Last month, Georgia Trend Magazine unveiled its annual list of the “100 Most Influential Georgians,” and included were two prominent Augustans: Mayor Hardie Davis Jr. and Augusta University President Dr. Brooks A. Keel — again.
The list also includes voting rights activist and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy and Gov. Brian Kemp.
Davis, the 84th mayor of Augusta, said being selected for this list is a tremendous honor and expressed his gratitude to the city’s residents for giving him the opportunity to serve.
“I’m very thankful and appreciative to be recognized among my peers,” he said.
Davis said one of the things he loves about the city is its proximity to popular family vacation destinations such as beaches and mountains. But Augusta also has so much to offer its residents, including a variety of restaurants and a thriving arts community, Davis said.
“I love Augusta because my family’s here,” he added.
Davis and his wife, Evett, have been married for almost 27 years and have a 19-year-old son, Benjamin, who attends the Savannah College of Art and Design, he said. His parents and siblings also live in Augusta, Davis added.
He called the city “a place of connectedness and a place of belonging.”
While Davis loves the city and everything it has to offer its citizens, he especially loves the people he gets to serve.
“You’ve got to love the people more than you love the work,” Davis said. “I am a people person.”
Of course, serving as mayor of the second-largest city in Georgia also requires a great deal of hard work, including serving on the Augusta Commission and creating a balanced budget, he said.
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While many politicians are former attorneys, Davis comes from a completely different background, he said. In fact, Davis graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering, which prepared him well to serve as mayor because he’s able to think analytically about the problems the city faces and find solutions to those problems, Davis said.
Prior to becoming a politician, he worked as an engineer for 24 years, Davis added. Before he was elected mayor in 2015, Davis served as a senator and representative in the Georgia General Assembly.
Davis is also the founder and senior pastor of Abundant Life Worship Center in Hephzibah, a non-denominational church that preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he said.
Davis wants Abundant Life to be “the place of hope, healing and love to everyone we touch,” he added.
Being a mayor, pastor, husband and father leaves Davis with little free time, but he enjoys running and playing golf when he gets the chance.
“It’s not often that I’m not working,” Davis added.
He’s in his second term as mayor, and term limits prevent him from running for a third term, he said. He’ll leave office at the end of next year, but for now, he would rather focus on doing his job rather than planning his political future, Davis said.
“Right now, there’s a lot of work to do in this city,” he said.
Like Davis, Keel said being selected for the list of most influential Georgians is both a great honor and a humbling experience. He was appointed president of AU in 2015, but his affiliation with the institution goes back much farther than that. In fact, he earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Augusta College in 1978 and his doctorate in reproductive endocrinology from the Medical College of Georgia in 1982.
Even as an undergraduate, Keel “was impressed because Augusta College took great pride in providing a first-rate education,” he said.
Over 40 years later, Keel and his team still strive to maintain this tradition of excellence by making AU’s students and patients their top priority.
As an academic medical center, “We are an incredibly innovative university,” said Keel. “We’re able to bridge art and science.”
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He also takes great pride in knowing that CSRA residents don’t have to leave town to receive quality health care.
During his tenure as president, the university has celebrated many accomplishments, including founding the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences and constructing a new $70 million College of Science and Mathematics building that’s scheduled to open in June on the Health Sciences Campus.
But Keel said his greatest accomplishment has been “putting together a great team that deserves all the credit.”
He’s also proud of how the university’s students, faculty and staff have responded to the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, Keel said.
In March 2020, like many other colleges throughout the country, AU was forced to transition all classes from the classroom to an online format, and its front-line health care workers began battling a mysterious and often deadly disease, he said.
“It’s been one challenge after another,” Keel added.
While navigating these challenges certainly hasn’t been easy, the university has worked hard to combat the problem by opening the first drive-through testing centers in this area and creating a telehealth app that allows patients to receive virtual health care 24 hours a days, he said.
AU scientists also developed the first COVID-19 test outside of the ones created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, Keel said.
Keel has many accomplishments of his own, including publishing 65 peer-reviewed papers and 19 book chapters in the field of reproductive medicine. Keel has many years of academic experience, including serving as professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita, associate vice president for research at Florida State University and vice chancellor for research and economic development at Louisiana State University. He also served as president of Georgia Southern University from 2010-2015.
Keel has been married to Dr. Tammie Schalue since 2001. He has a son who lives in Augusta and both a daughter and five-year-old granddaughter who live in Philadelphia. Because of the pandemic, Keel hasn’t seen his daughter or granddaughter in nearly a year, but he and his wife look forward to traveling again when they can, Keel said.
Keel and his wife are both certified scuba diving instructors, he said.
“I don’t dive as much as I used to, but Tammie would live in the water if she could,” Keel added.
Josh Heath is a correspondent for The Augusta Press. Reach him at producers@theaugustapress.com
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