Peachtree Corners Life
Scott Hilton and Ruwa Romman on Current Legislation and Issues of Today
Published
2 years agoon
Join the conversation as representatives Scott Hilton and Ruwa Romman discuss the latest legislative decisions impacting the lives of Georgians. From a $1 billion tax rebate to an increase in teacher pay, they dissect the financial bills shaping the state’s future. But the conversation doesn’t stop there. They also dive into the issues facing the education system in Georgia, reducing standardized testing and the state’s high turnover rate for state offices. With thoughtful and bipartisan discussions that extend to sensitive issues like gender-affirming medical treatment, the Peachtree Corners Life podcast provides an insightful window into the state’s political landscape.
Resources:
Scott Hilton’s Website: https://www.scotthiltonga.com/
Ruwa Romman’s Website: https://www.ruwa4georgia.com/
One of the cool things we did this year in the budget was we passed yet another $2,000 increase for our teachers. We are in a war for talent right now, just like every other industry. And Georgia now after the last four years, I think we’ve increased teacher pay by about $7,000. So we are now one of the highest states in the Southeast in terms of teacher pay. So really kind of putting our foot forward to say teachers are important and they need to be paid that way.
scott hilton
Timestamp (where in the podcast to find it):
[0:00:00] – Intro
[0:01:58] – About the Representatives
[0:04:52] – Passing a Balanced Budget
[0:09:32] – Consumer Protection
[0:19:37] – Education Issues
[0:34:59] – Gender Dysphoria Treatments
[0:42:59] – Scott Hilton Shares His Views
[0:46:29] – Closing
Podcast transcript:
[0:00:00] Rico Figliolini: Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the great city of Peachtree Corners, largest city in Gwinnett County. So we have some two great guests. This is going to be a sort of legislative session, politics, a little bit of recap of what’s going on in the State House. Let me just quickly introduce Ruwa Romman on the left. Hey, Ruwa. Good morning. Thanks for coming. Ruwa is a Fresh State House rep. She represents District 97, which includes Berkeley Lake, Duluth, Norcross and Peachtree Corners. Life here in Gwinnett County. She’s the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia State House, which is interesting as well. I come from New York, so being in the south is a little different. It’s good to see firsts on things like that. I also want to introduce also Scott Hilton that everyone, people know. Hey Scott. Good morning.
[0:00:49] Scott Hilton: Hey, Rico, how are you doing? Good morning.
[0:00:51] Rico Figliolini: Good. Yes. We had some issues, technical issues before, but we’re good now, though. Scott’s, a State House Rep. District 48. Actually. This is his second rodeo, if you will. He was State House rep once before and had some break between and is back again. He represents now a little different than the district before, which is Pastry Corners, Johns Creek, Alpharetta and Roswell. So, welcome. Before we get into discussions and all, I just want to introduce our sponsor, corporate sponsor, supporting our journalism, our podcasts, and the magazines that we produce. And that’s EV Remodeling, Inc. And the owner is Eli. And Eli lives here in pastry corners. Great company. They do design, build whole house renovation and such. So check them out and you can go to Evremodelinginc.com to get more information about them now that we’ve cleared that. And technically, I think everything’s going good. So let’s do this rehearsal again, and we’ll have Ruwa introduce herself this time. Well, like we did last time, I guess. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Ruwa, and how’s your first session, by the way? Your impression of it as well.
[0:01:58] Ruwa Romman: Hi, everyone. My name is Ruwa and I represent House District 97, which includes parts of fishery Corners, all of Berkeley Lake, parts of Duluth, and parts of Norcross. And I am a freshman state representative. I got elected last year, and this was my first ever session, and it was an incredible experience. I think, as I’ve told people as a freshman, it always feels like you’re drinking from a fire hose. And I was incredibly thankful that there were other freshmen that had come in with me. Almost 30% of the chamber this year were new members. We also had new leadership, which meant that everybody was kind of learning along the way. And even, for example, when we didn’t have offices, we kind of all navigated the area together, and we worked really well together, and it gave us an opportunity to build some really good relationships for the session.
[0:02:43] Rico Figliolini: Cool. Yeah. That first session of being a freshman could be a horror story sometimes, I guess, but I’m glad that you all are doing well and had time to spend with each other life. That scott, tell us a little bit about yourself, what you’ve been doing lately, and how that first session went to you.
[0:03:00] Scott Hilton: Yeah. Rico, good morning. Great to see you. Thank you for hosting us. I know when you and I talked about doing this, I thought it was so important that both Ruwa and I do this together. Our districts are divided essentially by 141. Got the forum side she’s got the bush road side but together, we jointly represent these street corners. And I consider Ruwa’s a good friend of mine, even though we’re on opposite political sides. What’s neat about working at the State House is that we do create those friendships and we do work closely together. You hear about DC. Politics all the time. I think it’s very different down at the Georgia State House. We do have our differences, but it’s awesome to see us work together. As you mentioned, I’ve lived in Petrie Corners 13 years now we live over in Amberfield and raising three kids here. Wife is a small business owner right across the street from Wesleyan. And we love live, working, and playing in Peachtree Corners.
[0:03:55] Rico Figliolini: Yeah. And I appreciate when you first contacted me a couple of weeks ago about bringing on Ruwa as well. So I appreciate you putting that out there. That’s very good. I don’t see that too often in politics, bringing on an opposing party with you to talk about what’s going on in session. So this is great to have two political point of views, I guess, but let’s get right into it. There’s a few things, and this started really with that legislative recap that you sent out that I ended up posting online. I’d like to invite Ruwa to be able to do the same thing for me. By the way, just to let you know. I’d like to be able to share your point of view as well within the week or two. So I’ll get back in touch with you on that. But, Scott, tell me, out of the half a dozen legislative more than that, probably legislation that you’ve highlighted in your newsletter, which one do you want to start with? What’s most important to you at this point?
[0:04:52] Scott Hilton: Yeah, what’s most important is really the only constitutional responsibility we have is passing a budget and passing a balanced budget. So we could go down there, do that, and adjourn and get on out of there. But that’s one of the biggest responsibilities that we have. And if you’re a taxpayer in Georgia, specifically Gwynette this year, this is a very good year for you. In particular, three things. Number one, we passed another $1 billion tax rebate for Georgia taxpayers, upwards of $500 for joint filers that you’ll see coming back into your pocket. Number two, we did another billion dollar property tax relief grant. So a lot of us that are watching this podcast here are property owners. And we’ve seen property taxes skyrocket over the last couple of years. And so giving much needed relief there. And then finally, third, worked very hard to introduce and pass a Gwynette property tax rebate. So that not a rebate, but we’re going to be able to vote in 2024 to double our current homestead exemption. So providing Gwynette taxpayers more tax relief here in the state.
[0:06:02] Rico Figliolini: Cool. Wow. Awesome. Yes, I noticed my property tax bill, when they assess it, and you know how that works, right? You get the value of the house, the assessment is much lower or well, supposed to be lower. They’ve raised it right. So I guess that’s life almost like a tax increase without voting for a tax increase when they do that, right.
[0:06:22] Scott Hilton: See what’s been happening. So this is the first time we’ve cut it in this major way since 1988. So we’re doubling the homestead exemption, assuming that the voters pass this, and we also provide another $2,000 homestead exemption for teachers, first responders, and active duty military. So really trying to attract the best and brightest to Gwinnett County with really trying to keep the American dream alive. We hear how it’s so hard to buy a house these days and a lot of that property taxes are so expensive at the same time.
[0:06:52] Rico Figliolini: Yeah, for sure. I think there’s only just saw a friend of mine that just bought a house in Peachtree Corners Life a year ago, and there were only two houses for sale in Peace Corners at the time, and I don’t think it’s that much different now, actually. So, Ruwa, what about you? I know you’re a freshman, but what legislation are you out there with?
[0:07:13] Ruwa Romman: I actually was going to say we always start out with a budget because that’s the biggest thing that we pass. And we actually technically two budgets. There’s an amended budget that we passed for the previous fiscal year and then the one for this upcoming fiscal year. What was really unique about the process this year is we had a $6 billion surplus. So we had an opportunity to really backfill some of the things that we’ve had to cut over the past ten years, which was great because we got to see some things like funding for various grants for nonprofits. We got to see funding for breakfast and lunches, particularly for kids who live in poverty because a child that’s hungry is not going to be able to learn. One of the things I was really sad about, and I don’t understand why and this wasn’t our chamber, this was the other chamber was we cut $66 million from the university system this year. So that’s what I want to learn a little bit more about is what went into that decision. Why did it happen? Because that tends to impact smaller colleges and universities a lot more than the bigger ones. And so this year, being able to see that budget process from the inside rather than somebody could advocate for a specific big piece of it was really great. And so it’ll be interesting to watch how some of that plays out. The other thing that I thought was very important was to finally give our state employees right now, our turnover rate for state offices is insane. It’s like anywhere from 30% to 40% turnover rate. And unfortunately, that’s really hindered a lot of our programs. And I was actually really happy to support the governor’s priority in making sure that we the resources that they pay for through their taxes.
[0:08:51] Rico Figliolini: Yeah, the process could be interesting. Right from the inside, you see competing interests. It’s not like someone lobbying for something, a nonprofit lobbying for a budget and not knowing what the competing aspects are on the other side of that. Because you can’t pay for everything, even with the $6 billion surplus. Because I could see paying one time capital expenses and stuff, but then putting it into a budget where it’s going to come back around again in operating budget like the next year, will you have that surplus still or will you have to cut it then? So, yeah, interesting. Scott, aside from the budget, where are you on some other issues?
[0:09:32] Scott Hilton: So I had a great session. It was fun being back the second time because you were a little bit dangerous. You actually knew what you were doing. And so I managed to pass three bills, introduced nine total, sponsored a number of bills, but yeah, managed to pass three House bills that I directly authored, and then three Senate bills that I sponsored. The one that I was kind of most passionate about this time around that did end up passing was involved with financial fraud. So we’ve all gotten the email, right, hey, I’m a Nigerian prince from wherever, and then all of a sudden your money is gone. Prior to House Bill 219, which I authored, we would have to refer that case, that criminal case, to wherever the criminal is, wherever the assets are that he stole. Now we can prosecute that case here in Georgia, delivering much needed justice for the victims of financial crimes. I’m in the banking industry, so it’s all too prevalent. We see it all the time now. So giving victims the tools they need to get justice here in the state was big. So, yeah, excited about Housebook.
[0:10:39] Rico Figliolini: It’s interesting. The Nigerian example is an extreme example, but I’ve seen phishing emails that just look like real emails from companies that used to be how did they even send that out? Even I can make a better looking email, like, closer look into the real thing than I was getting. But now it’s just unbelievable. You really have to be careful where it’s coming from. And those things can be hidden even in the email. So you might think you see the right address, like Apple, but the hyperlink inside it could be different. So it’s just like a mess out there just giving out your password and payments.
[0:11:20] Scott Hilton: Fortunately, it’s our seniors and elder community that typically lead as primary target or victims. And so to provide them with these protections, I think was so important.
[0:11:28] Rico Figliolini: Oh, cool. Yes. Because I could see that happening. So that would work even on things like where I get an email, I get an email, I get a text message. Looks like it’s from Amazon, says, you’ve been charged for this. You may want to check the link and double check it. And most people will probably click that link, which is not what you should do. Right. So will that legislation also cover those types of things as well?
[0:11:52] Scott Hilton: It will, yeah. So previously what would happen is we would investigate, or police would investigate, find out who that person was. Unfortunately, they would live in California or New York or wherever. We’d have to refer that case to the local jurisdiction. The locals would get it and kind of file it away and nothing would happen. Now we can actually begin to prosecute that person here in Georgia, so we actually see some justice going toward them. So cool. That was exciting. Also, bills that I serve as vice chair of the Education Committee, and we did a lot of work, the Education Committee, this year, two bills in particular to highlight the early literacy bill, moving us back to kind of the science of reading. Mississippi passed the same bill, and they’ve seen dramatic improvements in their reading levels. And so that’s something here in Georgia we’ve got to get back on track with. Kids have got to be on a reading level by third grade here in Georgia. So that and then the Safe Schools Act was important. Included in the budget, another line item we had was for school safety grants, each school getting upwards of about $50,000 per school in our state to keep our schools safe. And so that’s something from an education standpoint, we want good policy, safe schools, and good reading, good literacy in our state. So priorities for all the education committee.
[0:13:12] Rico Figliolini: Cool. Ruwa, I saw you nodding a lot there as far as the Early Dorsey Act.
[0:13:18] Ruwa Romman: Yeah. So on the consumer protection piece of it, there was a great bill that came through along those same lines called SB 73, which is meant finally crack down on Telemarketers. But what this bill does, a lot of these companies will outsource their calling. They’ll have a different company either here in the United States or overseas, do a lot of their marketing, and it’s become very spammy. I mean, we would be hearing this bill during committee hearing, and at least three or four of us would get a spam call in the process of hearing. And so we finally installed last year, but they’ll finally pass this year, that fine company close that loophole to say you’re also responsible for whoever you contract work out to and we’re hoping that we’ll mitigate some of those calls. So it’s exciting to kind of see when things complementary happen that way, where it’s a protection piece and we’re also even looking at the process. And same thing on the literacy bill. I was stoked to see that on the list of things we’re going to talk about today because I always tell people when I learned English here in the US. You start out by looking at pictures and then you kind of piece the pictures to the word. And if you’re dyslexic, you don’t catch that until you pictures away at that point, citizens, third grade, fourth grade, wherever it might be, and they’ve lost out on years of education where somebody could sat down and said, here, let me help you. And the parents that advocated for that were really awesome and they were really fun to talk to. And I always tell people that’s why it’s important to us, because sometimes we don’t realize either something has or an issue that’s there. Those are really great bills.
[0:15:11] Rico Figliolini: Yeah, a lot of good legislation there. The security grants and stuff as well, I think works out. I guess the schools can depending on the school. I think sometimes social media, really. I mean, there have been a lot of school shootings or at least highlighted more in the past year. Right. And that maybe makes people feel like it’s happening more often and maybe it is, but it’s such a small percentage compared to the schools out there. It’s interesting how you want to protect your kids. I have three kids. It’s not an easy thing. You send them out into the world and you expect that they should come back. Good to see that. What about other legislation that you’ve been looking at?
[0:16:00] Ruwa Romman: Yeah, so another one that I looked at this year that really helped me understand the process, kind of see the importance policy conversations in all of this is House Bill 73. So along the same so it’s in this case a House bill, not a Senate Bill 73. When we talk about consumer protections, one of the growing industries is the solar industry. And what we’re finding is sometimes some of these will try to sell something and unfortunately they don’t give their terms up front. And so somebody might end up scammed. They might have these solar panels that don’t work or they don’t have I said on energy, utility, telecoms, which is why I know so much about this. But one of the bills was a consumer protection bill and unfortunately the third section of that bill was going to stand up a whole new office for these companies to purchase. The problem is we already have that. The Secretary of State’s office. People register their businesses through that. The Attorney General has an entire oversight board. And so one of the conversations we had this year was instead of paying for branding office and having redundant spending and all of that, this should be moved under one of these two agencies. And it was really interesting because you don’t really hear about this sort of like bipartisan conversation that happens. And it did pass the House because we wanted to signal that this was an important bill. But then on the Senate side, we started working through to fix that provision so that hopefully next year we can fully pass the bill. But I always tell them, watch the process. Even if you take one bill each year to watch, you’ll learn a lot from this process. And that was one of them.
