About Us

Publisher Olya Fessard founded Georgia Family Magazine in March 1992. Prior to that, Olya graduated from Mercer University and completed two years of graduate study at Georgetown University. Her experience includes several years in foreign service with the Department of State with tours in Paris and Tel Aviv. After marriage, she started a French restaurant, Le Normandie, (yes, "le"—after the ship) with her French chef husband in Georgia where their clients often included such notables as Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, and President Jimmy Carter. She has traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. Following the closing of their restaurant, Olya earned a teaching certificate in order to teach learning disabled children. After becoming frustrated with the demands of the public school system that learning disabled children be taught in the same way as regular students, Olya decided that she could help children better, albeit indirectly, by helping parents find the vast resources available to them with which to help their children.

Managing Editor Veronique Saiya is a graduate of Goucher College in Baltimore with a BA in Psychology. Before she joined Georgia Family in 2002, Veronique taught at The Frazier Center in Atlanta, a preschool that served both typical and special-needs kids. She and her husband Ken are now the proud parents of one-year-old Gabrielle Shay Saiya.

Georgia Family Magazine supports and empowers moms and dads as they face today’s choices and challenges, throughout all stages of parenting. We realize that we are not the experts, but we are committed to finding the best of them for parents who are intent upon helping their children live up to their highest potential.

In March 1992, the magazine was first published as a 16-pager with a circulation of 10,000. Since then, it has consistently grown in sophistication of design and editorial development to its present circulation of 17,000. Georgia Family was the first regional parenting publication in the nation to encompass articles geared to parents of tweens and teens. It has consistently won national awards from the Medill School of Journalism for both its editorial and graphics. It has won numerous awards in the categories of Excellence, Best Writing, Best Layout, and Best Reviews.

Along with the incredible joyful, funny, excruciating, and unique experiences that parents through the ages have experienced, today’s parents are faced with the most exciting and ever-changing environments ever. Today’s dads are more involved in parenting, most mothers have outside jobs, and extensive worldwide media can be downright confusing. We aim to help parents navigate this world of change with the fewest impediments with our printed edition of Georgia Family Magazine as well as our digital edition.

Georgia Family is distributed by subscriptions and carefully-targeted free distribution in medical professional offices, private schools, restaurants, libraries, and other places frequented by parents of growing children. It’s website, www.GeorgiaFamily.com, receives more than 140,000 hits per month from Georgia and all over the world.