In addition to her gifts of genuine curiosity, love of people, competitiveness, friction-fighting and all things travel, Rachel brings a get-it-done attitude to the LRC team. Her years of experience encompass a wide variety of marketing disciplines especially within her academic field of study—public relations, which she gained from her beloved University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Though a die-hard Bulldog, between graduation and 1996 she handled the PR and corporate relations for the Manufacturing Research Center (MARC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This position, created for her after a brief internship, involved working side-by-side with some of the world’s greatest minds as well as inter-disciplinary corporate partners from Fortune 100 companies. Rachel was tasked with creating a communications system to encourage interaction and communication for the benefit of all involved. When her impending marriage and move to South Georgia suggested that she find other employment, the MARC director sought to have her approved to become a—if not the first–telecommuter for Georgia Tech.
The 1996 Olympics, a milestone moment in Georgia, also served as a pivotal moment for Rachel’s career as she worked simultaneously her final weeks for Georgia Tech and her first weeks for Callaway Gardens, a destination resort in Pine Mountain, Ga., owned by the non-profit Ida Cason Callaway Foundation™. By day she was schmoozing with journalists in the Olympic Media Center, ensuring they were aware that when the Olympics are in the South there are official grits. Specifically, the official grits of the 1996 Olympics were Callaway Gardens Speckled Heart™ Grits (yum). By afternoon, she would find her way to the Olympic Village on Georgia Tech’s campus to serve as the official coordinator between the Olympics and the MARC.
Post-Olympics and for the next two decades, her time was dedicated fully to Callaway Gardens, which provided enormous opportunities for both experiences and growth. She worked with the likes of Southern Living, CNN, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’ Sunday Morning, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NBC’s Nightly News and many more. She’s been inside of some of the biggest, shiniest television and radio stations in the Southeast…and some of the smallest and oldest. During that tenure she wore enough hats to cover a small army, which included serving as director of marketing and public relations, making her responsible for guest-facing words—whether on-property, off-property or in cyber space. Rachel lives in Harris County, Ga., with her husband and their two children.