[0:17:39] Rico Figliolini: Yeah. I mean, even though the House may pass several bills, it’s really the Senate. Then they have to go back and then write change.
[0:17:47] Scott Hilton: Yeah.
[0:17:48] Rico Figliolini: So it could go the other way. Yeah. Talking about those calls, I use T Mobile. And the interesting part is they have a scam likely thing, so they silence calls as it comes in. Sad part is, if it’s a call I need, it goes to voicemail and never makes it to me unless I put it in the address book contact list, rather. But yeah, so that could be a dozen calls like that.
[0:18:11] Scott Hilton: Rico, I’ll jump in. It’s funny, we have a consumer protection theme to the call here today. One of the neat bills we passed was dealing with online renewal transparency. So House Bill 528 basically said, life, listen, it’s so easy to sign up for an online subscription online, and then they make it so difficult to cancel it, right? Like, think about you have to call in, you have to go through all these and so it’s the transparency act that says, listen, if you make it easy to sign up online, you also got to make it easy to cancel online. So I think that’s going to provide a real breath fresh air for a lot of folks from a consumer perspective.
[0:18:47] Rico Figliolini: You know what, I appreciate you saying that, because that just reminded me of my daughter whose membership I was paying at a gym in Johns Creek because she wanted to go up there. It’s only five minutes from here, right? At some point, she ended up going to school and stuff, and I had to cancel it because she wasn’t around. They forced me to come up there in person to cancel the membership, and I said that’s like crazy. I would never have to do that in any other business. Why are you forcing me? And they said, that’s the only way we do it. And they would no matter what I said, they would not let me cancel it on the phone or online. And I had to go literally in person to cancel it, which is crazy.
[0:19:30] Ruwa Romman: Yeah.
[0:19:30] Scott Hilton: I mean, that’s the kind of deceptive stuff that we’re trying to protect people against. Yeah, it’s a very good bill.
[0:19:37] Rico Figliolini: I like that personally. All right, so we’ve been talking consumer protection and stuff. There’s been a few other and we talked a little bit about education. I noticed that in your email, Scott, you also talked about a couple other things like cold case justice and reopening cases. God knows I think we all anyone that’s on social media to any extent or watch certain news programs see, sometimes these cold cases open and DNA prove that that 20 year conviction was an innocent person or that cases are not solved. And because there’s just more cases right after that, everything’s whatever. If the parents if it’s parents, they have to scream the loudest to be able to get any attention. So tell us a little bit about that and what that means to families.
[0:20:32] Scott Hilton: Yes, we have one that did not go through that we’re still working on. When someone is wrongfully convicted and it’s proven that they were, we actually have a compensation program to compensate them for that time they spent. Right now, it’s a very laborious process for that person to receive compensation from the state. We’re streamlining that process, passed the House, got hung up in the Senate. I think we’ll probably get it through next year. Yeah. Victims of cold cases. That bill allows families to petition to have cases reopen when there’s new evidence, again allowing them to receive justice on cold cases there. You touched on education. I did want to highlight one of the cool things we did this year in the budget was we passed yet another $2,000 increase for our teachers. We are in a war for talent right now, just like every other industry. And Georgia now after the last four years, I think we’ve increased teacher pay by about $7,000. So we are now one of the highest states in the Southeast in terms of teacher pay. So really kind of putting our foot forward to say teachers are important and they need to be paid that way. And so really proud of the work we did there. One of the education bills that did not pass that we found to chat about here on the call, ru and I were on opposite sides of this, dealing with school choice.
[0:21:52] Ruwa Romman: We had away with it. Look, I was going to let you go through this whole you know what.
[0:22:01] Scott Hilton: She was super passionate about the other side. This bill would have allowed parents to keep the state portion of their education spending so equivalent to $6,500. This impacted if you had a child in what’s called a failing school. So we rank all our schools. If you’re at all school here in the state, you would have been able to opt out, take your child to either home school, a micro school, a private school, basically an education savings account. And essentially, I view it as a lifeline. The program only kicks into place if our schools are fully funded or our traditional public schools are fully funded, and the local schools get to keep the local portion of their tax digest while not having to educate the student. So, again, critical lifeline to those that are trapped in failing schools.
[0:22:54] Rico Figliolini: I think that legislation, or at least the way you headlined it, was school choice. The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act. Was that the one? I guess. And interesting because I always felt life there was never enough money for someone to actually go to private school, let’s say to choose. But knowing how the school systems work, actually there’s a lot of scholarship programs in private schools and charter schools. So 6500 actually go a long way in some private or charter schools to.
[0:23:24] Scott Hilton: Pay for you’re not sending a kid to 6500. We live in a big state, though, and what we found was private school on average runs, you about 10,000 short. But yes, you also have programs that many of the schools have kind of help bridge that gap, and even the parents themselves can help bridge that gap. We heard there was one parent who literally knocked doors in her local community to raise money to send her kid to private school. So folks are desperate. They want to get out. They want to have and this is something we worked very hard on, fell just a little bit short. I think we’re going to try to get it through again.
[0:24:04] Rico Figliolini: See, Ruwa jumping here. She wants to get right into the.
[0:24:11] Ruwa Romman: I’ve become the unintended consequences queen of the House floor because I’ll go up and I’ll talk about why a bill is bad, but specifically implementation. We talk a lot. I tell people all the time I had an incredible public experience, particularly in Foresight County public schools. You literally have your pick of programs from culinary school to IV program to tech, and they’re all publicly funded. And I didn’t have to pay a cent growing up to choose between those options. What we’re seeing is the culmination of all public education. And rather than saying, you know what, it’s time to reverse course, we’re saying, let’s just take that money and put it somewhere else. And that’s going to leave a lot of people behind. And there are co provisions within this bill in particular that give me pause. The first is that piece about how we’re only looking at the bottom 25% of schools. No matter what list you make, there’s always going to be a bottom 25%. So even if they meet basic standards, even if these schools do meet the thresholds we’re asking them to, they could still be the last 25%. The other piece to this is, as we mentioned, there is actually a gap for that funding. So even if you covered half of it with this scholarship and then the other half of the scholarship from the school itself, there’s still other factors that would prevent somebody who’s trying to get out of that low income area from going to that school. And that includes things like transportation, which is why a lot of studies have found that unfortunately, private schools are not the answer to some of the woes that we’re seeing in public education. And they’re very real. Don’t get me wrong. They’re very real. And there’s a reason a lot of people voted against this bill across the aisle. It’s because we knew that either our districts didn’t qualify for this, so it meant money going out of our districts for this or that. They didn’t have a private school that qualified within a span of area that was feasible to get to every day for their child. And so I always urge people, I say, things sound good, they might have a good title, a bill might look great on paper. But when you think about the actual implementation, the flow of money, I’m actually worried that this bill is going to take away from students. And the last piece I tell people is, on average, we spend half of that per pupil from the state. And that’s just like pupil to people. I’m not talking about everything else that we spend. I’m talking about the spend per student that we’re talking about here is almost half of that $500.
[0:26:42] Rico Figliolini: You’re talking from the state side versus the county.
[0:26:46] Ruwa Romman: And I think a lot about what that could mean in terms of potentially taking more money up than you’re putting in, and the fact that private schools don’t have the same standards that requirements in terms of entry as public schools, that gets fixed. And I’m hoping we get a fiscal note to figure out how much fully this will cost. So in the meantime, I’m a pretty hard no on that bill.
[0:27:12] Rico Figliolini: Let me ask you something. I know that charter schools is a big thing that people look at too, and there was a movement to stop charter schools, let’s say stop funding them, and charter schools actually become good ones. At least there’s always a bad actor in anything, right? So you always get the bad example in these types of things. But they’re really good charter schools in neighborhoods that could work, in poorer neighborhoods, let’s say, where maybe the school is not performing the way they should be. And the charter school puts it into a different light, a different way. And some people may look at it and say, well, it’s still a school, it’s still same teachers, maybe, but there’s a different mission in the charter school, right? You want to give these children the opportunity. I’ve seen, I’ve done sometimes career days at middle schools, for example, and it’s like unbelievable, the difference in the kids and who’s paying attention and who’s not. And it’s a shame because I could pick out out of class of 30, maybe two or three that are excited about what they’re seeing. And I could see that they’re going to go far, and then you could see the five or six kids that totally just not learning. And it may just not be their fault even. It may just be the way things are taught.
[0:28:30] Scott Hilton: So the beauty of charter schools is they get more flexibility. So they’re publicly funded, so they are public schools, they get more flexibility in how they’re able to operate and teach, but along with that comes more accountability, right? So if a public charter school is failing, they’re closed, whereas a traditional public school, if they’re failing, we give them more money. There’s the beauty in that fight to survive and be excellent in everything they do. And on average, our charter schools far exceed our traditional public schools with less money. They receive less money than traditional public schools. So it’s proven the model, the model works. We have thousands of Georgians on waitlist across the state to join charter schools. We actually have one, I believe they’re still here in Peace Corners, right off Spaulding version. Their students come and they learn Japanese. That’s how they have that flexibility to do that. And they’re doing amazing things, producing great scholars.
[0:29:33] Rico Figliolini: They have over 240 kids, I think, there, and they’re doing a great job. When I first heard about the Japanese immersion school, I was like, really interesting to go that way, but they’re doing phenomenally well.
[0:29:46] Ruwa Romman: We’ve talked about this previously, but I think once before, where honestly, to me personally, I think one of the places that we can absolutely save costs and be able to retain better talent within our school system is to reduce the amount of standardized testing that kids have to take these days. Because the reason kids aren’t able to learn in a flexible, critical thinking type of way is they spend sometimes up to 45% of their time on testing and preparing for testing and doing the testing. And I understand that we need to have metrics, but now it’s becoming redundant metrics. And if we want that flexibility, if we want to be able to bring some of that overhead out and reduce some of those administrative costs that we’re seeing that are ballooning across the board, that’s one way we can do it. And I always urge people, and I say, look, it’s easy to build something new and shiny and it’s easy to tear things down, and it’s a lot harder. There are people making decisions about education that have never set foot in the classroom and have never taught before, and that’s a mental element of education, is that we are teaching students. The basic premise to my stance is, if this takes an opportunity from another child, I can’t in good conscience vote for it, because then I’m just helping perpetuate the spiral downward. Now, that doesn’t have out of whatever school that they are assigned to. This is, can we find a way to help that school rather than building a whole new one with all that money and then bringing in brand new talent? No, we should just bring that talent to the school that’s already existing and bring some of that work in house rather than outsourcing it kind of interesting.
[0:31:40] Rico Figliolini: I think any parent that’s gone to the PTAs and schools and stuff over the years can see. I think if you’re intelligent enough, you don’t necessarily have to be an educator to be able to see when something’s not working. To me we all talk about. I think we all can agree that the formative years are the early years of a child. And I just wish that there was more money spent in that early part and that the classrooms are smaller even. Because once you get past, like my life says, sometimes they pick up from you what they’re doing. And I said, well, they’re past that eight year mark, so they’re not picking up anything more from me at this point. But it’s that example that leadership, not just from the teacher, but from the students themselves. And it takes work, right? It takes work to do that. The standardized testing is a lazy way. It worked at one point, I think, nationally, when we had no testing, when a kid in California applying for a college, with a kid in Georgia applying for a college, there needed to be some sort of standard way. But I agree with you. I think what it comes down to now is money. Who’s getting the multimillion dollar contracts to do these tests? It’s just ridiculous. At some point that the money that’s spent to test on kids, they’re not teaching well enough. The obvious thing is to spend the money there. I agree with that.
[0:33:14] Scott Hilton: One of the things we worked on in education, kind of outside of the school a little bit, I became kind of a de facto swimming guy this year. I had a couple of swimming related bills. One of the leading causes of death of children under the age of 18 is swimming accidents. And so I sponsored two bills, one that both have passed, one that uses our schools to disseminate information out to the community. Hey, here’s local resources where you can get for free swimming lessons. I think about Petrie corners, particularly the YMCA. If you want to go and get a swimming lesson, we offer it, and so a lot of people just don’t know about it. And so schools now, at the beginning of the year, will give out the parents, either a flyer electronically, information on where they can get free swimming lessons near them, and then also pass Izzy’s Law, which deals with private swim instruction. We had a case here in Georgia, private swim instructor was teaching 25 kids. One of them got loose, and you know what kind of happened from there. So it puts definitions around. Okay, when you’re doing private swim, what’s the ratio? Teachers to students and all that to kind of avoid that situation moving forward.
[0:34:24] Rico Figliolini: Yeah. More regulation sometimes is needed. I know people say sometimes we over regulate, but that type of thing you really do. There’s just too many people that just do their own thing irresponsible. We just assume people are responsible when they offer those lessons, but we don’t know. Right. There’s no way to grade them. Like going to a doctor that might have gotten a C at Columbia versus someone that got an A somewhere. We’ll never know that.
[0:34:52] Scott Hilton: It’s one of those industries we just didn’t have any kind of guardrails around. We’re getting close to summer here. That’s one of the important things here.
[0:34:59] Rico Figliolini: I’m glad you brought that up. Thank you, Scott. Ruwa. I know we’re getting a little long here, so I don’t know if I should introduce this subject, but I’m going to anyway. So there’s the gender thing. I say the gender thing because it depends who you talk to and what part of that subject, what part of that topic, whether it’s young kids under 18 I know you were involved with SB 140, I think you mentioned that, which bans gender dysphoria treatments for kids under 18. I have my opinion. I’ll leave it to myself. But I’d like to hear what you would say, Ruwa, about that, what that means.
[0:35:41] Ruwa Romman: Yeah. So, again, going back to unintended consequences, you’ll hear me say this a lot. What we’ve seen is this movement targeting particularly those who identify as trans. And we have a finite amount of time every session. We’ve got 40 days between January to March. There are a lot of bills that end up not passing. And for whatever reason, this has become the topic of the day. And the reason I’m particularly sensitive to it is last year, one of the bills that was passed was to enable the High School Association board, sports association board, to ban students who identify as trans from playing in the sport as their identified gender, instead of the gender that they were assigned at birth. And the reason I’m sensitive to that is, I’m not trans. This is not something that I ever experienced. But that bill was written in the same way that allowed the schools to ban hijab wearing girls from playing sports. So I’ve always been particularly attuned and sensitive to any bills that talk about a minority group when that minority group is not present within those that are making those decisions. And so this was one of those bills. We had a long committee hearing on it, although it had to be truncated because we were running out of time at that point. And I took that as an opportunity to listen, because this is not something that I’m familiar with. And the thing that there was a moment where those who had ever experienced any sort of gender dysphoria as under the age of 18 and had received treatment, whether that’s hormone replacement therapy or surgery after 18 if they regretted their decision. And then they were also asked, is there anybody that falls within that category and does not regret their decision? In the span of the process of this bill moving through, they have not found a single person, especially within the state of Georgia, that regrets receiving that treatment, particularly starting under the age of 18. I was sitting in that committee hearing. We waited for quite a bit of time to allow people to come to committee room to come testify on this. But the people who did not regret their decision were overall present in that room. To me, as a legislature who doesn’t have experience on this issue, that signals to me that I am trying to deal with something that I do not understand. There’s been, frankly, quite a bit of graphic conversation about what this means with gender reassignment surgery for those under 18. And I have to remind them that we do not perform those surgeries in Georgia. Adults are unable to find the treatments that they need because it is so rare in our state. But one of the unintended consequences of this bill, not only does it ban something that doesn’t exist, it bans hormone replacement therapies, which do have long term impacts, but it’s not surgery. And there was a provision within the bill that was struck out that would have prevented essentially a new crime from being created against doctors. That provision that would have had a safeguard within the bill was removed. And there’s a reason there’s unanimous consent within medical professionals opposing this bill. We had one endocrinologist come and testify, saying that she does not recommend formal replacement therapy for those under 18 after doing something. She does not treat people with gender dysphoria. She refers them out. And she has kind of gone on the speaking circuit on this. So for me personally, obviously, I’m not trans. It doesn’t impact me personally. I don’t have siblings who are trans or family members who are trans. But I’m incredibly suspect when people who are not impacted by something create laws about that thing.
