{"id":11075,"date":"2024-01-17T09:25:20","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T14:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=11075"},"modified":"2024-01-18T13:47:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T18:47:58","slug":"southern-bound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2024\/01\/17\/southern-bound\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Bound"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jennifer Abshire Finds Lifelong Connection and Community at Georgia Southern<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Just months after Jennifer Abshire (\u201987) graduated from Georgia Southern University with a bachelor\u2019s in public relations, she followed her college sweetheart from Statesboro to Savannah, where she entered the nonprofit sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her nonprofit jobs barely paid the rent, but she gained valuable experience, enabling her to obtain fundraising skills while working for the American Red Cross and then Parent and Child, where at 25 years old she was responsible for securing more than $3 million per year in donations. Abshire made vital inroads into the community that she continues to work with today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realize at the time how connections and receiving diverse experiences at such a young age would help me,\u201d said Abshire. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing what you learn while sitting in numerous board and committee meetings, raising money and seeking volunteers as one of your first jobs. You really get to wear lots of hats.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1992, Abshire accepted a new, four-year role as executive director of the Savannah Olympic Support Council, the local arm for the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI reported to a 55-person board here locally, as well as to senior Olympic officials, which was really an unbelievable career opportunity at age 28,\u201d Abshire remembered. \u201cWe worked daily with over 3,000 local volunteers who ran all of the community and educational Olympic legacy programs, and hosted more than 500 international guests who came to visit and experience Savannah. Every day was an adventure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a pivotal time for Savannah, on the precipice of major change as the city engaged on an international platform as the host of the Olympic Yachting Competition and its accompanying events. It was also a noteworthy moment for Abshire, whose trajectory was rising with the city\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was really one of the first times Savannah had to work together as one community with a larger goal in mind,\u201d said Abshire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn\u2019t the only time Abshire had been in the midst of transformational change, buoyed by bubbling excitement from the community. During her studies on the Statesboro Campus from 1983 to 1987, the student body grew from roughly 6,000 to 10,000. The football team, which had just been resuscitated by Erk Russell after more than 40 years, won two national championships with a gale-force response from Statesboro and beyond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abshire, a Marietta, Georgia, transplant who didn\u2019t know anyone on campus when she toured the school, chose Georgia Southern for its atmosphere of openness and synergy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat was cool about Georgia Southern was I met a lot of people from different states and my best friends were from different parts of Georgia I had never been to in my life,\u201d said Abshire. \u201cWhat I loved was the friendships and the camaraderie on campus. It felt really small, but it didn\u2019t feel cliquey. Students and faculty really knew each other. I still feel like Southern\u2019s very similar to that today.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like in Savannah, the relationships and experience she gained in Statesboro would support her throughout her life, in both professional and personal ways unknown to her at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Olympics concluded, Abshire leaned on the connections she had established in both cities to work as a consultant from home while she raised young children. The growth of her business was slow and intentional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was an organic, flexible business model,\u201d said Abshire. \u201cAs a consultant you only have so many hours in a day you can work, but I also needed to make time in my workday to be there for my two children,\u201d she said. \u201cThose flex-time goals set the foundation of where we are today. We were working virtually before it was the norm. It was a tremendous blessing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2000, Abshire officially launched Abshire Public Relations, a traditional PR firm. Three years later, alumna Susan Hancock (\u201982) joined as president. In time, their business plan shifted to a new media framework, merging storytelling and technology across multiple outlets, providing counsel and strategy for more than 200 regional companies and municipalities, as of today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs traditional PR faded out, multimarket media became the norm,\u201d Abshire said. \u201cOf course, every year we had to pivot and adjust to what was working to tell people\u2019s stories. Our first decade focused on lots of copywriting, then when we realized video was going to overtake the written word for corporate storytelling, we hired a young University of Georgia alumna who was a former television producer to help us gain strength in this arena. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to learn to remain nimble and stay open to new ideas, tools and strategies. Just because you tell somebody\u2019s story one way today doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s going to work tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its second decade, the firm, which now provides services to clients throughout Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, offers content creation, media relations, crisis management, training and facilitation, video, social media, executive counsel, community relations and philanthropic consulting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a great team,\u201d Abshire shared. \u201cWe\u2019re a good mix of creative content and executive strategy since we have had multiple decades working with so many different types of people and companies.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abshire is deeply embedded in the local and regional community, serving on the board of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce Board of Governors, the Savannah Community Foundation and Georgia Southern\u2019s Parker College of Business. She is a graduate of Leadership Georgia, Leadership Southeast Georgia and Leadership Savannah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her efforts, she has been honored with Georgia Trend\u2019s 40 Under 40 Leadership Award and as Georgia Southern\u2019s College of Liberal Arts (now Arts and Humanities) Alumnus of the Year. Throughout her career, Georgia Southern has provided a solid undercurrent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been fascinating how many projects we have been able to be a part of that are connected to Georgia Southern,\u201d said Abshire. \u201cWe\u2019ve also had more than 50 interns from Georgia Southern. They\u2019re fantastic. They\u2019re driven and enthusiastic, and are ready to hit the ground running for real life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s equally as enthusiastic about the area\u2019s regional growth and how Georgia Southern plays into that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived in Coastal Georgia for more than 30 years and we are about to see some of the largest growth in our region,\u201d Abshire stated. \u201cWe\u2019ve never experienced this level of growth. I think it\u2019s a land of opportunity for anybody who wants to make their mark in any type of career. Every aspect of Georgia Southern is going to play a major role in creating tomorrow\u2019s coastal Georgia, which is really exciting.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the 25th anniversary of her business in plain view, Abshire is reflective on how far she\u2019s come, and with whom. Community for her is more than a host to professional growth; it\u2019s been a source of love and support. In late 2021, Abshire\u2019s husband, John Davis, died unexpectedly. In the months following, many community leaders offered multiple levels of support, giving her the space to be still, but then inspiring her to move forward both personally and professionally. But it was her children and her close friends \u2014 many she has known since she was 18 as a freshman at Georgia Southern \u2014 who really rallied around her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abshire offered a wide smile that quickly gave way to a nostalgic pause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny how you gravitate to the ones that you know best and it\u2019s, you know, the people you meet in college,\u201d she said. \u201cThey kind of mold and shape you, and stay with you for the rest of your life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Melanie Sim\u00f3n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Abshire Finds Lifelong Connection and Community at Georgia Southern Just months after Jennifer Abshire (\u201987) graduated from Georgia Southern University with a bachelor\u2019s in public relations, she followed her college sweetheart from Statesboro to Savannah, where she entered the nonprofit sector. Her nonprofit jobs barely paid the rent, but she gained valuable experience, enabling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":11266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-11075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-fall-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}