Interview by Abernathy Cochran intern and Gainesville High School senior Marie Matthews
Meet Whitney Syfan Brown! Whitney is married to Chris Brown and the couple has one son, Liam, 6 years old. Whitney is a partner at Stewart Melvin & Frost and the Vice-Chair of the Vision 2030 Public Art Committee. She grew up in Gainesville and has lived in New York and Atlanta. Whitney came back to Gainesville five years ago to practice law.
We want to thank Whitney for spending time with us recently and telling us more about her life and love of Hall County.
Question: Please tell us about your current career. What do you love most about what you do?
Answer: “I practice mostly public finance law, so it’s awesome to get to feel like I’m a small part of some amazing project that helps a community. We help school districts and local governments issue bonds to fund the building of new schools or a public library or the purchase of new fire trucks.”
Q: What are a couple of your favorite restaurants in our community?
A: “I really love Eat at Thai, but my family is also super hooked on Chattahoochee Grill right now because it’s really close to our house and my little boy is obsessed with their Sonny Sykes Burger. He wants it every day, so we pick up from there a lot. We also like Inked Pig and Johnny’s, it’s classic.”
Q: How long have you lived or worked in our community?
A: “I grew up in Gainesville and then I moved away to boarding school for high school at Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee and then went away to college. I lived in Atlanta for about decade, then I lived in Brooklyn, New York very briefly. I moved back here about five years ago from Atlanta to practice law with my father, Tread Syfan.”
Q: Who is the most interesting person you’ve met here in our community?
A: “I think that Frank Norton is the most interesting person that I’ve met in this community. I think he is a really amazing business leader, but I love that he is right brained and left brained…he can do the business side and the creative side. He’s also a very talented artist and has a great vision for the future of Gainesville. I am honored to succeed him as Chair of the Vision 2030 Public Art Committee next year.”
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would it be and why?
A: “Back to Marfa, Texas, that is my favorite place on the planet. I went there last summer with my mom and my stepsister on a mother-daughter trip. I love it! It’s such a weird place, it’s this nowhere town in the middle of the desert and just full of quirky people and lots of art. I love the desert, it’s beautiful there and the agave grow huge, and it looks like something out of like a Dr. Seuss’ book. It’s amazing.”
Q: What is one of your favorite movies? TV shows?
A: “Right now I’m watching ‘A Discovery of Witches’ on AMC. My husband and I are serial streamers. We also like ‘Ozark’ and it’s always fun to watch and then spot a place near here on the show.”
Q: What advice would you give to people?
A: “You don’t have to spend every hour of the day working; family can and should come first.”
Q: What current or former local business makes you the most nostalgic about our community?
A: “The Inn Between. I miss when Suzanne and Wesley were there, I used to go in there even back when I would come home from boarding school and hadn’t been in town in forever and Suzanne would always remember me. I go in there and it still smells like the Inn Between. I’m so glad that the business is carrying on after their retirement and still such a huge part of the town. It’s great that there is somebody that wanted to pick up that torch and keep something that’s so quintessentially ‘Gainesville’ going.”
Q: If you could choose anyone, alive or dead, with whom would you love to have lunch? Why? And where locally would y’all meet for this lunch?
A: “Maybe Georgia O’Keeffe. I think that her body of work and her relationship with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who was a photographer, are so interesting and how they changed the art world together is amazing. I think she opened so many doors for other female artists, but also, she and her husband just opened the door for the whole country in some ways to modern art. I think we’d have to eat at Two Dog for sure.”
Q: What is your favorite thing or something unique about our community? And what is something you hope our community has or does in the future?
A: “One of the things that really struck me when I first moved back to town is that after having lived in Atlanta and New York, is that there isn’t that sense of community in big cities like you have here in Gainesville. I think that so many people in Gainesville give back, they want to make the community better, they really care about what happens here and are really invested in it and I think that you don’t see that everywhere. A lot of people who live here may not even know that happens, but there are so many business leaders who want to make Gainesville great. It is nice to be part of that, and I hope that continues into the future.”
Q: Where do you see yourself in five to 10 years?
A: “I’d love to own a gallery in the next five to 10 years; that’s sort of my dream.”
Q: What is something on your bucket list?
A: “I would love to go to Europe.”
Q: What is something you have been proud to check off your bucket list?
A: “Graduating from law school and passing the bar. I passed the New York bar and then passed the Georgia Bar. When I passed the New York bar, I think I’ve never felt more excited because I didn’t go to law school in New York, I went to law school in Georgia.”
Q: What is your go to band when you can’t decide what to listen to?
A: “Kacey Musgraves. She’s my guilty pleasure music. We went to her show a few weeks ago in Atlanta.”
Q: In hard times we can sometimes see and recognize greatness in those around us. Hard working. Positive attitudes. Helping on the front lines. Who is one of our local shining lights today?
A: “Randall Frost is on the Community Foundation board and he’s on the Arts Council board. I always look at the more senior partners at Stewart, Melvin and Frost, like Randall, Tom LeFevre and my dad, as teachers, not just in the legal world, but also in how one should support the community.”
Q: What would you rate a 10 out of 10?
A: “A weekend at Lake Rabun.”
Q: Who would you want to play you in a movie about your life?
A: “Emma Stone.”
Q: What is one or two of your favorite smells?
A: “I love how my dogs smell when they’re clean. I know that’s weird, but then they have that puppy smell right after they’ve had a bath, I feel like it’s a home smell.”
