Jessica Kohn woke up at 4 a.m. on the Tuesday of her interview for the position of Auburn’s downtown coordinator.
Due to a miscalculation of her travel itinerary, she missed her flight from California to Atlanta and didn’t arrive until midnight. She and her husband then spent the night in LaGrange, Georgia, before waking up early the next day to drive back to Auburn.
Running on two hours of sleep, Kohn arrived to the interview, surrounded by members of Auburn’s Downtown Merchants Association and representatives from the city.
“It was probably one of the toughest interviews I’ve ever had,” Kohn said. “It was a lot of very smart and intelligent people in a room together and me, and they all had very structured questions. … They got straight to the point.”
After leaving the interview and feeling nervous for two weeks, Kohn got the call. She was hired.
When Kohn graduated from Auburn University in 2009 with a degree in mass communication and media studies, she had dreams of becoming a sports reporter like Erin Andrews, but after meeting her future husband during her senior year, she decided to stay and find a job in Auburn.
She soon found employment managing student housing, and though she didn’t love what she was doing, she was good at it, eventually managing the properties of up to 900 students at a given time.
Kohn also joined the Auburn Chamber of Commerce’s diplomat program in 2011 as a volunteer and began promoting local businesses and attending events with other professionals and entrepreneurs.
“It wasn’t long until I realized, ‘Wow, Auburn is so much more than a university,’” Kohn said. “It was with the Chamber of Commerce that I realized just how special this town is and how many people love the City of Auburn.”
She was a diplomat for four years before being promoted to the Chairman Circle: a group of five members of the Auburn chamber tasked with planning events for the chamber’s Young Professional’s program, which she is still a member of, and meetings with the chamber’s top-tier investors.
However, after having a daughter in 2014, she began to long for a job that would allow her to spend more time with her family and wasn’t as stressful as property management.
“I feel like I owed it to her and my husband to be more present,” Kohn said. “Property management is 24/7. ... Anything can go wrong at any given time, so I was constantly at work.”
Then Kohn heard about the downtown coordinator position made this year by the DMA.
The downtown coordinator would provide the DMA with a representative who would be able to advocate for downtown businesses, help organize and plan downtown events and communicate with the City of Auburn, the Auburn Chamber of Commerce, Auburn University and the Auburn-Opelika Tourism Bureau.
At their meeting on Jan. 24, the Auburn City Council voted to allocate $30,000 in city funds to help pay for the position for fiscal years 2017 and 2018.
Since being hired as the downtown coordinator, Kohn has been promoting downtown businesses on multiple social media platforms and has filled her personal calendar with events she is organizing for Auburn’s downtown and meetings with members of the city as well as the DMA.
“Probably the biggest thing is the events and things that take place in downtown Auburn, advocating for the businesses and making sure it’s in their best interest,” Kohn said. “We’re already planning through December and looking ahead at the Mardi Gras parade for next February.”
Other events that Kohn is helping organize or is involved in are Summer Nights, a downtown art walk and parade planned for June 9; Restaurant Week, a promotion for downtown restaurants on the week of June 18; Cheers on the Corner, a wine and beer tour through participating downtown businesses planned for July 28; Come Home to the Corner, an entertainment event with live music scheduled for the start of football season; Roar on the Corner, a pep rally-like event to support Auburn High School’s athletic teams and Blue Friday, a day of discounted goods from participating downtown businesses scheduled for the Friday after Thanksgiving.
“There’s been a lot of brainstorming and putting new ideas on the table, and asking how we can advance the Auburn experience is really the main goal for my position,” Kohn said. “It’s not just about the game-day experience. It’s not about a football experience. It’s about an Auburn experience.”
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