Chamblee City Manager Kristen Gorham is helping to build a strong sense of place and a sense of identity through the day-to-day operations for the city of Chamblee.
After Kristen received her master’s in public administration at the University of Georgia, she says left Georgia for a couple of years and was looking to move back to the metro Atlanta area. Seeking a job in local government, there was an opportunity at the city of Chamblee, and she says she was impressed with how quickly the city was growing. “I thought it would be a great landing spot from a local government standpoint,” Kristen says.
Kristen joined the city of Chamblee in 2019 as the city’s senior management analyst. In 2020, she was promoted to assistant city manager and then appointed to deputy city manager shortly thereafter. In July 2024, Kristen was appointed to the city manager position where she now oversees the day-to-day operations of Chamblee’s city government via the city’s various departments and staff members.
In the city manager role, Kristen has six bosses – Chamblee City Council members and the Mayor. “City council appoints me to oversee all the implementations of policies and their vision for the city,” she says. “I take their direction and make sure that everything that we’re doing from an operational standpoint is in alignment with that.”
Kristen says she doesn’t have to worry on a daily basis if the organization is going to function. She's supported by what she calls an incredible staff. “I think a lot of the things that we’re able to do is because we have such a fantastic team of people,” she says. “I have a lot of great subject matter experts that I get to work with, who are part of the city’s team and that helps me be successful because I can rely on them to be effective at their jobs.” This gives her the ability to focus on the things at hand at both the city and state levels. For Kristen, she says city government has a strong sense of community and city of Chamblee staff members genuinely care about their jobs and the impact they have on the city as a community. “I think when you go to work in this environment, everybody’s all in the same boat rowing in the same direction, and it’s a very supportive environment to work in,” she says.
Another part of her role is community input and feedback. The city of Chamblee provides a number of opportunities for resident feedback, both formal, such as city council meetings, town hall meetings and public hearings, and informal. “Ultimately, it’s a representative form of government, so it’s the city council who ultimately decides what we do through policy,” Kristen explains. But through a number of programs and initiatives, the city asks for input and feedback that is then shared with city council members, and through this process Kristen says they create a product, whether it’s a park or a program or an initiative that community members are looking for.
According to a Google search, a Georgia Southern University study indicates that only about 12% of city managers in the state of Georgia are female, while national surveys show that about 30% of city managers are female nationally. Kristen says that while these statistics are true, they are changing. “I’m seeing that change across the board,” she says, adding that she used to attend conferences in rooms of mostly men. Now she says more and more women are in the room. “It’s a shift that’s happening,” she says. “It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s definitely happening.”
For Kristen, it was seeing her father in city management that caught her interest in the profession. “It was modeled to me as a career path that I found to be very challenging and rewarding because I watched him do it in a community that was one of the fastest growing communities in the country at the time,” she says, adding that it’s exciting to see more and more women lean into local government and city management. “I think women in general strive to look for career opportunities where they can give back and invest, and they want to see good things happen from that,” she says.
Kristen and the city of Chamblee hold events called Coffee with the City Manager, so community members can speak with Kristen and ask questions in order to have a better understanding of what’s going on in Chamblee city government and throughout the community. The next event is being planned for late summer or early fall, so watch for the announcement in the near future and get to know Kristen and learn more about Chamblee.
I have a lot of great subject matter experts that I get to work with...