Meet A City Of Dalton Employee: Audrey Simmons, Mack Gaston Community Center Asst. Manager

Wednesday, March 13th, 2024

The City of Dalton is special because of the people who work hard every day to make it the best place to live, work, and play in Georgia. The City is proud of the men and women working to serve our residents. This article continues a series of profiles we'll be running from time to time to spotlight the special people who are making a difference in our city. 

Audrey Simmons is the assistant manager of the Mack Gaston Community Center in the Dalton Parks and Recreation Department. In that role, she helps to oversee all of the operations of the facility and also develops programming such as dance classes, yoga classes, and indoor pickleball games. Drawing on her experience as a licensed therapist, she also works with kids at the facility and the youth leadership program she developed for middle schoolers, called "Level Up", recently held a graduation ceremony for its 15 newest graduates. She's a Dalton native and says that managing the community center was a dream job for her. 

Here's a Q&A with Audrey about her work at the Mack Gaston Community Center and what makes it a special place for Dalton:  

So Audrey, you've been with the community center since 2018. What does your job entail, and what is a typical day in your job like? 

My specific job is programs – I do programming. But definitely just greeting the people here is one of the most important things to me, making people feel welcome. I want this place to be a kind of a refuge. So that’s number one, greeting the people. After that, I’m just working on different programs. I’ve started yoga, dance classes, we had a line dancing class that we just finished up, started pickleball, indoor pickleball on Wednesdays, we’ve been doing that since ’21, it’s really great. And then "Level Up", we’ve been doing that. And then just doing the summer camps, planning and facilitating all of those programs.

So what is the "Level Up" program? Tell us a little about what that program is all about. 

"Level Up" is an eight-week leadership program - youth leadership. It’s really a leadership development program. What we do is we use John Maxwell’s book “Leading From The Lockers.” From that book, I took four pillars or four principles of leadership character-wise: Integrity, attitude, commitment and vision. So, we just sort of try to sharpen that, get these young people to start thinking about that really early. We don’t expect them to get it completely. But we want them to start thinking about having integrity, about being committed, about having a vision for yourself and having good perspective and attitude. So, we do that and we come in and we have speakers from the community who come in and talk to them. They talked to Judge Weaver – they actually went to the courthouse and talked to him in his chambers, and he did some role playing with them, talking to them about their First Amendment rights and talking to them about integrity. So, they went to his chambers and it was great. That was by far the best time that they had. They talked to Judge Weaver about rules, about law, about integrity, about First Amendment rights, because that’s sort of what we’ve been focusing on is to use their First Amendment rights effectively. So, he talked about that. We had some detectives from the police department come in and talk to them about different things. We had Christie Payne who is a social worker, a licensed social worker come in and talk to them about self-esteem. We had 4H, they came in and did a personality test as far as leadership styles and personality, she came in and did that and also taught communication and active listening. We had this guy named Kit Cummings come in, he’s a motivational speaker. I don’t know where Kit Cummings came from but he was really good. He talked to them about passion. We had LAA, they came in and talked about their services. Raphael Huerta came in and talked about that.

The other part of the program is mentorship. We get mentors to come in and meet with them at the end of the session for about 30 minutes. They come in, they talk about leadership, and then we do a small group, because I’m a licensed therapist, and I do personal development with them in a group setting. We do that for 8 weeks, and then they graduate.

You started the program in 2019, so you've probably seen some of your first students move on into college. Has that been satisfying to see? 

Yes, my daughter is one of them. She went through and finished... she’s grateful for what she learned in here. She is actually at Howard University in DC, and she put it on her resume when she applied. At that time, we were doing community service which looked very good (on the application). We kinda got away from doing community service because of COVID, when we started back nobody was letting kids come in (and volunteer). The next session we have, we want to bring back the community service aspect and volunteerism. I’ve seen a lot of people graduate… so when we first started, the program did have high school students in it, but I noticed that the middle schoolers seemed to soak things in more. And it’s still sort of a vulnerable time to get something in there with them, to get them to thinking about something, so that’s why I’m sticking with middle school right now for the program because they’re still a little fresh.

Caption: Audrey Simmons speaks to graduates of the Winter 2024 "Level Up" program at their graduation on March 8th

What led you to develop the "Level Up" program? 

It’s definitely spiritual, God... that’s my gift, that’s my calling, is working with adolescents. I used to be a youth leader, so I was looking for a place, like this Center where you can be athletic, where we are meeting the emotional needs, the mental needs.... I was looking for that even back in 1999 to start on my own. It never came to fruition, but when I got this job here at Mack Gaston, I was like… hmm. Just do it in here, because we’ve got everything you need. That’s how it came to bringing it here.

What makes the Mack Gaston Center a special place? 

I think what makes the Mack Gaston Center special is the warmth of the people who work here, number one. And then there are just all types of people who come in here. Poor, rich - we even have some homeless people who come through here. So, poor, rich, Black, White, Hispanic, and you wouldn’t know that anyone was really different here because everyone is just jelled together. To me, that’s what makes it special. We have people who come here that have just moved to Dalton and they come here to find out what to do, what’s going on? They come to the community center. It’s sort of like the nucleus of this town to me. And so people come here to get their information, it’s just sort of like the Yellow Book. People come here asking us questions, and we have no idea what some of the answers are but we find it for them.

I like creating good memories. Good times. I want people to have a good time here. I can remember growing up, going to the community center and those were some of my best days, just hanging out in a safe place and having fun. (Those are) some of my best memories. Laughter, just creating great memories.

So what led you to working here with the City at the community center? 

The manager position here was actually a dream job. This one, as the manager of the community center, and then over at Dalton State being over the housing there (were my two dream jobs). I applied for the housing job over there and didn’t get it, and then this one came along. That’s why I’m here. But my background is in marketing, my first degree was in business, I got that at UTC. And then I got my master’s degree (from Capella University) in mental health counseling. So, I’m also a licensed therapist.

You’ve been here five, six years. Whether it's the "Level Up" kids or just some of the kids you've built relationships with and worked with who come to play here, it must be special to see some of the kids you’ve worked with moving into young adulthood or college.

It’s rewarding. I don’t know what else to say about that. It definitely makes my heart smile just knowing that a small seed that maybe I planted or maybe opened the door for someone else to plant in their lives is beginning to bloom. It’s rewarding.