The Love of Here | Life and Work in Northwest Georgia

What happens when you realize time with your kids at home is running short — and how do you chase a career you love without losing yourself in the guilt?

Caroline Frost is the Development Director for Junior Achievement of Georgia in Northwest Georgia, a wife, and a mom of three. She sat down with us to share her Dalton story — from growing up here and graduating in a class of 26, to chasing something new in Dodge City, ...

What happens when a college president decides that higher education shouldn't just be about degrees — it should be about building a community from the ground up? Dr. John Fuchko, president of Dalton State College, sits down with hosts Lauren Sneary and Erika Mosteller to share how he landed in Dalton, why he sees the college as an economic and cultural engine for Northwest Georgia, and what's driving unprecedented growth and ...

What happens when a Tennessee girl moves to a small Georgia town and discovers it's the perfect place to become an entrepreneur — twice? That's exactly what happened when Janie Hayes relocated from Murfreesboro to Dalton. What started as a move closer to her husband's family quickly turned into a journey of community engagement, business ownership, and a profound rethinking of what it means to be rich. Janie sat down with us ...

What does it take to make a small city a place people choose — not just to work, but to stay, to raise kids, and to build something that lasts? Anna Adamson has been wrestling with that question for years, and the answers are more layered than you might expect. From bringing a Junior Achievement Discovery Center to the smallest community in the country to ever open one, to poring over housing data that explains why Target nev...

Have you ever met someone who doesn't just love a place, but sees its people, its potential, and its story all at once? That's exactly who we're sitting down with today.

Lauren and Erika welcome Allyson Coker — former Executive Director of Believe Greater Dalton and current Executive Director of the Whitfield Health Care Foundation — for a conversation about roots, reinvention, and what it really takes to build a communi...

What  does it take to build a hometown people can't seem to leave? In this episode, we sit down with David Aft, President of the Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia, to talk about what he calls the "Dalton differences": short commutes, civic engagement, and a town full of people who showed up planning to stay a few years and never left. From building Burr Park with a single donor's million-dollar check to reviving the hi...

Ever wondered what it takes to put a small county on the map — not to mention get the attention of Hollywood, HGTV, and out-of-state investors in the process?

On this episode of the Love of Here podcast, Lauren and Erika sit down with Barry Gentry, president of the Murray County Chamber of Commerce, to talk about how one "wrong turn" led to a mission of building up Murray County from the ground up.

Barry shares the real story b...

What happens when a sport becomes the soul of a city? That's exactly what you'll discover in this conversation with Juan and Todd, co-hosts of Monday Night Futbol — the show that has been hyping local soccer players and chronicling Dalton's rise as Soccer Town, USA for five seasons. From the Mexican League games of the early '80s to FIFA-size fields, Atlanta United scouting visits, and a World Cup viewing party at Burr Park, ...

What makes the city you hated become the place you call home — and then spend years working to make it that way for everyone else?

That's the quiet, powerful question at the heart of this conversation with Marisa Kelley, president of the Dalton-Whitfield NAACP. Marisa arrived in Dalton in 2014, hated it (her words — two thumbs down), and couldn't find her community. Fast forward 12 years, and she's one of the most visibl...

What does it take to go from washing dishes at your mom's café in Dalton, Georgia to landing on The New York Times list of the 50 best restaurants in the country? Chef Josh Taylor knows. Raised in Dalton, Josh discovered his love of food early — scrubbing pots at his mother's Sweet Basil Café and later pulling shifts at West Walnut Café before chasing a music career took him from Athens to Park City, Utah, and eventually to C...

Comedy is the best when someone holds up a mirror to what we would normally ignore and highlight the absurdity of it. That's exactly what our guest, the enigmatic creator behind the Instagram account @carpetcapitalmemes, has been doing for years. With 11,000+ followers and memes that make locals laugh, argue, and feel seen, "Johnny Carpet" has built something genuinely special for Northwest Georgia. We sat down to find out who's be...

What if the thing that changed your life started with a stranger posting their run on Instagram? That's exactly how Soal Running Club came to be — and now it's changing the culture of wellness in Dalton, one Saturday morning at a time. We sat down with founders Geovanni (Geo) Villa and Jorge (Jorgey) Hurtado to talk about how two childhood soccer rivals reconnected through running, why they opened the club to everyone regardl...

What does it actually look like to travel the world for work — and still choose northwest Georgia as home?

Ashlea Snell of Snell Photography has photographed weddings and commercial shoots across Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and beyond — with her work featured in People, Gardening Gun, and the New York Times. But when it came time to plant roots, she and her husband Tyler chose Dalton, Georgia. In this conversation, As...

What does it look like when you hike 2,000 miles, fall in love, move across the country, and somehow end up exactly where you were meant to be? Amanda Michaels-Brown and Chris Brown didn't plan to plant roots in Dalton, Georgia — but Dalton had other plans. From a chance college connection to a tragedy that revealed the power of community, their story is a reminder that the place you come home to shapes you in ways you never ...

What does it take to fall in love with the place you live? And then actually stay? In our first episode of the Love of Here podcast, hosts Lauren Sneary and Erika Mosteller sit down together to share their own Dalton stories. One grew up here and swore she'd leave. The other moved here reluctantly and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Together, they explore why Northwest Georgia deserves a better story — and why they're ...