[0:39:24] Rico Figliolini: Scott, how do you feel about that?
[0:39:27] Scott Hilton: Great question. We talk a lot about on this call, protecting children and the innocence of childhood. For me, this is a very simple issue. We should not be performing irreversible treatments on prepubescent children. For me, again, it’s pretty black and white. This was one of the easier votes we voted on. I think it’s sad what’s happening to some of these kids. I was on that committee hearing, served on the healthcare committee. We had a mom testify at four years old. Her daughter started exhibiting, and then at seven, I think they started some form of treatments. Again, as a dad of three kids, I can’t imagine what’s being done to some of these kids.
[0:40:17] Ruwa Romman: That’s actually very unfair, because I know that parent, and she and I spoke after because I really wanted more information from her. They did not start treatment at seven years old. What they did was they had the child meet with therapists and psychiatrists and an extensive team of both mental health and physical health professionals to understand if there were any other underlying issues before as they neared puberty, which was twelve to 13 years old, they then began discussing potential treatments. The child is not old enough to even receive hormone blockers, let alone hormone replacement therapy. Her conversation was this bill would prevent the child, if they reach that point, from being able to pursue the next step in their care should they need it. And I think again, this is why I say if you’re able to see something that’s a medical issue in black and white when there are so many degrees of gray, that gives me one of the things I hadn’t even thought about is was brought up during the committee hearing was that sometimes younger women, even under the age of 18, require breast reduction surgery because it creates intense back problems. It literally can create scoliosis, it can be paralyzing, and this bill could potentially impact that. And again, my question is, we have so many things we need to worry about. You’re talking about twelve families in the entire state that this could apply to just past the $32 billion budget. It’s guaranteed that we’re willing to use State Farm.
[0:41:47] Rico Figliolini: That’s what I was going to ask also in that committee meeting, how many people actually are affected by this legislation? In the state of Georgia, you would think there are hundreds of people impacted by this. The same way I think when it comes to gender and sports, how many people in school are actually impacted by that legislation? Yeah, sometimes I think our priorities get a little mixed up. That’s my opinion as far as what should be at the top and stuff, but I get it. Listen, we all have things that we want to discuss. Talk about this 300 plus. How many legislators are they now?
[0:42:25] Ruwa Romman: We’re 176. There’s like four empty.
[0:42:33] Rico Figliolini: 300 number I think is counties, then Georgia or something like that.
[0:42:41] Scott Hilton: 180 in the House, 56 in the Senate. I cover about 60,000 folks. Roughly about 40,000 voter or people registered to vote. Yeah.
[0:42:51] Rico Figliolini: Interesting. We were talking a little before about.
[0:42:53] Ruwa Romman: I need more people voting. Not enough of you. Vote local election, please.
[0:42:59] Rico Figliolini: Yeah, but if you’re going to vote, please look at the issues, read the stuff. Don’t just vote just because you think it’s like, I want educated voters also someone that knows what they’re doing. At least we’re out of time almost here. So what I’d like to do is we can keep going on, but I’m sure that if our listeners have any comments that would be putting it in the comments section once this is streamed out there, and certainly to the tail end of this. So I’m going to ask both of you to give me like one or two minute recap and then how people can reach either one of you. And I’ll make sure those are in the show notes as well. So why don’t you put you guys on and tell me what you need to tell us. Let’s start with Scott this time.
[0:43:47] Scott Hilton: Thank you, Rico, for having us. When I ran for office, you heard me say over and over again, I was laser focused on three things our economy, public safety, and education, and so fulfilled those promises this session. Look forward to continuing to fill those next session. Really focused on keeping our community safe, our schools strong, and doing what we need to from a financial standpoint to help you and your family navigate this economy. I’m going to continue to be effective for you, but most importantly, I’m going to continue to be accessible for you. You can reach me on all the social media platforms, ScottHiltonGA. ScottHiltonGA is where we are on Facebook, twitter, and instagram. If you go to my website, Scotthiltonga.com, you’ll see my cell phone number. And really, it’s not just from a policy perspective. I have folks reach out to me who need help with medicaid, with department of transportation, anything you might need from a state perspective, department of revenue, secretary of state, let me know at the second time. We’re out of session right now, but I have families reach out to me, Scott. I got a break in the summer. I don’t know what to do with the kids. Let me take them down the capital, give them a tour, give them behind the scenes look, all that stuff, I love doing all that stuff. I want to be as engaged as possible for you and our community, and you’ll see me about doing town halls and things like that. But whatever you need over the next nine months until we go back in January, you can find me. I’m out there and would love to help you out. It’s truly an honor to serve you in our community.
[0:45:23] Rico Figliolini: Cool.
[0:45:24] Ruwa Romman: All of that. Although we’re in session January through end of March, it’s actually the best time to set up meetings with us, talk to us about policy issues that you care about, because then we could dig really deep into them and prepare ahead of the next session. I’m actually wrapping up a round of town halls now. We’ll probably be doing them throughout the year as well, so be on the lookout for those. You can find me at Ruwa, the number four, Georgia on all the social media handles. For our website, there’s a form you can submit that will email my phone directly. And my team and I are always here to help in whatever way that you need. I’ve got really hit it on the head is that one of the things that people don’t realize is we can help you on the department level. We can support you if you’re not hearing back from somebody, if you’re not getting what you need, use us. And please come down in the Capitol. Whether it’s during session or outside of session, I’ve loved taking people and telling them about the process and showing them how they can have an impact. Anyone can come and testify before committee. Anyone can be in this. It is called the People’s House for a reason, and I really hope to see you there and around the district.
[0:46:29] Rico Figliolini: Cool. I want to just let people know also that you both have newsletters, so they should certainly sign up for those. This way they can see what’s going on. I know you send them out regularly. That’s why there’s no reason anyone should be ignorant about House bills and such and certainly constituent efforts. Like you both have said. If you need any help with state agencies, these two will be able to help you.
[0:46:55] Scott Hilton: Let me slide this in real quick. I failed to mention my biggest accomplishment this session. The Atlanta Journal had the listing of the best dressed legislators. Truly was named. One of them, Ruwa, was robbed. She should have been on that list. So next year she’s going to be on it. It’s fun being down there representing our community.
[0:47:13] Rico Figliolini: It’s fun. It’s good to have you guys on the podcast too. And I love it when Scott gets red faced. He’s almost like basketball. It’s so it’s great to have you guys on. Thank you again. And Scott, thank you again for suggesting that this would be a great podcast to have the three of us together like this. Everyone, leave your comments in the comment section and reach out to these two. They’ll be more than willing to help. Thank you again and have a great day.
[0:47:48] Ruwa Romman: Thank you.
[0:47:49] Rico Figliolini: Bye.
Related
Peachtree Corners Life
Inside the Solicitor General’s Office: Lisamarie Bristol on Justice in Gwinnett County
Published
4 days agoon
March 25, 2025On this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, host Rico Figliolini speaks with Gwinnett County Solicitor General Lisamarie Bristol about her work addressing the county’s growing case volume and implementing new justice initiatives. From launching a public resource website to tackling a 4,000-case backlog, Lisamarie shares how her office is improving efficiency and accessibility in the legal system.
She also discusses innovative programs like the Diversion Program, the Duty Attorney Pilot Program, and the Special Victims Unit—each designed to enhance fairness and provide second chances where possible. Tune in to hear how Gwinnett County is adapting to its rapid growth, the role of technology in legal processes, and how community partnerships are strengthening justice for all.
Key Takeaways & Highlights:
- Understanding the Solicitor General’s Role – How the office prosecutes misdemeanors, traffic offenses, and quality-of-life cases.
- 4,000-Case Backlog Solution – Strategies to streamline processes and improve case resolution speed.
- New Legal Resource Website – How Gwinnett residents can access critical legal information and victim advocacy services.
- Diversion Program Success – Over 1,400 successful cases, providing alternatives to prosecution and preventing repeat offenses.
- Special Victims Unit – Dedicated to handling sensitive cases like misdemeanor sex crimes and vehicular homicides.
- Teen Dating Violence & Social Media Risks – How technology is impacting legal cases involving young people.
- Expanding Access to Legal Support – Partnerships with Mosaic Georgia, PADV, and HIMSA House to assist victims and underserved communities.
- Justice System Challenges – Addressing mental health, substance abuse, and legislative changes affecting prosecution.
Listen in for an insightful conversation on justice, reform, and the future of law enforcement in Gwinnett County!
Resources:
Gwinnett County Solicitor Website: https://gwinnettsg.com/
Campaign website: www.lisamariebristol.com
Mosaic Georgia: www.mosaicgeorgia.org
PADV: www.padv.org
Ahimsa House: www.ahimsahouse.org
Transcript:
00:00:01 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. I appreciate you guys joining us. We’re in our little smart city just north of Atlanta. I have a great guest today, Lisamarie Bristol, Solicitor General for Gwinnett County. I appreciate you joining me, Lisa.
00:00:18 – Lisamarie Bristol
Thank you so much, Rico. It’s a pleasure to be back with you.
00:00:21 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, this is our second podcast together. I think the last one was just before you got elected?
00:00:29 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yes.
00:00:29 – Rico Figliolini
Right? ‘22?
00:00:30 – Lisamarie Bristol
It’s when I was still campaigning so probably about three years ago now. Oh my.
00:00:34 – Rico Figliolini
Yep, yeah. You took office January ‘23 so a good tenure. So lots to talk about right? But before we get to that I just want to say thank you to our sponsors. And we have two great corporate sponsors both based in Peachtree Corners, both family run. EV Remodeling Inc is a company that does great work. You have a dream home, they can build it, renovate it, add home space to you, renovate your bathrooms, your kitchens. They design your space like they want to design your life. So 260 families plus have been really happy with their work. So you should check them out. EVRemodelingInc.com. We appreciate their support. And Vox Pop Uli. Vox Pop Uli is family run as well. I want to thank Andrew and Daniel for supporting us. You have a brand, you want to bring it to life. These guys will put your logo, your brand on almost anything. Think of truck, car, vehicle wraps. They’ve done over 1,600 last year, I think alone. So check them out, trade show things, embroidering, whatever you need. If you have a logo and you want to put it on an object, challenge them because I think they have yet to fail whatever we need done. So it’s kind of cool. So check them out, voxpopuli.com. So I appreciate them doing that and supporting our journalism, our podcasts, and the magazines that we produce. But let’s get to Lisa. Let’s get to, do you prefer Lisa or Lisamarie?
00:02:11 – Lisamarie Bristol
Marie, actually.
00:02:13 – Rico Figliolini
Okay, Lisamarie. So you’ve been tenured in the job of Solicitor General for Gwinnett County since ‘23 of January. For those people that aren’t aware, tell them what the job entails. What does that job do in this county?
00:02:29 – Lisamarie Bristol
Great. Well, thank you so much again for having me here today. I’m really honored. Full circle moment. You were the first podcast I did when I was first campaigning for this seat. So it is wonderful to be back here. As Solicitor General, my job as the elected prosecutor is to handle prosecuting cases in state court, recorders court, and we handle all of the misdemeanors, the traffic offenses, the code enforcement, animal cases. So everything that’s not a felony comes through my court. My office is responsible for prosecuting cases in 11 courtrooms. We are the second largest office in the state of Georgia in terms of Solicitor General offices, and we are definitely a high volume office. So anything from DUI, domestic violence cases, death cases that are misdemeanor amounts, as well as traffic offenses and quality of life cases like junkyard and animal barking cases. All of those are prosecuted through my office.
00:03:33 – Rico Figliolini
Wow. That’s a lot. And I remember when we first spoke back then that there was a huge caseload backlog of I think over 4,000 cases in ‘22 and it was going to be a challenge for anyone that took office, the amount of courts, the amount of work to be done. And trying to make it in an efficient way. So you’ve started some programs to help better work the system if you will versus the system working you. So one of one of the things you all set up and maybe you could tell us about it. It’s the launching of the new website and what that does for anyone that needs to interact with the agency, with the department.
00:04:20 – Lisamarie Bristol
Absolutely. One thing I realized is a lot of people understandably just don’t really know what my office does. And the reality is, is most people will interact with a Solicitor General’s Office traffic court or something at that level. Lots of people get traffic tickets or they may be the unfortunate victim of a traffic accident. There’s lots of, you know, lower level misdemeanor kind of public safety or public nuisance crimes that may touch our community where they may be a victim or a witness to a car accident case or something that occurred in their community, not necessarily severe violent crimes all the time. And so one thing that I thought was really important was reaching our community. And reaching our community in a way that they got an opportunity to understand what we do, how we do it, why we do it, in not a very traumatic way. And so we created this website which allows us to give out information that we know we’re constantly being asked about. Things like record restrictions for people with older cases and older convictions to clear their record. So we have lots of information on there about that. Lots of information about our victim advocacy program and how victims and survivors of crimes can receive resources and help and assistance if they need it. We also talk a lot about what my office does and how we can help people and what we’re here to do. So if you go to GwinnettSG.com, there’s just lots of different nuggets of information. One thing on the website that I’m especially proud about is we started a safety resource library where we’re trying to periodically add different topics, whether it’s teen driving safety or DUI, a safety PSA, so people can kind of go there and kind of get like the high level nuts and bolts about different topics that affect everyone in our community and just get some quick information.
00:06:26 – Rico Figliolini
Well, you also have some additional links to other websites that are helpful as well, it seems, right? Gwinnett County Courts website and all that.
00:06:36 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yes, we have websites and links to all of our other county stakeholder partners, as well as lots of resources to other agencies that serve victims in the community. So whether it is somebody who needs help for domestic violence, they need shelter, they need resources, food, culturally relevant services. We’ve tried to provide kind of a one-stop shop if this is where somebody ends up to find all of the things that they could possibly need. Additionally we have you know the generic contact us page where if you reach out to us if you can’t find the information on our page, contact us, send us an email. And if we don’t have the answer we will definitely try and point you in the right direction of who does.
00:07:21 – Rico Figliolini
And the good part is that the site can be read in not just Spanish, but Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, Dutch, Chinese, Arabic. Quite a few languages.
00:07:34 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yes, whatever language you need. I mean, Gwinnett County is the most diverse county in the entire United States. I don’t know if anyone had the opportunity to see our chairwoman deliver the state of the county earlier this month. We have, for the longest time, Gwinnett’s been known as the most diverse county in the Southeast region of the U.S. We’ve recently been recognized as the most diverse county in the country. I think that’s phenomenal. And as such, I thought it was very important to have a website that could properly serve such a diverse and vibrant community. So yes, all of the languages are available with a click of a button.
00:08:15 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that must complicate things, I’m sure, in the courtrooms as well, right? A little bit.
