BRAD & LESLIE PICKEL
Seahaven Consulting
story by JENNIFER BROWN-CARPENTER
Brad and Leslie Pickel have been living in Habersham, SC, for 14 years. As a couple looking to perfect the work/life balance, Habersham has served as the perfect spot to live, work, and play. As Managing Director of the Seaside Institute in Seaside, Florida, a development started in the 80s with similar traditional principles to Habersham, Leslie and her husband, Brad knew they wanted to live on a Main Street, have their home upstairs and their office downstairs, and help a town grow.
This was in 2007. Leslie and Brad brought both of their backgrounds to Habersham to create their business: Seahaven Consulting.
The name, Seahaven Consulting, was a nod not only to their time in Seaside but also to The Truman Show with Jim Carrey, where the fictional town was called Seahaven. The whole movie was filled in Seaside, Florida.
Brad and Leslie moved here in August of 2007. The draw was two-fold: they wanted to be in Habersham but also wanted the water culture of Beaufort that they were used to from living in Florida. When they did some research to find out what traditional neighborhood developments were at the top of the list in the Southeast United States, Habersham always came to the top of the list. They visited for the first time in 2004 before moving in 2007. They live above their business right on Market Street.
Seahaven Consulting got its official start in October of 2007. Seahaven is in non-profit management consulting. They currently have four national non-profit clients: The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association, The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, The Urban Guild, and Illuman. Brad also offers retreats and workshops on the Enneagram, a personality typology system similar to the Myers-Briggs. With only Leslie and Brad behind the scenes in their business, they stay busy.
Leslie’s background is in education on smart growth communities, traditional town planning, and placemaking. Brad’s background is in Marine Science and Coastal Engineering with experience working for local governments and a Washington D.C. Government Affairs firm. Their business was built on the idea that many non-profits start out being run by volunteers. Eventually, these non-profits grow to the point of needing more people but not being able to hire a full-time staff. Seahaven Consulting fills that niche, serving as staff in relationship to a volunteer board. They are not full-time employees of any of the non-profits that they work for. Two of the non-profits that Leslie and Brad work with are coastal and water resource-based. One is based in architecture and urban design, and the fourth is a male spirituality-focused non-profit.
One of the biggest ways that Seahaven Consulting serves the Lowcountry community is by their work with the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, where Brad serves as executive director of the association. They are a national non-profit advocacy organization that works to secure funding to maintain the waterway all along the eastern seaboard. Brad has been serving in this area since 2012. They work with local governments, marinas, and more to ensure that they have a well-maintained and dredged waterway. This leads back to economic development in the area and is good for our military as well, delivering jet fuel from Jacksonville, Florida, through the waterway to the Beaufort Air Station.
Brad and Leslie volunteered for over a decade in Habersham, working on events in the Marketplace. Leslie was a founding member of the Habersham Merchants Council back in 2008, working with a very small volunteer board that eventually birthed the very well-known and popular Habersham Harvest Festival. It has always been important to Brad and Leslie to volunteer in Habersham and create the community that they wanted to live in.
Brad and Leslie will continue working with national non-profits, but it is important that they do that to serve their local community. Their company’s focus is to affect national policies that impact individuals.
Leslie hopes that people will realize that Habersham, as a neighborhood, is an extension of Beaufort and the principles of great design that Beaufort was founded on and that they complement one another. It is such a beautiful community, and they want people to come and enjoy it and everything that Market Street, in particular, has to offer.
“We could work anywhere,” Brad says. “All we need is a cell phone and a laptop. But we chose to move here in 2007, and we are not looking to go anywhere. The environment and the fabric of the community… it is an amazing opportunity. There’s nothing that requires us to be here, but everything calls us here. Beaufort is unparalleled.” We would have to agree with him on that.
