Laura D. Katz

Laura Katz is the area director of the Athens office and is a public service associate within UGA’s Public Service and Outreach unit. She has extensive experience in marketing and business development for both large corporations and small business. She has helped develop, price and bring to market new products for companies such as Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Levi’s. In the second part of her career, she has worked with small business owners implementing business development and marketing plans.

In 2011, Laura joined the UGA Small Business Development Center as a consultant and since then has earned several awards: UGA SBDC Consultant of the Year (2014), ASBDC State Star (2015), UGA SBDC Flewellen Awards for consulting excellence (2013, 2015, 2018) and an UGA SBDC Program Innovation of the Year Award (2017).

In 2015, Laura achieved the rank of UGA Public Service and Outreach Associate Faculty and was promoted to Athens Area Director. Katz is a nationally recognized speaker on marketing, work/life balance and agribusiness. Her program FarmSMART is implemented nationally by the SBDCs of Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri in response to the SBA’s Rural Initiative.

Laura enjoys working with small business owners, utilizing her education and experience to help transform their businesses.