00:08:20 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yeah, it does. And we try and have, you know, court certified reporters as quickly as possible when needed. And I’m grateful for the resources that we do have and definitely trying to expand the resources that we have even within my office. One of the things that we definitely worked on was making sure some of the core victim resources that we put out on a regular basis, we develop them in more than just English and Spanish. We expanded them, I believe, to Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, some of the more regularly seen languages that we were seeing throughout the community to make sure that we could reach people where they are.
00:09:00 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. I mean, there’s a large Korean population, Vietnamese population in Gwinnett County. Yeah. So it must be. So, I mean, with the growth of the county, which continues to grow, with second largest county in the state, a million plus residents, and that’s going to keep growing probably as much as 20% over the next decade, I bet. Easy. How does that affect your office? How does that affect budgeting and the things that you have to do?
00:09:30 – Lisamarie Bristol
Well, growth is a thing. Actually, the day I took office, my office grew. So we gained an extra judge in our circuit, a seventh state court judge. And gaining an extra seventh state court judge meant growing my office by an extra team and that was day one. And yes we do continue to grow, we do see an increase in numbers of cases that come in. I think we’ve seen a growth of approximately 2,000 cases per year so far that coming through state court. Two to three thousand citations per year and increasing coming through our recorders court. And the growth is something that we do have to deal with. I have increased my staffing levels and kind of restructured, not kind of, actually restructured how my office handles cases in an effort to be as efficient as possible. We have flipped how we look at our cases. So we are front loading a lot of the work. And what I mean by that is the effort that we’re putting in, every single case that comes through my office has to be touched. It has to be investigated. We have to reach out to the victims. We have to make these first critical touches and calls and safety planning and things like that. That has to happen no matter what. At the beginning of 2024, we had approximately 14,000 cases open in this office for state court alone. But by front-loading the work, by having my amazing investigations unit, my amazing victim advocate unit, who all since I took office has been nationally credentialed and poured a lot of training into both teams. What we’re able to do is we’re able to figure out which of those cases need further resources and need to be prosecuted at a higher level versus which ones we can divert and put into our diversion programs. Or which ones we need to go ahead and put in our accountability courts by identifying those low level offenses by identifying those low level or non-frequent fires so to speak, we’re able to kind of reserve some of that energy and efficiency so we can put that towards the cases, the more serious violent cases that we know need our attention.
00:11:48 – Rico Figliolini
So we’re talking about the implementation of the diversion unit essentially. And how that frees up the case, well not frees up but certainly frees up the time. I can see why you want to front load that to just, it’s almost a triage in a way because the flood keeps coming, right? It doesn’t stop. You can’t even put up your hand and say, whoa, it’s going to get more just essentially even just because of the expansion of population. Just the natural thing of it. So how do you identify these cases sooner than later? What makes you delay them or divert them? What criteria do you use?
00:12:31 – Lisamarie Bristol
That’s a great question. So diversion for those who don’t know, free trial diversion is an alternative to prosecution. So what it means is that someone who either has a minimal or no criminal history is given the opportunity to still be held accountable for their behavior, but rather than it ending up with them having a criminal conviction and criminal history, it gives them an opportunity to participate in this program pre-adjudication and keep a clean record if they successfully complete the program. So typically, a diversion program will be for someone who is either a youthful offender with very few cycles on their criminal history, less than three, someone who’s not been convicted of any felonies or any violent crimes, someone who’s maybe had a couple of traffic citations, anything that’s not violent or overly serious, things like that. They come into the program, they have to pay a fee. They usually have to do some forms of community service. The fee is not exorbitant. They’ll do some community service and they may have to do, well, they will have to do some sort of treatment. Maybe it’s anger management. Maybe it is a values clarification course, if it’s a theft-based class. Maybe it’s defensive driving if it’s a traffic offense or something of that nature. But they complete their portion in hopes that we are addressing what got them there in the first place, right. And once they successfully get through the program, which takes about six months, with no further arrests or any run into the law, the tradeoff is we will expunge their record. We’ll dismiss their case and the record will remain clean. So it gives them an opportunity to have. Yes, they did mess up. Yes, they did get a case. They were held accountable. They did have to pay their fine. They had to be supervised for six months. They had to go through this program, but they hopefully learned a lesson from it. And they have a chance to have a do-over without having the tarnish of a criminal record on their back.
00:14:37 – Rico Figliolini
So does this, just because the question pops to mind, I’m sure that other people might have the same question. Number one, are these minors or this would be anyone?
00:14:48 – Lisamarie Bristol
It could be anyone. It depends on their criminal history. So if, for instance, someone who is in their 50’s for the first time comes into contact with the criminal justice system and has a slip up and they’ve never done anything, they too would be eligible for our diversion program and would be able to maintain a clean history.
00:15:13 – Rico Figliolini
Go ahead. I’m sorry.
00:15:14 – Lisamarie Bristol
Well, as I’ve said before and what I campaigned on is knowing that convictions even to misdemeanors can have such a dire impact on people’s lives. It can keep from getting student loans, from you know stable housing, from jobs, from serving in the military. There’s a lot of things that can impact them. People with criminal histories may be prohibited from even getting a liquor license which may prevent them from being able to get a job as a server at a restaurant. So our goal is for those who are low risk, who have made a mistake, who may be restorative, to have that opportunity to do so. And so we’ve really expanded our diversion program. We’ve expanded our reach. We’ve tried to get people into our diversion program as quickly as possible. And I’ll tell you, our numbers are impressive so far. Between ‘23 and ‘24, we put in about 1,900 people into our diversion program, 1,900 cases, excuse me, with over 1,400 cases successfully completing it. So we have about a success rate of successful completion of about 74% on our diversion cases. We haven’t tracked this year yet.
00:16:31 – Rico Figliolini
So I guess the question for me would be a couple of questions. One is, how do you keep track of that? That’s a lot of people. You know, how do you keep track of it and make sure that it’s done in a comprehensive way? Because, you know, people can do things and fool around and stuff. And maybe you’re not getting quite all the information. But so how can you track that reasonably well? And the second part is when you expunge the record, what if they come in back into the system? Do you still, will you still know that they’re a repeat offender at that point? Or because the case is, the records expunge, you don’t have that record. So I guess that’s the two questions that I know that would come to mind to a listener.
00:17:19 – Lisamarie Bristol
Great questions. So for the first one, how do we keep track? Well, first, my office keeps track of, we have a team that is dedicated solely to our diversion program. And so their sole responsibility is keeping track of sending out the offers, maintaining the offers, signing them up, keeping up with their monthly check-ins. They are actually supervised by the probation office, not by my office, but they are responsible for staying on track of them and at certain timelines, checking in to ensure that certain cases have hit certain benchmarks to see that we’re on track. If someone has absconded or has disappeared or is not doing what they need to do, that team then pulls that case. We’re notified by probation. We pull that case and that case is then put on the regular track for prosecution, which would account for the 26% of people who unfortunately did not successfully complete the program. So we have multiple ways to track it, both internally within my team, as well as the independent probation office that handles the actual supervision of the people in the program. In terms of how do we know if they’re second offenders, the great thing is, well, what people are going to always know is for criminal records, there’s levels, right? As a criminal justice agency, we will always see somebody’s entire criminal history. So even though their record is expunged, that means for employers, for housing, for those reasons, yes, it is expunged. But law enforcement will always be able to see it. So I will always have access to their entire criminal history and see whether or not they’ve already been afforded an opportunity to go through diversion on a previous case. So those are all things that are checked prior to them being admitted into our program.
00:19:13 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. Okay, great. That answered my questions on that. So glad to see that that would work that way. Anything else about the diversion unit that you’d like to share?
00:19:25 – Lisamarie Bristol
I think one of the things I’m really happy about with our diversion unit is we are working really hard to expand the service providers within it. And by that, I mean, we’re trying to find as we are such a diverse county and not just in culture, but in needs. So we’re really trying to find diverse service providers that we can refer people to. That means having a variety of different types of anger management courses, not just always sending people to the same provider. The reality of it is, is if you have, say, a 23-year-old young lady, she might respond very differently to an anger management course then, let’s say a 30-year-old man. And we’re trying to be mindful of things like that and having a better rolodex of options so that people can be placed with the most impactful provider that will actually help them buy into the reformation and actually make a difference in what they’re doing.
00:20:26 – Rico Figliolini
Are you working with nonprofits in Gwinnett County as well that do outreach of this sort?
00:20:32 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yes. And as we go around and we meet new nonprofits, I have members of my team who are able to kind of vet what they’re able to do, how they’re able to do it, and whether or not we can refer people not only through our diversion program, but sometimes through regular deed bargains with our defendants. Sometimes the victims in cases need some of these resources. So it’s really been helpful to kind of build these relationships with our community partners and other nonprofits. so we know what’s out there and so that we can utilize them and they can get the support as well.
00:21:08 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. There’s another program that you implemented as well, the Duty Attorney Pilot program. I know you’re proud of that as well. So tell us a little bit about that.
00:21:19 – Lisamarie Bristol
One thing we recognized when I took office is that, you know unfortunately some people are unable to bond out of the jail. They get arrested on a misdemeanor charge and they may have, they may, they will have a bond, but they may be unable to post the bond for various reasons. And for every day that they’re in jail, that leads to housing instability, job instability. It can really have a huge impact on them. And some of these crimes are, again, you know, nuisance crimes or nonviolent crimes that could destabilize them. One of the things I worked really hard with and did take partnership with other community partners, with other stakeholders rather, was getting a schedule so that we could have duty defense attorneys scheduled to be at each one of my jail calendars. We do three jail calendars a week so far. Hopefully they’re going to increase that soon. And at each of those jail calendars, there is a duty defense attorney. That means every person that we can get ready and put on those calendars, has the opportunity to resolve their case, even if they would otherwise not have had that opportunity or they would have had to wait a little bit longer for an appointed attorney to maybe get to them. The reality is we don’t have a public defender’s office here in Gwinnett. And our indigent defense defendants are dependent upon the attorneys who take the cases. And sometimes they’re stretched thin. Sometimes there’s complex things happen. People get stuck in other courtrooms. And what was happening is sometimes the defendants in jail got stuck because their attorneys could not make it for various reasons. I really wanted to address that. And having the duty pilot program has worked. It’s worked a great deal. I’m very proud of it. We’ve been able to increase our volume, increase our calendar sizes, and really start to move those cases on a more consistent basis. Because, honestly, the cases that we’ve identified that can be fast-tracked, our goal is to get them out of the jail, let them be held accountable for whatever they’ve done, and keep moving forward. It saves the county. It’s better for us in terms of community safety, and that’s definitely what we’re working towards.
00:23:38 – Rico Figliolini
So, obviously, you’re addressing a lot of the pressing challenges of the office, and you’ve done it, right, since ‘23. The, there’s other challenges as well. And you’ve implemented another program, the special victims unit program that you all did. And very important part, right, for the other side of that crime. So tell us a bit about the special victims unit.
00:24:03 – Lisamarie Bristol
So when I took office, one of the things I also recognized is there are some cases that just require extra care. I’m very fortunate I’ve had the experience to have worked with all types of crimes throughout my career on both sides. Whether it’s been from traffic, through serious violent felonies, as both a public defender and a prosecutor. And sometimes there are crimes that just require a little bit more TLC, a little bit more attention, more training to deal with them. We have a great deal of misdemeanor sex crimes that the legislature has carved out to be handled in state court now. And those are crimes of sexual nature that occur between consensual teenagers, anywhere between 14 and 18, sometimes 13 and 17. And frankly, those are just very sensitive. The subject matter is sensitive. All the facts usually surrounding the topics are sensitive. Both parties on both sides, usually the parents and guardians involved, it can be very sensitive. And I recognized really quickly that it was important to have a team that could really dive deeper and focus in on that, that I could spend extra time training and focusing their attention on handling those cases with the extra care they really do require. So our misdemeanor sex crimes, our vehicular homicides, which are cases where unfortunately due to a traffic accident, someone has passed away. And those are horrendous cases to deal with, but unfortunately they happen. So it’s an accident that a loved one has passed away. Again, very sensitive, very highly emotional at times and requires a little bit of extra attention. And so there are just certain crimes that have been, that we’re seeing an increase in volume at times in the office. Gwinnett has the largest school district in the state. So a lot of kid cases and just needed that extra touch. And so creating that Special Victims Unit was my solution to that.
00:26:16 – Rico Figliolini
Are you finding, I mean, so there wasn’t anything like that before? Or is this new? Are you improving on what might have been there?
00:26:28 – Lisamarie Bristol
Special Victims Unit is brand new to this office. There wasn’t anything like that in this office before.
00:26:34 – Rico Figliolini
Are you finding any trends in that part? Let’s stick to that for a second. When you say, you know, we have the largest school district, you know, and parents worry about the safety of their kids, both inside the school and outside. Are you finding any trends that you’re seeing that you’d like to share?
00:26:53 – Lisamarie Bristol
What we are seeing is we know that teens are engaging in intimate and romantic relationships younger these days, and they’re exposed to a lot more. They are, whether it’s on the phones, on the media, what have you. And we are seeing that they are exposed and more experimental with things earlier now than probably several years ago, 10 years ago, even. I think that’s part of the reason why this whole kind of Romeo and Juliet portion of sex crimes is carved out. So what my office is trying to do is not only are we not only just the creation of the special victims unit, we’re also trying to be very proactive. So for instance, February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. And my office participated in a number of activities trying to get ahead of it. And what we did was we participated in resource tabling here at the courthouse where we set up tables with tons of information about teen dating violence, where we could share the importance on signs of healthy dating, management partnerships, and just regular partnerships amongst teens. We actually went out and we were in five different high schools throughout the month of February, where we were invited over their lunch periods to meet with various teenagers throughout the Gwinnett County Schools and talk to them and meet them where they are about healthy dating habits, healthy boundaries, how to seek help if they felt like they were in an unsafe situation. Whether it’s a friendship or an intimate partnership. Because what we do know is sometimes teens don’t feel comfortable or don’t want to talk to their parents. So we were able to give them other resources. Here are some toll-free numbers you can call. Here are some safe adults you can speak to. Speak to your teachers, speak to your counselors, if that’s what you need to do. There are some red flags you need to consider. So we’re really trying to be proactive with educating the public as well, not just being reactive.
00:28:58 – Rico Figliolini
Are you seeing any activity or exposure to social media that you have to attend to in some of the cases that you do?
00:29:08 – Lisamarie Bristol
We do. Sometimes a big part of it is explaining to teens the impact of some of the things that they’re doing on their phones and the potential pitfalls to some of that behavior. And a lot of times going out to the schools, whether it’s just a teen dating, violence awareness, tabling event, or just being at their career fairs or going to career days and speaking to different youth groups and answering those questions has been really beneficial. We also participated in a teen summit where we did a panel discussion, there was an attorney, an advocate, and an investigator from my office that all participated in the Teen Summit, which was in partnership with PADV, the Partnership Against Domestic Violence. Huge event over at Gas South last month. And they had the opportunity to ask those kinds of questions. What is, you know, what happens if I take this picture and I send it to my friend or if I get this picture and I send it out to my other friends? So I think having those conversations with young people in a space where maybe they feel a little bit more comfortable asking those questions has definitely been helpful. And we’re certainly trying to make sure that when we’re talking to them, they understand who we are and they’re meeting us not on the worst day of their life. So they can build that kind of trust and rapport with us.
00:30:32 – Rico Figliolini
I like the way you put that not on the worst day of their life, yes. Because some kids don’t you know, I think critical thinking sometimes is lacking, depending on the age. And they think you know they get a picture from from a friend from a friend and they think it’s okay to put it out because they didn’t shoot it you know. And it’s like you know whatever. But yeah some of these kids just, you want them to grow up a little faster in how they think, but you don’t want them to grow up too fast, right?
