Lori Auten

Lori Auten is the CEO of Columbus, Georgia-based Focus Consulting Group, a firm that provides professional coaching, business consulting, group facilitation and leadership development. Auten was formerly a public service faculty member of The University of Georgia with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in Columbus, GA. She was a business consultant, area director, and associate state director during her 16-year career with the SBDC, and during that time she provided more than 7,500 hours of coaching and counseling to more than 1,500 entrepreneurs in the areas of leadership, strategic planning, team building and management.

Auten is an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation as well as a Qualified Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Coach and a certified practitioner of the EQ-i 2.0 Model of Emotional Intelligence. In addition, she is an Everything DiSC® and Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team® Authorized Partner and trainer. She holds a certification as a FastTrac facilitator with the Kauffman Institute and also serves as facilitator for The University of Georgia Small Business Development Center GrowSmart™ entrepreneur program.

In 2010, she and her husband Greg opened their first Tidal Wave Auto Spa, an express car wash facility, in Milledgeville, Georgia. Over the next few years, they added five more Tidal Wave locations in South Carolina and Georgia.

Auten is on the board of directors of Liberty Utilities (East Region), the Greater Columbus Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Easterseals and the Columbus Public Library, and she is the past-chairman of the Columbus Trade Center Authority. She is a graduate of Leadership Columbus and has been featured in Georgia Trend Magazine as one of the “40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Georgia”.

She earned her bachelor‘s degree in Economics/Mathematics from Emory University and an MSA in Management from Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Business Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.