Our Approach

Natalie Crawford brings more than two decades of business experience, public service, and issues advocacy to Georgia First. In her role as executive director, she helps advance economic opportunity and health outcomes for all Georgians while adhering to “old-school” Republican principles. This includes building strong faith-based and community coalitions, limiting government overreach, promoting fiscal responsibility, and advancing individual liberty.

An unapologetic moderate, Crawford is a native Georgian and lifelong Republican who served two terms on the Habersham County Commission, filling roles as vice-chair and chair. She held top leadership roles in the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, including as vice president of the Group Health Benefits Board of Trustees, and served on the Board of Managers. During her eight years in Habersham, Crawford is credited with helping save the local hospital, increasing county reserves, and leading economic expansion efforts with the creation of the Habersham Partnership for Growth and completed expansion projects for both the airport and a large industrial park.

Despite her significant accomplishments, Crawford lost her third-term election to a Republican challenger who decried her efforts to reach across the divide by engaging in bipartisan activities surrounding democracy defense and election integrity. Crawford’s historically strong positions on local control and unfunded state mandates, along with her belief that voting is the very bedrock of our democracy and it should be accessible, secure, and easy for every eligible voter, are the primary reasons for her bipartisan work in this area.

The overall tone of her final local campaign, combined with the continued rhetoric and hyper-partisan attitudes at both the state and national levels, are what bolstered Crawford’s desire to continue serving not just her community but the state of Georgia. That desire is what would ultimately lead her to form Georgia First and establish its cross-partisan executive board with equal Republican and Democratic representation along with one staunch Independent.

In addition to her public service, Crawford has extensive private sector experience in community banking and FinTech, nonprofit administration, and higher education. Currently, she is an investor and advisor to Gentreo, a full-service digital estate planning solution; president and founder of the Evie Peters Foundation, a non-profit serving breast cancer patients and survivors in Northeast Georgia; and adjunct professor at her alma mater Piedmont University. Crawford’s advocacy record also includes advancing efforts on health care, jobs and the economy, and good government.

Crawford completed both her BA and MBA at Piedmont. She was honored as one of the 2020 Georgia Trend Top 40 Under 40, competitively selected and completed Georgia Forward’s 2022 Young Gamechangers program, and was selected for the Conservative Leadership Policy Institute’s 2024 cohort. Crawford currently resides in Hall County with her family.

Shannon Ferguson, Georgia First’s senior policy analyst and strategic communications director, has spent more than 20 years providing public policy and legislative analysis and public sector marketing, communications, and stakeholder engagement services. More than a decade of her career was dedicated to providing legislative tracking, analysis, and reporting on behalf of Georgia state agencies.

Ferguson began her career in state government working for the State Health Benefit Plan under the Georgia Merit System and then the Department of Community Health (DCH). She served as both the benefit unit manager and the lead constituent services representative, administering the health plan’s administrative appeals process and responding to inquiries on behalf of the highest levels of state government.

Recruited in 2001 by the state treasurer to start Georgia’s new 529 college savings plan, Ferguson served as the assistant director, providing contract management and oversight for the plan’s third-party investment manager. She was also responsible for leading the marketing and communications strategy. Under her leadership, assets under management grew to more than $1 billion in just under 10 years, a time period including two economic downturns with one being the Great Recession. Ferguson was publicly recognized at the state capitol by Governor Nathan Deal for her 10-year role in launching Georgia’s Path2College 529 Plan and achieving milestone asset levels in such a short period.

Transitioning into higher education, Ferguson went on to serve as the communications director for the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government. She also served as a part-time instructor through the Institute’s training partnerships with the Georgia Municipal Association and the Association County Commissioners of Georgia and provided subject matter expertise on local and state government contracts and projects.

Following her family’s return to the metro-Atlanta area in 2016, Ferguson worked in local government communications and economic development with the North Fulton and North Georgia cities of Milton and Dahlonega. She also spent several years working in the private sector, providing stakeholder engagement management for large utility and energy infrastructure projects in the Southeast and Midwest regions, including Georgia Power’s multi-year, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure improvement program.

An Alabama native but Georgian at heart, Ferguson relocated to Atlanta after completing her master’s in public administration with dual specializations in organizational

management and community relations at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has received separate team honors from the American Bankers Association and Georgia Trend’s Four for the Future for her contributions to two rebranding projects and was competitively selected for UGA’s Vivian H. Fisher Public Service and Outreach Leadership Academy. Ferguson currently calls Milton, Georgia home.