00:31:02 – Lisamarie Bristol
Exactly.
00:31:03 – Rico Figliolini
Technology, you know, that’s always, we’re talking about phones and smartphones and all sorts of things. How has technology affected you? Good and bad, either in office to make efficiencies or in other ways? Are there innovative technologies you all are using? How does that work?
00:31:26 – Lisamarie Bristol
So one of the things we were able to do in coming into office is we did apply for some federal ARPA funding. And, you know, the ARPA funding was earmarked for offices affected by the COVID backlog. And I was like, hey, that’s us. We are definitely affected by the COVID backlog. And very grateful we were able to apply for some of that ARPA funding to enhance and upgrade a lot of the technology in our office. Whether it is scanners for investigators so that they can move quicker in uploading evidence along with our trial assistants, just making sure we have the equipment that my team needs to work more efficiently. So those are things that we were able to do and does help us do our job better.
00:32:17 – Rico Figliolini
You talked a lot about community outreach just before. You talked about preventative. Preventing crime, crime awareness in the community, promoting that. Are there any significant partnerships or collaborations that you’re doing with other agencies within the county that may not have been done before that you’re expanding on?
00:32:38 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yes. One of the first partnerships that we were able to forge was with Mosaic Georgia. Mosaic Georgia is a nonprofit here in Gwinnett County, and they service victims and survivors of sexual assault crimes. They do free sane exams. They do free counseling and forensic interviews and anything that somebody may need. If schools reach out to them, if a victim reaches out to them, they’re a one-stop shop. They’re an amazing organization. Mosaic is someone, is an organization that I think is critical to a county like Gwinnett and the work they do is just so important. I was really excited to develop a partnership with them. They are one of the nonprofits that receive benefits from the annual 5K that my office does. It’s our signature event. So every October, we’ve done two so far. We do our Dash for Domestic Violence Awareness 5K. It’s the first Saturday in October at Alexander Park. And the proceeds from that 5K, every single penny we raise, whether it’s from registrations from runners and participants or sponsorships, is divided amongst Mosaic Georgia, Partnership Against Domestic Violence, or PADV, which is another nonprofit that services survivors of domestic violence both here in Gwinnett County. They also service them in Fulton County. We have a shelter here in Gwinnett County under PADV. They assist survivors with getting TPOs, temporary protective orders. They will help house them for about 90 days as they get back on their feet and give them some housing stability, child care, a little bit of job training to help people who are leaving those really hard situations stabilize and have a moment to catch their breath with dignity so that they can hopefully make that pivot and launch to a better place. And we also formed partnerships with the HIMSA House. HIMSA House is probably one of the more unique organizations that my office has partnered with. On a steady basis, the third recipient of proceeds from the 5K. HIMSA House houses animals. When people are leaving domestic violence situations, what a lot of people don’t realize is about 70% of people who would leave a violent situation do not because of their pets. And they don’t want to leave their pet behind. They have no escape to bring them. HIMSA House will house their pets up to a certain amount of time. And not just cats and dogs. And I ask them every year what’s the most interesting animal they’ve had for the year. They’ve housed horses, snakes, dogs, cats. They have quite an interesting list. But it gives that survivor that extra level of peace so that they’re able.
00:35:40 – Rico Figliolini
I didn’t even think about that. That makes a lot of sense. When you think about that the other things come to mind also then. Yeah, it’s just amazing. So let’s shift gears a little bit and because you know you’re not you don’t live in a silo right? Georgia State House legislators they’d like to pass laws and, you know even if we need them or don’t need them, the reforms that are happening at the state level and legislation, they tend to impact a variety of people, a variety of organizations. I am sure they impact sometimes the prosecution of cases or stuff. What approach do you have to that? And what do you see happening in the statehouse currently that might affect Gwinnett cases?
00:36:28 – Lisamarie Bristol
Yeah, that is an excellent question, especially. Like of us just getting over crossover day. I think what we’re seeing in the legislature is sometimes we have lawmakers who have the best of intentions and they want to fix one problem and it sometimes causes a domino effect down the line. And we don’t always have the opportunity to be like, wait, wait, wait, let’s stop and think how this can play out because you’re going to, you’re going to pass this lovely law and then you’re going to hand it to me to enforce it. And so the way I approach it is I really do try and be open and have relationships with my Georgia delegations. I actually spend as much time as I can down at the Capitol while they’re in section. So I’ve been down there quite a bit. I have conversations with different committees. I’ve testified before the committees and offered input on legislation that is being put before the Senate or before the House to make sure that they understand the impact of what it is that they’re trying to put out there and maybe reconsider some of the wording, reconsider some of the clauses. And I think having that open dialogue and having the availability to do that makes a huge difference. And I think it makes an impact because they know before they do something, they know they have a partnership in their prosecutors and they can say, hey, is this going to mess you up? How is this going to mess you up? How do we shift that? And we’ve definitely seen some improvement, I think, on certain things, not all things, by having that communication.
00:38:13 – Rico Figliolini
Do you, are there specific legislative reform or policies you would like to see updated that hasn’t been touched yet?
00:38:24 – Lisamarie Bristol
I would love to see us have some updates on or some better clarity on our intention with the misdemeanor sex cases. That’s been one of the things that I’ve been talking about probably the most since taking office, just in terms of intent and direction and some better guidance. It’s a really sensitive topic, and I would love to dive a little deeper into that. And generally, you know, most recently they passed some more law. I don’t know if they’ll make it to the governor’s desk or not, but I know it’s about crossover day regarding how we are assisting victims. We need to be victim-centered and whether or not victims can include their pets for TPO protection and things like that. So I think we’re seeing the legislature becoming more sensitive and aware to a more victim-centered, trauma-informed approach. And I think that’s important in this work that we’re doing.
00:39:24 – Rico Figliolini
Okay, cool. Mental health, substance abuse. I mean, we touched upon that a little bit. Is there anything you want to share about that as far as some of those issues, mental health issues, basically?
00:39:39 – Lisamarie Bristol
I think mental health is an issue that we’re continuing to see in the community as we continue to search for resources. I think that’s going to be our biggest downside is finding the right amount of resources to assist the people who need it. I think we’re trying. I think we’re at least acknowledging that, you know, there are people that we’re scared of and the people that we’re upset with and the people that are just in new settings. And I think we’re finally moving into an era where we know we can’t treat them all the same. For the people who, their real issue is mental health. It becomes, okay, well, what can I do? So you don’t just keep coming back. We don’t quite have the answers yet, but definitely working on it to make sure we’re not just putting them on that hamster wheel so they keep turning back.
00:40:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yes. I think we all feel to some degree we’re on a hamster wheel, right? Day keeps going, which is that by the time Friday comes, Monday comes, we’re still doing the same old, same old, and you want to make sure that you don’t keep doing that, right? So, okay. I mean, you’re only in this now. It’s been two years? Well, two years.
00:40:52 – Lisamarie Bristol
I’m in my third year now. Yes. Two years and two and a half months.
00:40:57 – Rico Figliolini
So too early to talk about a legacy, of leaving a legacy in Gwinnett County. But what would you like that to be if that was the case? What is the most important thing that you’d like to make sure you left once you do leave?
00:41:14 – Lisamarie Bristol
That’s a really great question. Thank you for that. I would really love to know that you can look back at the work that my office does, the work that my team does, the work that I do, that it makes an impact, that it leaves people better than how we found them. That I understand that a big part of what I do is supporting victims during some of the hardest times of their lives. Trying to keep the community safe during, you know, really hard times, whether it’s DUI or domestic violence cases, or whether it’s a family grieving their loss of a loved one. That can be really hard work. My desire is to have a legacy in knowing that people look back and say, even though it was a really hard time, Solicitor Bristol’s team treated me with compassion and kindness and respect and dignity, whether they were the defendant or the victim or the witness. And that even when held accountable, they came out knowing that what happened to them was fair. That is the legacy I really want to leave because sometimes you may not like what happens to you. You may not like being held accountable, but you can still acknowledge that it’s fair. And I think that’s important to me. It’s very important to me that what the work we are doing, we are supporting the victims. We’re educating, giving resources and doing what we can, but we’re still treating everyone with dignity and compassion and being fair in how we do it.
00:42:51 – Rico Figliolini
I’ve got to believe being a mother of three, middle schooler and high schoolers, that that probably informs a little bit about how you feel about doing these things.
00:43:03 – Lisamarie Bristol
Absolutely. Everything that I do, I’m always mindful that my children are watching me. And I never, ever want to do anything that I would be ashamed to do in front of them. So absolutely.
00:43:14 – Rico Figliolini
Well, yeah, the kids are definitely watching even when we’re thinking they’re not watching.
00:43:19 – Lisamarie Bristol
All the time.
00:43:21 – Rico Figliolini
Final question, I guess. You came in on, I won’t say it was a wave or anything, but you came in during a time of a lot of elections going on in ‘22, a lot of changing of the seats, if you will, changing of the chairs. It feels like musical chairs sometimes, they keep going back and forth. But I think there was some good expansion, some good things done. What would you consider saying to someone seeking a career in public service or law enforcement in Gwinnett County, what would you say to them that they should know about from your experience?
00:43:59 – Lisamarie Bristol
I think anyone who wants to serve publicly has to know it can’t be about them. It has to be about people. It’s a very humbling experience, and you may think you’re right, and you may think you have the best approach, and you might. You might be correct in that, but this work is not for the faint of heart. I will say, knowing when you walk into public service, you are walking into a situation where you are dealing with a cruise ship, not a speedboat. And it’s going to be small, incremental changes that make the biggest impact. And sometimes it’s easy to get lost in thinking, I’m not doing enough. But if you take a breath and you look back over it, and know where you’re heading, it’s worth it. It’s absolutely worth it. And so when I look back at where we started on January 1st of 2023, where my team is today, it was small. It was small steps along the way, but I am incredibly proud of the work that we’re doing. And I’m absolutely looking forward to continuing it on into a second term.
00:45:11 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. So we’ve been speaking to Lisamarie Bristol, Solicitor General in Gwinnett County. Appreciate the time you’re giving us. Thank you, Lismarie. Hang in there with me for a minute. I just want to say thank you to our sponsors again, EV Remodeling and Vox Pop Uli for their great support of these podcasts, the magazines, and all that we do. If you have questions for Lisamarie, certainly if you’re watching this on Facebook, YouTube, or X, leave them in the comments, post them. I’ll have links in the show notes as well so you can reach out to her directly. If you’re listening to this on an audio podcast like Spotify or iHeart, certainly share it with your friends and share our video podcast as well. We appreciate that. It’ll be easier for other people to find our podcasts as well. So Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners. Thank you, everyone. And thank you, Lisamarie.
Related
Business
Why Patient Experience Matters: A Conversation with Dr. Aristo Shyn
Published
6 days agoon
March 23, 2025On this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, host Rico Figliolini sits down with Dr. Aristo Shyn, owner of Link Dental Care, to discuss his journey from corporate dentistry to running a thriving private practice. Dr. Shyn shares insights on the challenges of entrepreneurship, how he built a patient-centric practice, and how technology is transforming modern dentistry.
They also dive into Link Dental Care’s community involvement, the role of social media in business growth, and the importance of creating an exceptional patient experience. Whether you’re interested in dentistry, business ownership, or local community impact, this conversation offers valuable takeaways.
Key Takeaways & Highlights:
- From Corporate to Private Practice – Why Dr. Shyn left corporate dentistry to build his own patient-focused practice.
- The Power of Technology in Dentistry – How 3D imaging, digital scans, and upcoming Botox treatments improve patient care.
- Growing a Business – The challenges of launching and expanding a dental office without prior business experience.
- Community Involvement – Supporting local schools, charities, and offering free dental makeovers.
- Navigating Insurance & Patient Care – Why transparency in billing is crucial in healthcare.
- The Role of Social Media – How Link Dental Care’s Instagram skits helped grow their brand and even go viral.
- Balancing Work & Family – Juggling a growing business while raising two kids.
- Future Plans – Potential expansion, but always staying patient-centered under one roof.
Listen in to learn how Dr. Shyn built a thriving dental practice while prioritizing technology, patient experience, and community engagement!
Transcript:
00:00:32 – Rico Figliolini
Hey, everyone. This is Rico of Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners, Gwinnett County, just north of Atlanta. We have a great guest here today, Dr. Aristo Shyn, who owns Link Dental Care. Thank you for allowing us to do the podcast with you today.
00:00:48 – Aristo Shyn
Thank you for having us. I’ve been calling you our very own Joe Rogan for years now, so it’s an honor.
00:00:54 – Rico Figliolini
I’ve done over 250 episodes. I feel like I could be Joe Rogan. I get the head for it. Before we get into the show, though, let me say thanks to our sponsors. We have two. EV Remodeling, Inc., and Eli, who owns it, that lives here in Peachtree Corners. Great family. They do great work. They do design to build, whole house renovation, or your bathroom, your kitchen, or an addition to the house, whatever you need. They’ve done over 260 homes throughout the metro area. I think you should check them out. EVRemodelingInc.com is where you can find that. Vox Pop Uli, our second sponsor, is also here in Peachtree Corners, also family owned. So they take your brand and they bring it to life. So think about it. You have a brand, you have a car, vehicle. They do, I think this past year, they did over 1,600 vehicle wraps alone. You go to trade shows, they’ll put up a whole setup for you. You need shirts, they’ll do that for you. You need just one or you need 1,000, they’ll do all that for you. If you have a logo and you want to imprint it on an object, bring it to them. Challenge them. It’s amazing what they’ve done. So check them out. Vox Pop Uli is the company, and we appreciate the sponsorship of these podcasts, the magazines, and our journalism. Now that we’ve done the sponsors, I appreciate the conversation we’re going to have today. Aristo’s been, Dr. Shyn has been our family dentist for quite a while for all my kids and my wife and myself. So seeing you guys grow from a very small office that was probably big enough for you when you started.
00:03:06 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah, you’ve been with us since the beginning. Yeah, very humble beginnings.
00:03:09 – Rico Figliolini
So just moving from that, I saw you know you guys were getting more and more patients. The place was getting filled and now you’re in a larger location, a very beautiful place here right on Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Holcomb Bridge Road here. So tell us a little bit about your origins, where you started.
00:03:28 – Aristo Shyn
How far back do you want me to go?
00:03:30 – Rico Figliolini
Where were you born?
00:03:33 – Aristo Shyn
So I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, next to UMKC, which is where my dad went to dental school. And then moved to Alaska afterwards. Stayed in Alaska from ages 2 to 14. And then I moved to Florida, pursued a golf career, and then naturally transitioned to dentistry after that.
00:03:57 – Rico Figliolini
Naturally.
00:03:58 – Aristo Shyn
Yes. And then I’ve been in Georgia since 2012.
00:04:01 – Rico Figliolini
That’s amazing. You went from Missouri, where I’ve never been. I’m a Brooklyn kid. Kid. No longer a kid, but from Brooklyn. So I don’t know that place. Alaska, which is, for me, you know, grizzly bears is what I think of. So you went, right? From grizzly bears, snowstorms, to Florida, alligators, rocks, and hurricanes. And now Atlanta, of which you find almost none of that, actually.
00:04:25 – Aristo Shyn
It’s nice.
00:04:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, it must be different, right? But you went to start with a golf career. When did that even take hold?
