City of Peachtree Corners Communications Director Louis Svehla

A multi-tasker by nature, this Augusta native finds this job, this area a perfect fit

To be able to handle the job of communications director for a bustling city like Peachtree Corners, you have to possess a particular set of skills: ■ Articulate complicated governmental jargon and procedures into everyday language for the masses, ■ Oversee website, social media, internal and external communications and a host of other things – kind of a jack of all trades, ■ Maintain a professional composure in all situations — especially emergencies…

And you must make it look effortless.

Louis Svehla’s circuitous route to the position prepared him for that and more.

Born in Augusta, he didn’t remain there for long. When he was six months old, his father, a military man, was assigned duties overseas. So, the first ten years of his life were spent in Europe.

“My dad was Army. He was an electronics and communications equipment specialist in the military,” Svehla said. “I was almost 11 when we moved back to Augusta. I did all my middle school and high school there. My dad retired there with the military. And then I went to college at Georgia College in Milledgeville. Oh, which is now Georgia College and State University.”

Svehla said he has four passions: people, information, education and kids. He wasn’t necessarily looking for a career that would encompass them all, but thought law be a good choice considering his “gift of gab” and public speaking skills.

“That was in the mid to late 90s and the market was getting flooded with lawyers. And I decided By Arlinda Smith Broady

Above, Louis Svehla with his son, mother, and fiance and her son.

that wasn’t a good career path. So, I moved into communications,” he said.

A major in mass communications had him thinking about a career in advertising or public relations. “I wrote for the Union Recorder, just a couple of stories, kind of freelance,” Svehla said. “For my major, you had to work in the newspaper and the television station to do all your practicums. And kind of toward the end, I realized I didn’t want to be the person that was asking the questions. So, I didn’t want to go the pure journalism route.”

California dreaming

Right out of college, he moved to Los Angeles and worked for a company called Sky Radio Network. It produced the inflight audio talk channels for all the airlines. Svehla did an internship there as he was graduating, and the company offered him a job.

“I was responsible initially for doing some of the creative and design work and some basic scheduling,” he said. Although it was a sales-based position, he hadn’t really worked in a sales capacity. He wrote a lot of sponsored content and eventually found himself writing scripts and recording interviews.

“I was the producer of the Yahoo Sports channel on Delta and American Airlines,” he said.

“There was all this cool technology on planes where people don’t even have headsets. That was fun. I really got to cut my teeth on how to use my creativity, my Q&A, my ability to connect with people and to conduct interviews and stuff like that,” Svehla said.

In March 2001, he decided that the West Coast wasn’t really for him. “I liked the cities, but I was more of an East Coast guy. And I decided, at that point, I wanted to try my hand at education,” he said.

Svehla left California and moved back to Augusta. He was still freelancing for Sky Radio but working remotely — even before it became the big thing that it is now.

And then September 11 happened. The airline industry took a big hit and that job went away. “You can’t sell airline [radio] time when there’s nothing able to fly and with everything that was going on at that time,” he said.

Each one, teach one

Svehla got a line on a television reporter job in Greenville, North Carolina which morphed into a teaching job with the school system there.

“I worked for the Pitt County school system for two years. I started out as a distance learning teaching assistant, working with their new distance learning program,” he said.

The next year he taught 11thgrade English and the school yearbook class. Svehla continued some of the distance learning classes and coached the high school golf team. He also helped a little bit with the high school newspaper.

One of my passions is coaching and mentoring. I have been coaching since I was 19 years old. Even in college, I was coaching an intramural girls’ softball team. When I lived out in California, I got involved with Big Brothers, Big Sisters and got to do some coaching out there as well.

Louis Svehla

“It was great. I loved it. I still try and bring kids into anything that I do,” he said. “One of my passions is coaching and mentoring. I have been coaching since I was 19 years old. Even in college, I was coaching an intramural girls’ softball team. When I lived out in California, I got involved with Big Brothers, Big Sisters and got to do some coaching out there as well.”

