MS ALABAMA SENIOR AMERICA 2018,
GEORGIA LEE

CONGRATULATIONS to GEORGIA LEE, Ms Alabama Senior America 2018, and Special Thanks to Rita Allen and Edwina Chappell for an exemplary State Queen!

Georgia Lee is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor, now teaching writing, yoga, fitness and meditation. She balanced a demanding career with her most challenging and rewarding role as a devoted single parent to two children.

A  classically-trained pianist, Georgia graduated Magna Cum Laude in music at the University of Georgia, and performed as an actress, dancer and director of musical theater productions in the Southeast and taught public school music before launching a career in journalism and writing. A finalist in Glimmer Train's 2012 New Writers contest, she has studied on scholarship at the Paris Writers Retreat and Mediterranean Arts Group in Andros, Greece. As a certified fitness/yoga teacher, she works at gyms, studios, resorts, churches, senior centers and at charity retreats.

For 21 years, she served as Southeast Bureau Chief for New York-based Women's Wear Daily and W magazine, after editing and writing positions for numerous publications. Winner of the Atrium Award for Excellence in Business Reporting from the Henry Grady School Journalism, she also won the DIVA Award for Fashion Business Reporting. She served as president, public relations for Fashion Group International and judged the Miss South Carolina U.S.A. pageant, along with design, talent, fashion and literary competitions. Traveling from Miami to New York and points in between, she's made television appearances as guest speaker in Montreal, Canada's Fashion Week and videos for the Indianapolis-based Author Learning Center. She investigated Honduras garment workers' conditions for an award-winning feature story in WWD.

From 2009 to 2014, she was Director of the Savannah College of Art and Design's Writing/Cultural Arts Center, where she launched/curated regional events with world-renowned authors; established Writers-in-Residency and Young Writers programs and served on SCAD's creative team for design publications.

Since retiring from full-time work, Georgia devotes her life to the arts and to serving others by teaching writing, yoga and fitness, primarily to seniors. Her It's Your Story: Stick to it, memoir writing class at OLLI, a division of Emory University for students 50 and older has garnered top reviews and she is under contract to publish a guide to memoir under the same title. She teaches memoir writing to private and group workshops. Georgia is at work on a novel set in 1960's Lowndes County Ala., home to her paternal ancestors since the early 1800s. She advocates anti-poverty initiatives in Alabama.

The sole owner of a large timber farm in south AL, she supports wildlife organizations and maintains a Certified Natural Wildlife Habitat. She donates time and money to women's and children's charities, national mental health organizations (NAMI) and addiction recovery. She visits nursing homes, playing piano, reading and singing Christmas carols.

An only child, she solely attended to her elderly parents, by their side through hospital, hospice and at the moment of death, which inspired Hurly Burly, an essay juxtaposing her childhood with end-of-life care of her parents. She dedicates each day to their memory and treats every senior citizen with the love she would have wanted for them.