00:04:40 – Aristo Shyn
In Alaska, of all places. Yeah, I was pretty good at it. Again, we moved to Florida to pursue that, but I think dentistry was my true calling, and I think I made the right choice.
00:04:55 – Rico Figliolini
Well, and you were kind of young too, I think, when you got your dental degree?
00:05:00 – Aristo Shyn
Yes. I try not to talk about that too much, but I was 23 when I graduated.
00:05:07 – Rico Figliolini
I saw that. I was like, that’s amazing. And so you’ve been practicing since then, obviously.
00:05:10 – Aristo Shyn
Mm-hmm.
00:05:13 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. So you’re in Atlanta. You moved here in 2012. You decided to start your business in less than a year of moving here.
00:05:23 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah, I think my first job in Atlanta was a corporate job. It wasn’t for me, to say the least. I think I lasted about seven months before saying, I got to do this. I got to do something else. I got to do this on my own. And that’s how I came to Peachtree Corners.
00:05:45 – Rico Figliolini
So just to be clear for people to know, it’s corporate dentistry is what you were working at. So corporate environment with multiple offices and stuff is a whole different business model, I think. Isn’t it?
00:06:02 – Aristo Shyn
Yes, to say the least.
00:06:08 – Rico Figliolini
Yes. You might not want to say it, but I’ll say it. Corporate dentistry is not that great. When you don’t have an owner that owns the business and doing the work that’s passionate about his patients and his community, it’s way different than dealing with someone that’s billing out of Texas let’s say or they have multiple 20, 30, or 90 offices throughout the country. And they sound like they’re local because they sort of keep the name of the place so they sound local but they’re really not. And so they’re driven by money because they have a big nut to pay.
00:06:36 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah, you’re just trying to get me into trouble right now.
00:06:39 – No, no, I’m saying it so it’s okay.
00:06:42 – Aristo Shyn
Listen, I would, in general, and this is from my own experience and what my colleagues have experienced as well, it’s just a lot of, and I think there are good dentists there, but unfortunately they don’t have the autonomy or the control over the whole operation. So I would say a lot of corporate offices, a lot of chain offices, are profit and production driven versus being patient-centric.
00:07:02 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I can’t argue with that.
00:07:05 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah, I mean, for example, and this you’ll find often in the industry, when you have your morning huddles, a lot of times at those offices, you’re looking at the schedule for that day. And if there’s not enough production on the schedule, you have to find crowns or implants somehow. And I’ll let our audience use their own imagination for that one. But when we have our meetings, we don’t really talk about that. And we talk about how to streamline logistics and how to improve the patient experience. And these days, fortunately or unfortunately, we’ve been doing some Instagram skits. I’ve been putting my staff through a whole other level of stress.
00:07:58 – Rico Figliolini
You all have to visit the Instagram channel that he has. He comes up with all the skits himself. Some of them are really cool. They’re all pretty good. I mean, some of them are hilarious.
00:08:09 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah, we really, you would expect, you know, before and after photos or us selling something. But I think we’re just trying to have fun there. I really don’t know what we’re selling, but it’s fun. I think it still gives us exposure in a different way. We have a live follower counter there. We’re trying to get that up right now. So follow us, please.
00:08:27 – Rico Figliolini
What is the Instagram? It’s Link Dental Care.
00:08:30 – Aristo Shyn
It’s @LinkDentalCare.
00:08:32 – There you go. So follow them. They want to hit 1,000, like, you know, soon. But no, I think that’s a great team building to be able to do that. There’s a lot of pressure sometimes in doing work and such, and every day is different. I think we would talk before a little bit about how you, you know, you go from one patient speaking English, let’s say, to another patient and speaking Spanish or maybe Korean. So multiple languages here in the office, and multiple challenges, dental challenges, right?
00:09:06 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah. I mean, due to the range of services that we offer from fillings, crowns, to root canals, implant surgeries, sinus surgeries, we get quite the variety of cases here. And then there are days where in one room I’m speaking obviously English, and then next room, I’m speaking Spanish. The other room, I’m speaking Korean. And I think we did a count earlier. We speak a total of nine different languages in this office.
00:09:38 – Rico Figliolini
It’s amazing that you speak three languages, at least.
00:09:43 – Aristo Shyn
Two and a half. We’ll call it three.
00:09:43 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. You get by on it. That’s good. So busy, busy work. Technology, though, drives a lot of dental practices now, too. So tell us a little bit about some of the technological improvements you’ve made here. Some of the technology you’ve brought in.
00:10:01 – Aristo Shyn
Well, everything’s new here. So it’s all digital. All new x-ray units, we have our 3D cone beam imaging machine, we have a 3D scanner, we’re doing really cool stuff with digital photography not just for before and after cases but also to communicate with our lab. We’re doing botox and dermal fillers soon. Busy.
00:10:29 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that’s amazing. Botox. How does that work in dental?
00:10:34 – Aristo Shyn
I think it’s been requested quite a bit. We haven’t started it yet. We will very soon. It’s not just for, I don’t think it’s just for cosmetics, but it can do a lot with TMJ and related issues.
00:10:51 – Rico Figliolini
Now, when you started on Peachtree Park, it was just you. I think your mom was helping at the front desk.
00:10:55 – Aristo Shyn
No, she wasn’t there at the time.
00:10:57 – Rico Figliolini
She wasn’t there. She came later, maybe.
00:11:01 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah. It was, I think it was a thousand square feet. I don’t think anything was digital at the time. And I had, it was me, one and a half hygienists, one assistant, and one person in the front. Yeah, I still remember I could actually stand in the middle of the office, and if I did a 360, I could see everything. The front office, the four chairs, the lab.
00:11:23 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, I was just thinking the same thing. That’s how small this place was. How many square feet is this place?
00:11:33 – Aristo Shyn
I think it’s just over 3,000.
00:11:38 – Rico Figliolini
And you took on a new, also an additional practitioner with you as well?
00:11:41 – Aristo Shyn
Oh, yeah. New staff, front offices, expanded assistants, hygienists. Another doctor. I mean, she’s been terrific.
00:11:42 – Rico Figliolini
Dr. K?.
00:11:51 – Aristo Shyn
Yep. Dr. K.
00:11:52 – Rico Figliolini
So business has been going well. So that’s good, no?
00:11:54 – Aristo Shyn
It’s been busy. It’s been busy.
00:12:00 – Rico Figliolini
Can’t complain. And there are challenges, right? So let’s go back a little bit. Challenges of opening a business. What would you say to an entrepreneur, to another dentist that wanted to do the same thing? What challenges did you have to overcome when you did that?
00:12:16 – Aristo Shyn
When we first started everything I mean, I was still learning. I had no business experience, I had no HR experience. I mean, I was still learning dentistry at the time so you know the normal course for I’d say acquiring a dental office is, you know you’re usually out in the field for a few years and then you kind of pick up on things and you know slowly transition. But everything happened at once for me so I don’t recommend you do that because it’s quite the learning curve. But going back to everyday challenges, though, I would say half of my stress is just due to my staff, which I love very much, who I love very much. I think we have the best staff ever right now, but you’ve got to deal with staff every single day. So there’s always something. And then beyond that, it’s insurance. Insurance is an issue for, I think, everyone involved in the insurance game. And then after that, it’s just dealing with a wide range of patients and cases that we have coming in, which is also fun for me. But there’s also some focus and stress, and we’re always on our toes. So there’s that aspect to it.
00:13:35 – Rico Figliolini
I think part of that stress probably is because you’re, of your concern for your patients and stuff. I mean you’re sharing that stress with them right? Because some of them, because like you said insurance can be an issue. You know they come in they have to do certain things insurance may or may not cover it or you know, yeah. I mean so, has that changed in the state of Georgia a lot over the past decade?
00:14:01 – Aristo Shyn
I don’t know, insurance is kind of like a foreign language to me. We try our very best to be transparent with everything, I mean not just in my communication with our patients but also you know with our front desk communicating you know regarding finances and numbers. But you know, we try our best, that’s all I can say.
00:14:19 – Rico Figliolini
No that’s good. That you know, I mean that’s the toughest part I think when it comes to medical.
00:14:23 – Aristo Shyn
And our front desk goes to bat for patients if there’s any issues with insurance we don’t just give up and you know tell them that it’s on them so yeah. I know my front desk works very hard.
00:14:36 – Rico Figliolini
Okay cool. You know, the care that you show into the community as well, right? You’re involved with the community. So let’s cover that a little bit as well. What do you like doing in the community? What have you done? Where has Link Dental Care been involved in when it comes to community organizations, events and stuff?
00:14:55 – Aristo Shyn
Well, it’s very different now than when I first started. And I’m very happy and proud of where we are today. For example, I mean, even last year we were able to sponsor the Norcross High School Marching Band, local photography club. I’ve worked closely with Norcross Co-op for quite some years. And it’s, you know, when we interview for dental school, you know, one thing that we’re always saying is we want to be part of the community. We want to be involved in the community. And, you know, that wasn’t the case when we first started. Now that we’re here. Yeah, I plan on staying here and being more involved as time goes on.
00:15:37 – Rico Figliolini
That’s cool. You know, I mean, the biggest thing that we do at the magazine and stuff is that we like to be a cheerleader for businesses that are giving back to the community, doing things with the community, especially if you’re pulling from this community. You know, your patients, your customers, and all that. So being involved makes sense.
00:15:57 – Aristo Shyn
Yeah. And I think we’ve done quite a bit of charity over the years. We don’t advertise it or we don’t really post a whole lot of it on social media. But outside of working at volunteer clinics, we try to take on at least one patient a year and give them a makeover, which they wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise. That’s something I’ve been doing.
00:16:21 – Rico Figliolini
That’s cool. That’s great that you’re able to do that. When the business gets to a certain point, and you’re facing these everyday challenges, right? At the end of the day, what do you do to release that stress, that pressure? I mean, what do you do outside of the office? You’re not playing golf anymore.
00:16:53 – Aristo Shyn
No, it takes too much time.
00:16:54 – Rico Figliolini
Do you get out of the office? What time do you close up?
00:16:57 – Aristo Shyn
Well, it’s a good thing I still like what I’m doing. But yeah, life’s gotten busy. So the way I see it, I mean, I do have a few hobbies, but really it’s been work and my kids right now. So when I’m working, the way I see it, it’s overtime in a football, basketball scene. And then when I’m with my kids, it’s game seven, triple overtime. So that’s where all my focus has been after work.
00:17:28 – Rico Figliolini
Sure, sure. You have two kids, I think? Two kids. Good-looking kids. So, you know, you’re expanding. You’ve done your expansion. But there’s a future, right? I know you want to stay here. You want to expand. What does the future look like for Link Dental Care? For you?
00:17:44 – Aristo Shyn
We just moved in here. We’re talking about expansion again.
00:17:47 – Rico Figliolini
Are you really? You just moved in here. How long has it been? It’s been a few years. Can’t you stop?
00:17:58 – Aristo Shyn
I mean, a few. I mean, patients and staff have asked me in the past, what do I plan to do? Do I plan on opening multiple offices or another location? And to answer one part of that question, I think when a dentist branches out to two, three, four offices, there comes a point where you’ve got to stop being a dentist and become more of a businessman. And I still like what I’m doing a lot. And I really want to keep our practice patient-centric and really emphasize that we are a people business, not a tooth-cutting business or a production business. But, you know, I definitely plan on staying in Peachtree Corners. We’re not leaving. I mean, if there ever is another expansion, you can rest assured it’ll still be under one roof. That’s been always important to me. And I mean, going forward though, I think we’re just, we’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing. We’re going to continue to stay up with technology, continue to reinvest in the office and the community.
00:19:19 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. This is a great place. People want to take the tour. I mean, 3,000 square feet is a lot of space. I think you have plenty of space to expand in. What should people know about you maybe that they don’t know? Is there anything interesting that you want to share?
00:19:41 – Aristo Shyn
I can share what our dental practice focuses on. I think a lot of times patients and dentists alike, they emphasize, they put their emphasis a lot on good dental care. And that is absolutely important. But, you know, to us, you know, good dental care alone doesn’t really, it doesn’t always equate to a good patient experience. And I care a lot about the patient experience. So that means the patient experience starts from the first time you call into our office, from the time you walk through our doors the first time. From the way you’re greeted from the front office, from the way, you know, our assistants or hygienists take you back to the clinical area. So, you know, bedside manners and having clear communication. So, you know, when you’ve put in all those factors, you know, the receiving good dental care, although quite important, it’s not the only piece to the puzzle. So that’s been my focus.
00:20:48 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. Patient-centric, essentially. Well, we’ve been speaking to Dr. Aristo Shyn. It’s a great practice, you guys have. I’m glad that he’s my dentist also, my family dentist. He has been doing a great job. So I appreciate you giving us some time and telling us a bit about your business.
00:21:06 – Aristo Shyn
Thank you.
00:21:07 – Rico Figliolini
Thank you. Everyone, if you have any questions, you can actually check out the website, which is?
00:21:13 – Aristo Shyn
LinkDentalCare.com. There you go.
00:21:15 – Rico Figliolini
And Instagram, it’s the same handle, @LinkDentalCare, right? Anything else you want to share? Count is 455, so we need to get that up to 1,000 apparently.
00:21:25 – Aristo Shyn
It was 200 a few months ago. I’ll tell you one more thing about Instagram before we end this. Within a couple months of us actually trying on Instagram, we actually went viral on one video. We got 1.3 million views.
00:21:41 – Rico Figliolini
Damn, which video was that one?
00:21:43 – Aristo Shyn
That was last year. It was the one about our 3D scanner. So I thought I figured it out and I was almost ready not to come into work the next day. And then here I am doing a podcast with Rico.
00:21:57 – Rico Figliolini
Sorry, it’s not a YouTube content or TikTok creator yet, but he’ll get there soon. Thanks everyone. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. Of course, we’ll have links in the show note and you can always find Dr. Aristo Shyn here at Link Dental Care. So thanks again, everyone. Take care.
Related
Business
Burn The Ships: Alex Wright on Committing to Success & Helping Businesses Thrive
Published
1 week agoon
March 21, 2025Discover how Alex Wright, a former U.S. Naval officer, founding member of the City of Peachtree corners, and corporate finance veteran, made the bold decision to “burn the ships” and launch his own fractional CFO firm. Burn the Ships Financial embodies Wright’s philosophy of unwavering dedication to success. Wright explains how fractional CFO services can help entrepreneurs navigate their financial journey, from basic accounting setup to high-level strategic guidance.
Resources:
Burn The Ships Website: https://burntheshipsfinancial.com/
Key Takeaways:
- Burn the Ships Mentality – Why Alex embraced total commitment when leaving corporate America to start his own business.
- Solving Business Challenges – How a fractional CFO helps entrepreneurs manage cash flow, optimize processes, and grow sustainably.
- Financial Storytelling – The power of translating financial data into actionable insights for business owners.
- City Leadership & Business Strategy – Lessons learned from helping launch Peachtree Corners as a smart city and how that applies to business growth.
- The Role of Technology in Finance – How tools like QuickBooks and Power BI can improve financial planning—if used correctly.
- Long-Term Business Planning – Why forecasting, budgeting, and understanding financial trends are crucial for sustained success.
Listen in as Alex Wright shares his journey from the military to corporate finance and now to empowering small businesses with Burn The Ships Financial!
