To some, it’s a stretch.
Who could imagine Georgia as the epicenter of a fast-growing yoga enterprise? The state is hustle and bustle, team sports (especially one where humans violently collide on a gridiron), The Masters.
But yoga? That’s a peaceful, ancient practice from faraway India, a suite of mental and physical practices that meld mind and body in harmony.
Georgia is home, sweet home. Yoga is om, sweet om.
Three UGA alumni, two of them Terry grads, are reimagining — and reinventing — yogism. Yonder Yoga, their 2019 startup, has grown from one studio to seven locations in metro Atlanta, Athens and Charlotte. The company ranked 18th on the 2024 Bulldog 100. In 2025, it stands at No. 34.
Yonder’s three founders were elite athletes in college. Selby Hill (ABJ ’14) captained and rode with UGA’s 2013-2014 national championship equestrian team. Her husband, Alex Hill (BBA ’10), captained Georgia’s men’s tennis squad. Wes Van Dyk (BBA ’12) walked on and earned a scholarship as a running back for the Bulldogs from 2008-2011.
Their collective mindset — three former athletes leaning into a business venture — has tapped a hidden energy everywhere a new Yonder Yoga studio is launched.
“You’d be surprised about Georgia being a hotbed for yoga,” says Selby. “When most people think of yoga, they imagine Bali, eastern music, meditation. We market Yonder Yoga as a place to move, to flex, to get stronger than you’ve ever been.
“We advertise our sessions as workouts, and we also emphasize the impact yoga has on mental health. This combination changes a lot of opinions about the possibilities of yoga.”
An ill wind blows good
Hurricanes shouldn’t have silver linings. But Hurricane Irma, when it socked Georgia in 2017, spun off a shining opportunity.
During the storm, Selby, Alex and Wes found themselves in a house without power for three days. By candlelight, they brainstormed business ideas.
“We put our heads together,” Selby says. “Wes had experience as an entrepreneur. Alex had his business background. And I had a teaching background and years of yoga. We separately couldn’t have done it, but together the three of us found the motivation to start Yonder Yoga.”
Wes channeled an inner entrepreneur he discovered at the Terry College.
“I took a lot of business classes, and I found myself in upper-level business courses even as an undergrad,” he says. “I leaned heavily toward classes that focused on entrepreneurship.”
Wes and his sister entered a business case competition, creating a database to organize sorority and fraternity registrations online. They won, and Wes launched and transformed the business case into an actual business while still an undergrad.
After graduating with a management degree, Wes sold and successfully exited the company, then looked around for the next green mountain to climb.
Along came Alex, who had gone into commercial real estate investments after earning a finance degree. He became the first investor in Wes’s Surterra Wellness, a medical cannabis company. They expanded across the Southeast, growing to a $2 billion valuation by the time Wes exited Surterra in 2018.
Growing a cannabis business to billions in value in just five years invited tense regulatory and political moments. When Selby invited Wes to a yoga studio to ease the stress, he reluctantly agreed.
“The first time she brought me into a yoga class,” Wes laughs, “I told her I was never going to come back. The second time I went, I told her I was never going to stop.
“Yoga gave me exactly the solace I needed in a trying time. And it was the happiest my body had felt since I was playing sports in college.”
The X Factor
Yonder Yoga’s pleasant, welcoming studios, often specialized for hot-yoga aficionados, offer relief from stress and care for the spirit. Similarly in the yoga tradition, they bring together a caring community of kindred spirits.
But, uniquely, Yonder Yoga offers something else. An X Factor.
Athletes like Wes, Alex, Selby and millions of others eventually pass a point where they can compete at their peak. It leaves an emptiness. While their bodies might not be able to attain past levels of physical performance, their minds still live in the arena, craving competition.
“There’s no league for 35-year-old contact football,” Wes says flatly. “But in yoga, you still have a way to push your body and mind farther. It’s a crazy luxury after losing the thrill of competition. And it’s daily … and you can do it for the rest of your life.”
Yoga surprised Alex too.
“The first time I tried a heated yoga class, I thought I was going to die,” he remembers. “I seriously considered leaving halfway through. But how I felt afterwards made it more than worth it. I was rejuvenated. I was ready to tackle whatever came next.”
Selby agrees that yoga might be the ultimate competition: a body in constant contest with the person he or she was yesterday — or years ago.
