Live Oak Fiber’s Expansion, Georgia Workforce Skills, and Georgia Ports Authority’s Next Chapter

We're pleased for our member spotlight this week to welcome a pretty great member.

Live Oak Fiber is here.

Steve Smith, Live Oak's Chief Revenue Officer, is going to spend a few minutes with us today.

I've got to first say, though, this is a return visit.

You were so kind to host not only me, but Councilman Nick Palumbo, as well as Hughes Threckwood, who just won his first professional.

Golf tournament.

You had a little Savannah series of the Live Oak podcast, which people can go and check out when they're done listening to this.

So thanks for making the return visit and coming to the Chamber Connect podcast.

Live Oak, of course, fiber company that's lighting up Savannah, signing up customers.

Tell us about your sort of why Savannah, why you guys picked this area and what has been the reception been so far? First of all, thanks

for today.

This is great.

We're over here on Tybee Island, which is an awesome place to do a podcast.

Hazard pay today.

It's hazard pay.

I mean, it's got to be 85 and there's not a cloud in the sky.

It's nice.

Yeah, so Live Oak Fiber, we started in 22.

And we started in Brunswick, Georgia and Niceville, Florida, Okaloosa County, Florida.

And since then, in the last couple of years, we've gone from four employees to about 175.

And we've been a great place to work, a certified company the entire time.

So we're not just building fiber.

We're building careers.

We've hired a lot of full-time people that we create jobs in these areas.

Savannah came to our attention just because it's a fantastic community.