Timestamp:
00:00:02 – Interview with Alex Wright
00:02:27 – From Naval Officer to City Leader, Alex’s Remarkable Journey
00:06:45 – Burning the Ships, Commitment to the Mission
00:10:39 – Solving Business Problems as a Fractional CFO
00:13:59 – Optimizing Business Efficiency Through Financial Analysis
00:18:14 – Guiding Entrepreneurs to Financial Clarity
00:21:30 – Providing Financial Guidance and Structuring for Growing Businesses
00:25:46 – Translating Financial Data into Actionable Insights
00:31:19 – Leveraging City Startup Experience for Business
00:37:43 – Helping Others Succeed From Military to Coaching to Entrepreneurship
00:42:14 – Expanding Startup with Passionate Partners
00:45:31 – Connecting with Burn The Ships Financial
Transcript:
00:00:34 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. I have a great guest today, this morning, Alex Wright. Hey, Alex. Thanks for joining me.
00:00:43 – Alex Wright
Hey, Rico. It’s good to see you again. Thanks for the invite.
00:00:46 – Rico Figliolini
Sure. We’re going to have exciting things to talk about. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you to our two sponsors, EV Remodeling Inc. and Eli and his family who live here in Peachtree Corners and the company is based here. Provide a sponsorship to us for supporting our podcast and our magazines. And EV Remodeling Inc. is a company that does design to build. You need a whole house remodeled or you just need your bath remodeled or your kitchen, they’re the people to do it. They’ve done over 260 large projects over the past few years. And you should check them out. Great supporter of ours. Great people. Nice guy. EVRemodelingInc.com is where you can find them. Our second sponsor, Vox Pop Uli, is also based here on Peachtree Corners. Family owned, they are a company, if you have a brand and you want to bring that brand to life, Vox Pop Uli is the people to do it. They do, think about the truck wraps, car wraps that you see traveling around, trade show booths, signage, anything you need imprinted on any object imprinting. They’re the people to do it. You need a backdrop for you, 20 feet by 10 feet tall, they can do it. Any of those things that will bring your brand to life is what they’re doing. Challenge them, and they’ll come back and surprise you. They’re right here in Peachtree Corners and Norcross. So check them out, Vox Pop Uli, and the link will be in the show notes. But if you search them, V-O-X, P-O-P, U-L-I, you’ll find them. Thanks again for your support. So now we have Alex. So let me introduce Alex a little bit. He has a great background. He served in U.S. Naval, as a U .S. Naval officer back during the 90s. He was the founding member of the City of Peachtree Corners City Council and has been a city councilman here in leadership here since 2012 when he was first elected. He was also the guy that originated the idea of Curiosity Lab that set our path on being a smart city and on so many foundational parts that the Curiosity Lab has been involved in including autonomous vehicle, 5G technology, and all that. So without him, I don’t know where we’d be when it comes to that. Georgia Institute of Technology grad, so much more. He’s also a board member of the Peachtree Corners Veterans Monument Association, if you’re familiar with that and the monument that we have at Town Center. So now that I’ve given a really good background, I think, of you, Alex, why don’t you tell us just a little bit more about what what you’ve been up to and where where we’re going?
00:03:33 – Alex Wright
Yes, that was a great introduction. I wish my wife could have heard how great you made me sound she would’ve found that entertaining. Yeah so I, after I got out of the navy, you know I went to the graduate school and then basically the next 25 years was at various companies in corporate finance. Some big ones, Glaxo Welcome, which I guess that was GlaxoSmithKline, Home Depot, Equifax. And then the last 11 years was at a big consumer products company in a divisional CFO role. That was here in Atlanta. And about three, I guess it’s probably November, I made a decision to transition out of corporate America and with some colleagues of mine that I used to work with, formed a fractional CFO company. Some people refer to it as business advisory firm. And it’s called Burn the Ships. That’s the name of the company. And so, yeah, we’re in the process of just getting engaged in the community, you know, looking for companies that could use our services.
00:04:56 – Rico Figliolini
So tell me, I understand the burn the ships part, but really what inspired you to name burn the ships financial?
00:05:04 – Alex Wright
So, you know, when I was making the decision to leave corporate America and, you know, that’s kind of all you know, it’s, you get comfortable with that and to make that, you know, giant career change you know it’s, it can be kind of scary. And I happened to be reading a book at you know during this time when I was trying to figure out and do I want to do this and the name of the book was called actually burn the boats. And the book is about it’s written, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he’s an entrepreneur serial entrepreneur and the gist of the book is not to have a plan b. And you can apply that concept to really anything, whether it be your marriage or training for an athletic event or starting a business, that something that’s going to be challenging and require your full effort in order to succeed, you can’t have that thought of, well, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll just go back to that. It has to be a total commitment. So that phrase is a metaphor for total commitment. You know, there’s a, not to go into much of the history, but, you know, the phrase comes from, not to go into a lot of history, but of Cortes when he was exploring the coast of Mexico. He had been tasked with that. And he gets there and discovers that, you know, there’s the Aztec Empire is there and decides, hey, I want to go into the bowels of Mexico and see what’s going on there. He just had a few hundred men with him. These guys that he had with them were apprehensive, obviously, because he wants to march into the jungle, the unknown. Plus, their orders were to just explore the coast. Well, his solution to that was, I’m going to eliminate the plan B. And the way he did that was he literally burned all the ships. There was now no way to go back. It was succeed or, in their case, die. So that phrase is about total commitment to the mission. And it really, at that time, it rang, just struck a chord with me as I was trying to make this decision because that’s a big change in a lot of different ways. And so I really just loved the story, that idea of total commitment. And so that’s the brief background or as brief as I could make it, where that phrase came from, because I just loved that story about the, you know, the commitment. Those other, not to go on a lot of my other, you know, kind of pursuits that I’ve got in my life, but, you know, different, whether it be especially like athletic things or projects, some of the things we’ve done with the city where it’s only going to succeed, you know, totally buy into, you know, what we’re trying to accomplish, the total commitment. So that’s the, that’s the name. And you know another, some of the advice I got was you need to make the name evocative so when someone hears that name, I think what does that mean? You know versus opposed to a right CFO services.
00:08:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, no I totally agree with that branding is key to to a lot of what we do and get people remembering. And I can appreciate what you’re saying too because having, I mean I have not worked in corporate environment except for a couple of years. And I’ve been on and off a business owner and then working for a company and stuff. So I’ve been on both sides of that so it’s a little different. But you’ve, your whole career has been with corporate large companies, so I can appreciate that jumping off the ship almost and not going back is really scary, I’m sure. So your experience has been as a divisional CFO at least for the past decade or so, I guess. How do you think that that’s going to, how does that shape the services that you’re offering through Burn the Ships Financial?
00:09:23 – Alex Wright
So in this role I had, when people say, I worked in corporate finance, that can mean a whole lot of different things because in larger companies, the finance department’s quite large. So the role I had, in this business, and this company had probably 15 businesses, and as a divisional CFO, you’d be embedded in the business. And what that means is you’re at the table with the decision makers actually helping run the business. From generating sales to making, say, manufacturing more efficient to how can we ship more efficiently to negotiating with vendors for better terms, you name it. You had exposure to that. So the relevance of that is you’ve seen, now granted, maybe it’s a bigger scale, bigger numbers, but the challenges of making a business successful, you’ve had exposure to a full P&L balance sheet, just like for a small company. And so that allows you, the reason that’s translatable is ultimately what, when companies hire someone. As a fractional CFO, really what they’re looking for is I’ve got a problem. I’ve got a pain point and I need someone to help alleviate that pain to make that, help take that problem away. So it’s really about problem solving. So running a business in the finance role is ultimately about solving problems as well. So I feel like the skill set is very translated because that’s what I did for 10 years, which was solve problems to make the, our business more financially successful.
00:11:13 – Rico Figliolini
In the practical way, can you give us an example, without sharing the company you worked with I guess or you know particularly, but is there an example that you can give of how that translates in an actual real life story?
00:11:30 – Alex Wright
Yes. So now you know at a larger company it’s especially when it’s publicly traded, you know, it’s all about how do we get our earnings per share up? You know, the company is normally pretty stable. And like, say, a smaller company, they might, in some cases, might be fighting for survival in some instances. So a little bit different scenario, but ultimately it’s about how do we make the company more profitable, whether it be small or big. And so an example of something we did at this larger company is, we were in a market where there wasn’t a lot of growth on the top because it was an industry that was actually kind of shrinking. So how do you grow profit if your top line is stagnant at best or maybe just growing through price increases, very low single digits? So one of the things that you could look at is, let’s look at our product, the actual composition of the product. So we are actually a manufacturer. Are there ways that we can make the product that we’re producing less costly, but hopefully in the process also make it more effective? And so in this instance, the product in this case was grass seed. You’re thinking, well, what can you possibly do to grass seed? But in today’s world, they actually take the grass seed and they put a biostimulant around it so that when the seed goes out, it has a much higher probability of germinating. So what you would look at is, what can we do with the stimulant to change the makeup of it, change the composition where it’s, maybe the germination is even higher, but we’ve substituted some type of material that costs less. So in those instances, you’re working with an R&D department, you’re marketing people. And so in this instance, we did that over a series of five years, switched all of our, you know, changed the composition of our products. And so the ultimate takeaway for that was we increased the margins for the business by about a thousand basis points. So what that means is let’s say your margin was 30%, now it’s 40%. So that’s, and that drops straight to the bottom line through that. Something is, it wasn’t simple, but you know, instead of saying, well, there’s nothing we can do because we’re not growing is to basically look at everything on the pan out. What are, you know, areas that we could look at? I mean, you could apply that to your own personal life. I’m trying to cut back on spending and you go through and look at every expense and explore it. And maybe we don’t need the 1G, you know, internet. Maybe we just need the 500 megabytes and, you know, no stone uncovered. That’s the way we had to operate and I think that’s very translatable skill for smaller businesses because most likely they’re going to be even more cost conscious than you know a bigger company that’s got you know, more resources at their disposal.
00:14:45 – Rico Figliolini
So it’s really looking closely not just at the books but at the process of what companies do, right?
00:14:52 – Alex Wright
That’s exactly right. So one of the things when I’m, and this is before I transitioned, you know people would say well you know what does finance do? It’s just kind of this broad term and I would always describe it as in three pieces and it’s very simplistic, the first the most basic part is the gathering of of information. And that could be billing AR, AP like in a big company that’s completely automated, smaller company it might not even really exist. The next level is you’re taking that information, you’re analyzing it, you’re putting it into a reporting format. At a bigger company, not completely automated, but mostly automated. At a really small company, especially like reporting, the small business owner, his financials might be his bank statement. That might be the limit of what he’s got. And the third part, and this is really where finance differs from, say, accounting, is. You are going to the decision maker and you’re saying, hey, if you pull this lever, this will happen over here. You’re giving them actionable data, advice, if you will, on how to drive the company, whatever the company’s financial goals are, giving them suggestions how to do that.
00:16:17 – Rico Figliolini
So it’s also, I guess. You know, if I look at it from what I do a little bit, from my business and stuff, every business is somewhat the same to the degree there’s peaks and valleys. You might not always have the same trend line of revenue coming in and stuff. So it’s finding how to maximize the use of the money that’s coming in and the money flowing out. Maybe it’s the manufacturing or the service side and how that’s being done. Whether that’s parts being delivered or how it’s being ordered and such. So you’re looking beyond just the numbers on the books. You’re trying to optimize the way a company’s doing business behind the scenes.
00:16:59 – Alex Wright
That’s right. And that’s the thing I was talking about being embedded in the business, being part of the decision-making is, again, looking at the full P&L. You’re not just reporting the news you’re trying to influence what’s going on. So you might be looking at in the course of a day okay how do we make our you know logistics more efficient. You might be looking at hey what’s the ROI on this marketing spend. You know any anything you can do to you know drive profitability. And that you know I guess that’s one of the upsides of a publicly traded company when you’ve got that pressure that quarterly pressure if we got to make earnings you know you’re looking at anything and everything all the time. Now there’s downsides to it because sometimes to make the numbers look a certain way things will be done that maybe aren’t super logical but you still have that relentless pressure to become more efficient to drive costs down as much as possible.
00:18:02 – Rico Figliolini
I think with certain types of business, like you said, the private business, smaller businesses, the owners tend to, the job keeps going, right? Three years will pass before you know it. Maybe they’re not optimizing their cash flow properly. Maybe they’re doing the work, if you will, and not really looking at everything because money’s coming in. Everything seems fine. They may not see even the trend of how things are going where maybe it’s going bad, but they’re not seeing it yet because maybe they have the revenue there. The cash flow is there. They might not see it for the next three months. And all of a sudden, they start realizing, whoa, this is bad. We’re beyond, why didn’t I see this before? So how does the aspect of what you do as a fractional CFO, let’s say, how will you give that foundation to these businesses? What’s the process, if you will?
00:19:01 – Alex Wright
Well, I think that obviously each company is different, right? You have to go in and see what, if any, processes they have. But I think if you make the assumption that they don’t, kind of your point, they’re just, you know, you’ve got this entrepreneur. They’re really good at making pencils. And that’s what their total focus is, selling those pencils, just growing, growing, growing. You know, they don’t really have a whole lot of time to, you know focus on the finances other than making sure they got enough money to meet payroll or buy anything. I think the key thing when you go in, in a situation like that is, you know, to talk to the owner or the founder, you know, understanding what is it that, you know, what are your, you know, try to define the goals besides just staying afloat, you know, kind of help them sit down. Okay. Let’s put this pen to paper. What is it you’re, I’m going to make something up, okay you’re doing 500,000, million in revenue and you want to get to a million and a half in two years. Again I’m just making this up. You know in the larger company it would be you know to be a budget or they’d call it a you know five-year plan it’d be some kind of structure you know a guide post if you will. I think that’s the, I mean you could apply that to your personal life. Like okay I’m trying to you know, retire at age 65 or I’m trying to lose 20 pounds or whatever it might be, whatever that you’re trying to accomplish. You’ve got the saying about if I fail to plan, I plan to fail. So I think that’s the key thing is to understand from that owner what it is you’re trying to accomplish. And then once, because ultimately it’s their business, you’re there to help them be successful. So once they’ve articulated what those goals are, then one of our jobs would be, okay, let’s lay out a plan to see if we can get to that. Because in some cases, you know, my experience has been people that are entrepreneurs, when it comes to forecasting financially, they’re not always the most realistic because they’re normally going to be really optimistic. I can conquer the world, which is you need that to be an entrepreneur. But one of the jobs of finance is to kind of poke holes in arguments, not to discourage people, but to make people think realistically, okay, can we grow from a million to a million and a half in two years? Understanding, you know, what is there a path to do that that’s realistic? And having those conversations with, you know, with these guys, because in some cases you’re bringing up things that maybe they haven’t thought about because they’re so focused on the here and now versus looking a year or two out that that’s just not really what they’re focused on because, again, they’re trying to grow the business.
00:22:08 – Rico Figliolini
So when you come into a firm, for example, you know, obviously people, you know, you want to build that foundation without the cost of a full-time CFO. I mean, that’s the idea, right? So work with me for a minute. In an ideal world, you would come in for a few hours or whatever that first month and then how would the rest of it work like is there a maintenance level that you provide? Quarterly stuff you provide? So give me in brief what that would look like to someone.
