Celebrating 14 Years with Vicki Wadsworth

As Atlanta Design & Build celebrates our 20th Anniversary this year, we also celebrate the 14 years we have been blessed with the diverse skills of our Director of Administration, Vicki Wadsworth.

Learning sales and management from a young age

Raised in the Midwest, Vicki Wadsworth received her BS degree in Business Administration from Baylor University, in Texas. She graduated  with a dual concentration in Marketing and Management. Upon graduation, she began her career with AT&T in Oklahoma in business sales. Recounting the course of her career, Vicki appreciates the extensive training and diverse opportunities afforded her.

She gives credit to her dad for the most impactful training in sales she ever received. Rising thru the sales ranks for General Mills, he retired as their Director of National Sales Training.  According to Vicki, he could sell anything! He also made sure his three children were managed in sales principles from their earliest years. “I was raised chewing on Zig Ziglar and his motivational sales tools,” Vicki laughed.

Her AT&T career included additional opportunities and relocation.  She became immersed in the world of computer programming upon successful completion of Programmer Basic Training and relocated from Oklahoma to Florida. Beginning in system administration and ending up in charge of online security programming for AT&T’s Core Billing System. Vicki stated she valued this IT segment of her career for the strategic thinking the training and assignments provided her.

While working in IT, Vicki also worked with the AT&T personnel department conducting campus interviews. Later, an opening arose requiring a sales & programming background. Vicki was offered a position with AT&T personnel as the Management Employment Recruiter for the state of Florida. She thoroughly enjoyed running the remote office hiring for sales, programming, accounting and engineering departments. In 1991 when company budget cuts were needed, she recommended closing the Orlando, FL location and moved to the AT&T southeastern hub in Atlanta, Georgia.

Moving, Marriage and Family——The beginning of a new chapter

Three years later, Vicki married a ‘family’ and began raising her two children. When AT&T offered generous retirement packages in order to make further budget cuts, she decided to retire in Jan. 1996 and began homeschooling. A year later, her third child was born. After a year with her newborn, when AT&T contacted her to offer a contract recruiter position she agreed to work from home part-time. Soon after this contract completed, she was offered a job as a church secretary/office manager three days a week. This allowed her to be home when the older kids got home from school. That’s where she met Dale Contant, president of Atlanta Design & Build.

When the church decided in 2002 they needed a secretary full-time, Dale called Vicki and asked her to be ADB’s part-time bookkeeper. Vicki said, “Little did I realize how valuable my Fortune 100 experiences and solid structures would be at ADB.” When Jamie Franks’ wife, Lisa, was hired as bookkeeper 1 ½ years later, it freed Vicki up to do other things. Dale Contant had a deep desire to raise the bar at his company, and Vicki was thrilled to help.

“I’m a process-oriented thinker,” said Vicki. “And I understand that the processes are all intertwined.” To start, she interviewed the crew to understand what their systems were and created documentation. The ADB processes simply needed to be formalized to help the company be a little more professional. These processes needed to be ingrained in the team members. To that end, Vicki enjoyed planning/facilitating several team building opportunities.

When the construction recession hit in 2010, Vicki again served as the sole administrative support for the office. She began working full-time performing whatever role was required.

The Vicki Wadsworth of Today

Since 2015, Vicki functions as Dale’s assistant. She manages his calendar, pre-screens all sales calls, setts up sales appointments, handles HR, and is also involved with marketing. Vicki enjoys interacting with the prospective clients who contact ADB looking for assistance with their remodeling needs. She gets to know them and facilitates the next steps for them to begin working with Dale or Steven.

Vicki delights in working with ADB clients, with the company’s partners, and with its team members. “Since my skill set is pretty diverse, I’ve been able to positively impact the company in a lot of different ways. I find that to be very gratifying.”

Outside the office, Vicki spends as much time as possible with her family: her husband, their three grown children and her four grandchildren.

She is also passionate about a ministry she and her husband began in 1996 called Legacy Ministries International that is active in Africa. They have an orphan/refugee educational support program and support local pastors in providing community outreach projects. Some of these include clean water projects in rural Uganda and Kenya, computer and sewing training centers, etc. For Vicki it’s all about seeing how God transforms people’s lives. The ministry is a registered 501C3 organization. Its website is currently under re-construction.

Vicki Wadsworth in Africa
Our team ministered for a week in Buwalasi, Uganda in 2004. The culmination was handing out school supplies to students at the rural school.