“Yoga is beautifully frustrating,” she says. “There’s no mastering it. Every day, you strive to learn and perfect it. Every day, you get better but fall short. It absolutely appeals to a person with a competitive nature.”
The Terry twist
Alex Hill is quick to credit Terry for his professional chops.
“Terry,” he says, “gave me a great foundation for success: financial skills, an incredible network of people and a diverse education. Now that I wear many hats in a startup, I appreciate the business classes that I use every day. Whether real estate transactions or yoga studios, I have a skill set to build and value cash flow streams, which informs everything we do.”
Membership is a big part of Yonder Yoga’s revenue, supplemented by earnings from private off-site corporate and group private sessions. Yonder also offers label apparel, global retreats and a training program where teachers learn Yonder style and service. More than three of every four company instructors are graduates of the Yonder Yoga School.
For Wes, B-school lessons from Mark “Dill” Driscoll, in 2009 named Terry’s first Entrepeneur-in-Residence, still help shape strategic decision-making as Yonder Yoga looks to the future.
Alex and Selby agree.
“We have been really intentional about our growth and have thus far done everything organically and with internal capital,” Alex says. “We’re trying to prove the concept and scalability on our own, while also really learning what works and doesn’t work. It’s been nice to be able to control that process without outside pressure.”
Will that change?
“I would say, looking forward,” Alex says, “that we will need to explore different strategies to grow more exponentially. That could look many ways, but in some form it likely involves introducing outside capital partners to benefit from our learned knowledge and bring Yonder to more communities.”
Adult daycare
A Yonder Yoga studio looks like the community around it. There’s a lovely cross-section of humankind — old and young, all races, colors and lifestyles.
Ashish Malik, a project manager at SAP, has been one of Yonder’s most faithful friends, attending 1,100-plus studio sessions.
“Selby and the Yonder Yoga team have created a great culture at the studio,” Ashish says. “I joke with her that it is my adult daycare. I travel a lot for work, and when I go to other cities I never quite find a studio that encompasses all that Yonder provides.”
Ashish and many other men prefer Yonder studios to more traditional ones. That’s by design.
“We like to market ourselves to athletes,” says Selby. “Because of our background, we’re well positioned for that market, where there’s growing demand. There’s not a good business supply side focused on what athletes need … especially men.”
To her point, NFL players occasionally drop by for private lessons. They stretch, strike poses — and discover that their bodies are not as flexible as they thought. Yoga helps with alignment, hip placement and other priorities for athletic success.
Yonder Yoga understands it is disrupting the traditional mindset of what yoga can accomplish.
“Most places, yoga is perceived as simply stretching and meditating,” Selby points out. “We are actively working to change that narrative and assumption. Our practice stays true to the fundamentals of yoga and mindfulness, but it incorporates a lot of movement and fun music, creating an effective workout.
“There’s a big fitness scene in Atlanta, so appealing to that desire for a workout gets people in the door. Then they stay for the mental and emotional benefits.”
A unique brand
Selby and Alex ran into each other by accident during her freshman year at UGA. Their parents tried matchmaking them the previous year, hoping Alex could convince Selby to attend UGA, but the university senior and high school senior didn’t end up connecting.
Once they did, feelings deepened. They married in June 2019 on Herty Field — with Wes as their officiant.
Selby went from riding horses at UGA to a desk job in Atlanta. She wanted to stay healthy and fit. She also wanted a community around her.
“Yoga checked all the boxes for me,” she says. “I really got into it, especially after trying some of the boutique workout places that just left me feeling depleted, missing meaning. I preferred what I found in yoga, all the different workouts, levels and teams.”
Selby switched from PR to high school education, where she taught English. The combination of yoga and classroom instruction set her up perfectly to launch Yonder Yoga.
The founders worked with a branding professional to select the Yonder Yoga name.
“We wanted something that wasn’t your girly yoga studio brand,” Selby says, “and we wanted something that captured the essence of what makes the yoga practice so special: that the journey never ends.
“Yonder means ‘a place you can see but haven’t yet reached.’ That’s the idea that keeps people coming back for classes. They are chasing new potential that they didn’t even know was in their reach before.
“It’s a great metaphor for our lives on or off the mats,” she adds. “The growth and progress never end, and as long as you keep chasing it, you will live a fulfilling life.”