Svehla figured he’d found his calling and that teaching was going to be his profession. But he soon realized he was better suited for the mentoring and coaching role than the teaching.

“It takes a special type of person to do that. And unfortunately, that wasn’t one of the special skills that I had. So, I moved back to Augusta and got a job with a medical device company as their director of marketing,” he said.

It was 2004 and Svehla stayed with the company until 2008. “I did everything from writing instruction manuals to advertising and PR, to running all of the trade shows and tradeshow design and filling the salespeople’s toolkits with what they needed to go and meet with physicians and stuff like that,” he said.

But he ultimately realized he wasn’t doing what inspired him. “I felt like I was doing too much on the sales side and not as much for the community side,” he said. “I think a lot of that came from my father being military, and myself always having a dedication to something or a cause that’s bigger than me.”

In 2008, Svehla landed a job as public information officer for the Augusta-Richmond County school system. That lasted for four years. At the time there were 60 schools, about 33,000 students and more than 5,000 employees. He was the one person tasked with working as a liaison to the media, parents and community stakeholders. He would appear at schools explaining journalism and mass communications. And he also had to work with the school’s police department.

Along the way, Svehla married a woman whose family lived in Florida. After their son was born in 2011, she really wanted to be closer to family, so the family moved.

On the road again

Svehla took a job with the Walton County government in the Florida panhandle. One of its attractions, Santa Rosa beach, is a popular vacation destination for those in the metro Atlanta area.

He was the director of communications for almost 10 years for the county government. “I really enjoyed that was a smaller community,” he said.

Like the job in Augusta, he did pretty much everything involving communications. “I was in charge of public communications, media communications, nonprofit and business communications. I even managed a project that had nothing to do with my job,” Svehla said. “But I was an assistant project manager for the development of a new sports complex, and I was lead project manager for the development and construction of a local skate park. I even dabbled in some IT stuff. I was the one that brought live streaming and video meetings to that county to be able to really increase public involvement.” a divorce in 2015, Svehla gained full custody of his son, and although they remained in Florida, his son has the same wanderlust bug. They’ve traveled extensively. In the U.S., they’ve been as far west as Texas, as far north as Baltimore and pretty much everywhere in the Southeast.

“We took a two-week trip to the UK in 2019 and loved it,” he said.

A perfect fit

Like the old saying goes: ‘How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?’ His son craved the excitement of a larger metropolitan area, and Svehla’s parents, though divorced, both lived in metro Atlanta, so the Peachtree Corners position was the perfect fit.

“I don’t like to sit still. I have a servant’s heart, so it is important to me to work with the community, to make sure the community knows me. And more importantly, to make sure that the community knows that they can reach out to me,” Svehla said.

He readily hands out his cell phone number and encourages people to reach out. Svehla serves on several boards, has partnered with schools and tries to insert himself into every area that he can.

“I want to continue to try and grow outreach to the community, I believe partnering with local school systems, businesses, nonprofits, any groups that I can, is crucially important to building a solid community,” he said.

And the area has his son’s approval. He is excited about the museums and theater, as well as all the other community and cultural activities — and every kind of college and professional sports.

His son plays basketball and football, but Svehla has stayed away from coaching. “I’ve found being a single dad… that sometimes it’s easier to let someone else coach him… because he can get tired of hearing my voice all the time,” he chuckled.

Svehla is engaged to a woman he met in Florida who has a fiveyear-old son. With his mom and a combined home that includes five dogs, he has a great family and has found a spot doing what he loves in a community that feels like home.

“I hope the community can see that I’m dedicated. That’s what I have always tried to be,” Svehla said. “I’m very personal. I tell people all the time, ‘My passion is people. I am a people person.’ I like to be creative. I like trying to find new ideas and new ways to do things. I would say that those are probably my biggest strengths.” ■