“Maybe everyday is Saturday morning.”—Drive-By Truckers* A couple of decades before we declared We Do Amazing, good ole Columbus, GA boasted a fairly fitting slogan: ‘What Progress Has Preserved.” While still a solid mantra for our small big city / big small town—with genuine historic Southern charm churning inside an economic engine, with bold, visionary civic leaders as...
Executive Director, Keep Columbus Beautiful Commission Is Columbus, Georgia a beautiful place?“It is a beautiful place. But I think we could do a better job keeping it beautiful and making itmore clean. We have to make sure that we’re pushing things to keep people from littering and keeping our city clean. Because Columbus is a beautiful city.Littering is such a habit for people—to flick...
My Year in Screenshots “What if everyday was like Saturday morning?”—Drive-By Truckers** Looking back at the past year ain’t a pretty picture. While I can’t tell y’all exactly why my 2020 was such an ugly scene—statute of limitations dictates we’ll have to wait about 4 years to spin that year—social-media algorithms reveal a lot about my journey these last 12...
Program Manager, Georgia Center for OpportunityAdmin, Columbus Community Resource Network What exactly is the Georgia Center for Opportunity?“The Georgia Center for Opportunity Is a wonderful organization. I’m so blessed to work there with people who have the heart that they have for others and the purpose that they have to make our communities better. It’s an organization that’s been around in...
Christmas Lights & Tradition in the Time of COVID (Crane-Spotting Edition) “What if everyday was like Saturday morning?”—Dive-By Truckers** . A TWISTED TALE OF TRADITIONI walked a bitter cold block upriver Tuesday morning for my first-ever glimpse of the gingerbread houses display the RiverCenter always hosts during the holidays. It was weird. And a lil’ bit sad.This is not...
Executive Director, Dragonfly Trails Network Why is bicycle infrastructure—from both a commuting and recreational standpoint—important to economic development?“Take the Riverwalk for example, designed to be a really beautiful service road for our Combined Sewer Overflow [CSO] system. Cities started building trails for recreational purposes and then noticed people were using them to get to work...
Managing Producer, Columbus Ballet’s ‘The Masked Nutcracker”Faculty, CSU Youth Dance Conservatory Why is “The Nutcracker” such an enduring Christmas classic? “It’s such a sweet tradition for so many people. In general, it’s very classic. There are a lot of people out there trying to make “The Nutcracker” into something else. But what I have found is people love the...
Director, StartUp Columbus Why has Columbus struggled in recent decades to foster small businesses and entrepreneurship?“There are a lot of different reasons that people have given for it. I have my speculations, which are that we’ve had a lot of really successful large businesses. For the population, we probably have more Fortune 1,000 companies than any community our size. the size of our city...
Georgia Political Director for Biden/Harris 2020 Campaign Were you surprised that Joe Biden won Georgia? “No. We had a tremendous campaign with volunteers giving up their time and driving all over the state to encourage voter turnout. This was positive and important work for the [Democratic] Party. Plus all the voter registration efforts of Stacey Abrams and the Fair Fight organization...
Plant Manager, Goldens’ Foundry & Machine Co. After Golden’s filed for bankruptcy back in 2009, what changed as far as your business model to foster the type of success the company has today? “Not really anything changed as far as our business model. To go back a little further, in 2001 we made a massive investment in the Columbus plant. We put in a brand-new molding operation...