00:22:45 – Alex Wright
Right. So again, each company is going to be different but really kind of two levels, and I’m simplifying this, but really two levels of service. And you can pick one or the other or both. So let’s assume we’re talking about a company that we used an example earlier of the finances are literally the bank statement. I know how much cash I got. That’s kind of an extreme example. So we use that one as our example. So in that case, they don’t have a P&L or balance sheet. They don’t really know what’s going on other than, you know, how much cash they got in the bank and maybe in their head, they’ve got kind of a gut instinct of what’s going on. So in that instance, you know, you’re going to have to come in and create a structure that will allow you to build a P&L, which is, you know, the foundation of any type of forecasting or budgeting. You’ve got to have that initial document. And to get to that, you’ve got to go in and take basically all their transactions that, you know, are in their bank statement and create what’s called a trial balance, which is going to have a chart of accounts. Basically, all that is coding where, you know, okay, this is travel and this is, you know, sales and it’s basically, you know, accounting 101, right? And so that base level of service would be something like that plus reporting that goes with it. And that reporting you would get through programs like Microsoft power BI that can do you know anything at the like that but you’ve got to have the you know the numbers formatted. So that would be a basic level of service and the first time that initial transition that would be time consuming because you’ve got to you create something, a structure that’s not there before. But then after you’ve created a structure you know each month you’re just really just updating, you know the results putting them into a P&L format. And if we think back when I was talking about the three levels of finance that’s really like the first two levels combined. So that’d be like a fixed fee you know for that service almost like a subscription. The second level of service it’s more like what that kind of like that third level I was talking about before where you’re sitting down with the decision maker and you’re telling them hey, this is what’s going on with your business. And depending on if they wanted to have, layout objectives, then you talk about the progress each month of how are we progressing versus these objectives that we’ve laid out. And if we’re off course, what things can we change to get you back on course? And so that would be an in-person review where, the analogy I use is that movie, The Matrix, if you remember, they’ve got all the data that’s doing this, right? You can’t read it. And so if you’re not in finance, often people struggle to, you can give them 20 reports, but if they’re not a finance person, they’re often going to be like, I don’t really understand what this is telling me. That second level is, it’s really about storytelling, where you’re taking the information and you’re telling the owner a story, you know, not in a fictional way, but this is what’s going on with your business, but you’re translating it in a way that is easy for them to understand, versus if you’re just talking about debits and credits, they’re going to be lost with that.
00:26:21 – Rico Figliolini
So if they already have QuickBooks online, for example, they’re already getting reports, you’re at that stage already, but you’re able to tell them more than that, what the reports give them in numbers, because you’re looking at all of it, right? Holistically almost.
00:26:38 – Alex Wright
That’s correct. So you know a lot of companies will have you know they’ll have a controller, bookkeeper, you know maybe both of them. And so in my you know previous life I had plenty of accountants that worked for me and really what their job, and I’m simplifying and this isn’t to say anything negative about accountants, like I said I’ve worked in accounting. But their job really is to tell you okay this is the number and this number is correct. But if you ask them well okay that number is that’s a number ten, last year it was a five, why did it go from a five to a ten? That’s really not what their role is in most cases. So they’re challenged to you know explain the why part of it right? And so that’s where, that’s really where finance comes in to explain what is going on. And not just report.
00:27:36 – Rico Figliolini
And not just explain it. I would imagine if, from my point of view, you might explain why that went from a five to a ten, but you should probably be able to give me advice on, you know, where can we take that from now? You know, why is this? I know the difference is there. I knew it grew. Maybe it grew for this reason, but you might be able to tell me how we can adjust that, right? I mean, the whole idea is, for you to provide guidance. So almost like a, what do you call it? A person that, the accountability partner, if you will, in this.
00:28:15 – Alex Wright
Yeah. Well, that’s the great thing about, you know, having a budget is that you’ve, again, we were using examples earlier, but you could apply it to different parts of your, you know, personal life, but having that objective. If you don’t have that objective, then you don’t really know. It’s like driving a car. You’re trying to get somewhere, but you don’t have a map. You’re going to struggle without that map to point you in the direction you’re trying to get to.
00:28:45 – Rico Figliolini
So now we’ve got here, does technology play a part in what you do as well in financial advisory or in this type of field?
00:28:59 – Alex Wright
So the, remember when earlier I was talking about the kind of the three levels of not services but you know what finance does, and what’s occurred over the last 20 or more than 25 years is that systems like say SAP or Hyperion or for these large ERPs is they have really kind of flattened the work structure of companies because what they’ve allowed is it’s really like an early form of AI. Is they automated you know tons and tons of functions that before there would have been literally like armies of people you know just doing kind of mindless work almost and so technology, now some of these small companies you know they’re not going to have an SAP or Hyperion but when we were talking earlier about power where that’s like Quickbooks but on steroids the kind of things that can do. But the reality is, whether it be QuickBooks or Power BI, if you don’t have that basic level of the information formatted, the magic can’t happen without that. So ultimately, at the smaller companies, there is some manual aspect of, I’ve got to code this expense correctly, input it. So the technology, at a smaller company, you know, that doesn’t have an SAP or Hyperion or Oracle is really more in the, you know, the reporting phase, the things it can do once the numbers are formatted correctly. It’s almost mind boggling now that the danger there is you can have too many reports. I can produce 30, 40 reports, but it’d be too much, you know, information. And that’s the, so when people talk about, well, I got QuickBooks. or even got Power BI, if you don’t have someone there to interpret it for you, to say, well, this is actually what this is telling you, it’s a very limited value. Like we were, again, using the Matrix example of it’s great, but if I can’t take any actions based off of it, then I don’t really want to do it.
00:31:15 – Rico Figliolini
Right. And I can see that in a world where a company might have two, three, or four different credit lines using them for a variety of reasons. Well, the financial planner might come in and say, why do we have these two where your APR, your interest rate is this high, you’re actually utilizing the wrong credit line or, you know, there could be a variety of things there, right? Let’s look a little bit at experience. As a founding member of Peachtree Corners, the city of Peachtree Corners since 2012, how has the involvement in local government influenced your business perspective? Has that influenced it at all? And where does that go?
00:31:57 – Alex Wright
The thing that I, kind of a, not a comparison, but an analogy is, I was talking to someone about this the other day where we started the city. There was an election to whether to have a city, and then there was an election to elect a council. So we had seven people who, for the most part, didn’t know each other. And I mean that was the city, there was no city staff there was no anything. So the reason that’s relevant it’s almost like a startup where we’re like okay we need to find someone, it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know. You had to go find people to kind of help us get started and then there’s those growing pains of whether it be the relationships amongst the council or you know finding the right people from a staff standpoint to be part of a city startup because if you think about all the cities in the country, very few new cities. That idea of a new city, it’s not unique to Georgia but you know prior to say like 2005 that wasn’t something that was happening here. So it’s that, there’s only certain people that want to take that risk. I guess it was kind of like going from a big corporation to a startup, it’s you got to have the right you know mindset and you know kind of fire in your belly to do it so it’s being part of something and seeing it grow from you know literally the seven of us in a room one day like meeting each other to you know what there is now. It’s what I envision starting a company would would be like. And you know maybe the the comparisons aren’t you know the correlation not completely you know accurate but I would think for sure there’s some you know similarities those same kind of decisions we had to make about bringing the right people in at the right time and you know just being able to get along. Because at a smaller company I would think those relationships are, the importance of them are more pronounced because there’s fewer people. Versus at a larger corporation not that the relationships aren’t important but you know the success or the failure of say like working at the home depot headquarters is it going to be based on you know just a you know my relationship with somebody because there’s 400,000 people that work there.
00:34:17 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I think part of it too is you’re starting, you know, the city started with just, you know, with a certain amount of revenue because it took over some of that revenue being a city, franchise taxes, business licenses, but you also grew into a budget. And then as the city grew financially, I know it’s not a business, but you all treated it to some degree as a business, right? You didn’t spend money you didn’t have, or if you did there was a reason you knew where the revenue might come in from whether it was a grant or a loan or whatever it was. I’ve got to say that the city has overall done it responsibly. So has any of that informed the way you know or have you used your experience there you know working with that type of finance too?
00:35:08 – Alex Wright
So, you know the analogy I use sometimes with people is like the city council relationship, say, to the city manager is similar to in a company, a board of directors to a CEO. So that, you know, being a role, you know, because I was never on a board of directors at a company, you’ve got to be way up or probably older than me normally, you know, to be in that role of coming up with policies and then entrusting someone to execute those, you know, definitely gives you a different perspective. You know, running an organization because my career had been on the implementing people’s policy, you know, taking that directive from on high and implementing it and, you know, bringing it to some results. So to have that perspective from the other side has been, I think, good because, you know, I sit there and think about not too many people get that opportunity to be on the other side of the, you know, the table, if you will, to come up with policies. And trust other people, find the right people to enact those and make them successful.
00:36:20 – Rico Figliolini
Going from other experiences, your military service as a naval officer, has that also provided any experience that you’ve drawn on? Excuse my black cat.
00:36:34 – Alex Wright
No, you’re okay. That was a little more tricky. I think the thing that, where that part comes in, and this was really more about, you know, the why of, you know, I wanted to get into this type of work. Because when I was making the decision to leave corporate America, you know, I was in a position from a career standpoint, financial standpoint, a personal standpoint, you know, kids rolling off the payroll. There’s an opportunity here to do something different. And I did a, I don’t know if you know what a SWOT analysis is, but strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, did like a SWOT analysis of myself and thought, what is it that, you know, now in this situation where I don’t have as much responsibility as far as taking care of other people, like what really brings me, you know, satisfaction, fulfillment, besides just, you know, helping a company get that EPS each quarter. And, you know, the common theme as I looked at all these different things I’ve been involved in. I looked at my military experience, looked at serving on the city council. I looked at the 20 years I coached kids sports. All three of those things are thinking, how the heck are those three related to each other? But the common theme, because each one of those brought me satisfaction in different ways, was that you’re helping other people in each of those instances. You’re serving other people. You’re making other people either successful or in the case of, you know, the military is really about, you know, serving the nation, but it was doing stuff for other people. Again, differently. And I thought, how do I take these skills that I’ve built up over 25 years and do that in a way where I can help other people be successful? Because one of the things I would constantly hear from small business owners is, we were kind of talking about it before where they’re really good at you know that making the pencils or whatever it is but they struggle with finance because that’s not what their you know expertise is. And in a lot of instances can’t afford you know to bring somebody in or they don’t they don’t need someone full-time. And as I learned more about that industry I thought this could really fill that that impulse, if you will, you know, I’ve got about how can I help other people be successful? And in a way where you go in, you take this person’s got their whole life’s work tied up in this business. Their heart and soul in it. And to be able to go in and help them eliminate or alleviate some of their pain points that are preventing them from being successful. That really appealed to me much more than, well, I’m just going to go back into I’m going to call it the matrix of corporate america life we’re just going to you know get that EPS up three cents. You get to a certain point in life where like I’d really like to a bit of focus more on giving back. Just like with the you know city council it pays eight thousand dollars a year an occasional free t-shirt but you just have a great sense of satisfaction when you go out to the Town Center and you see like the the playgrounds and stuff we’ve built out there and you see all those people enjoying themselves you think you know I had a some small part of you know bringing that you know joy to these other people so it’s that same you know you want to do the same thing but in this different you know industry.
00:40:16 – Rico Figliolini
Now and I can see that. I mean you brought a lot, you’re passionate about the things you do. We were talking about a little bit about the industries that you’re passionate in, the areas of like CrossFit and stuff. So, you know, a person that’s driven that way and that’s sharing. I mean, you’re doing the Memorial Day Challenge for kids on Fort Payne, which is our obstacle course. That’s probably one of the best in the city, if not the best. So I can see that. I mean, giving back to the community and all that. And working with entrepreneurs, startup businesses, or even just businesses that have been around for a while, providing them with information. And you’re right. Some people, number one, either they think they can’t afford it, but they really can’t ignore it, right? Because if they’re going to grow their business, they really need to know what those numbers mean. And, you know, I mean, you’re right. Bank statement or even a QuickBook report. I mean, fine, so you can see your business is growing, you can see its profitability, but you may not see the things that are coming, which those numbers can tell you. It’s almost like being a futurist with it, right? Or being able to tell the future with numbers, if you will. And those numbers don’t lie to a degree. So giving back to the community as a business leader, as a political leader, I mean, I know that’s part of what you do. The relationships you’re building with Burn the Ships Financial, I mean, you just started out. This is your first few months in business. And you want to be able to give the feedback that you can to them. So tell me what, you know, what do you look ahead? What’s your company’s long-term goals? We’re towards the end of our interview here. So I just want to know where you think you’re going, where you want to be in a couple of years. What type of clients, what industry maybe. What do you want to be? Tell me.
00:42:24 – Alex Wright
So one of the things that I’ve done you know as I was learning about other companies that play in this space you know some of their you know limitations whether it be bandwidth or skill set. One of the things I did is I reached out to a lot of former colleagues and said hey would you be interested in going on this journey with me? Like hey, don’t quit your job but you know would you like to you know partner with me on this? And literally every person I reached out to was like, yes, I would love to do this with you. They were very excited about it. The reason that’s relevant is, it gives us a scope of skills and bandwidth that I would argue most of these other companies just don’t have because they don’t have access to these people that have worked in companies. The reason I mentioned that to your question is, some of these folks that are really you know fired up about you know doing the business initially, I was just, I’m just going to do it myself and take on four or five six customers you know that have compelling stories but as these other folks really wanted to get involved you know I’ve been rethinking that just see how things go but you know it could be that things take off and we’re able to some of these folks come on board we might you know make it a bigger plan. I just wasn’t expecting the level of response I got about how excited people wanted to do this as well. So that’s TBD, obviously. We’ll just see how that goes. But money is a very personal thing, whether it be our personal money or a business’s money. It’s really about trust. And obviously, you’ve got to build that over time. I’m anticipating, you know, it’s going to take several months where, hey, you got to inform people they have moved into this space and you’re spending a whole lot of time meeting with people and just telling them what I’m doing and, you know, getting the word out that I’m here to, you know, get involved to help people be successful. So we’re just, we’re going to have to wait and see how that goes. See what kind of growth opportunities there are. But, you know, Peachtree Corners, that’s over, I want to say about 2,500 businesses. They’re not all in the space that I’m looking to get involved in, but it’s a great location to be in, in terms of this industry.
00:44:51 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. We’re a growing city, so it’s never-ending. We’ve been speaking to Alex Wright with Burn the Ships Financial. Just started a startup of his own. A city councilman with City of Peachtree Corners here as well. Alex, I appreciate you being with us. Can you tell people where they can find more information about you, your website, your contact info?
00:45:15 – Alex Wright
Yes. So website is just like the company name, Burn the Ships Financial. We got that up a few weeks ago. And that’s probably the best place to go. It’s got my contact info and some of my partner’s contact info on there. Yeah, that’s going to have all my info. I was going to say you could go to the city website, but at this point, everything you would need would be on the company website.
00:45:46 – Rico Figliolini
In fact, on the homepage, there’s a phone number, email address, and a schedule a consultation button. So it is burntheshipsfinancial.com that you should all visit. And check out Alex Wright and his team and the services they provide. Hang with me for a second, Alex, but everyone else, thank you for joining us. Appreciate your support. Appreciate the support of evremodelinginc.com and Vox Pop Uli as well for supporting our podcast as well as the magazines and the digital work that we do, newsletters and all that, and the journalism that we produce. So thanks again to everyone. Alex, appreciate you being here. And if you all have any comments, leave it in the comment box, depending where you are. YouTube, Facebook, or just email Alex and he’ll be able to answer your questions.
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