continued in the automotive industry and worked his way up to acquiring his first store in Oxford, Alabama, in 2010. Shortly thereafter, he relocated from Birmingham to Anniston with his wife and son, Daniel. Since that time, he has acquired four more dealerships to make up the Benton Automotive Group, with five stores in total. He has locations in Oxford, Hoover, Bessemer, and Guntersville, Alabama, and Columbia, Tennessee. He enjoys spending time with his family, gardening, sports, and the outdoors.

Kari Payne, CFO of WaterTower Films, is a 1997 graduate of Vanderbilt University. A native of Heflin, Alabama, Kari moved to Nashville following high school to pursue a degree in the medical sciences. Kari graduated from Vanderbilt with Cum Laude honors and a B.S. in Chemistry. She spent three years as an Analytical Chemist followed by eleven years as a Quality Assurance Specialist and Manager within the pharmaceutical industry. During that time she also earned an MBA from Georgia State University. Kari left Abbott Laboratories in 2011 to become CFO of Water Tower Films. Today, Kari and her husband, Will, own Water Tower Films, an Emmy Award winning production house, where they create content for television and web. Water Tower has produced hundreds of programs, commercials, and corporate videos since the company’s founding in 2008. Committed to her community and its development, Kari serves on the Empty Stocking Gala Board, the Heflin Main Street Board, the Board of Directors for the Cleburne County Chamber of Commerce, and she chairs the Cleburne County Fair and Rodeo. Additionally, she serves as the East Alabama World of Works Communication and Media World Leader. Kari and Will reside in Heflin, Alabama, with their two children Sam (15) and Claire (11). The Paynes enjoy traveling the globe with friends and family as well as weekends at Lake Wedowee.