The Assistant Who Fixed 400 Brochures by Hand: Julie Bohata on FEW Atlanta, The Power of Yes & Saying Yes to Motherhood

Julie Bohata walked into 216 Coworking describing herself as the person who never wants to be in front of the camera, the executive assistant who has spent her whole career being the glue behind other people's spotlights. Three years ago, she said, she wouldn't have sat down for a conversation like this one at all. But between co-authoring a book, serving as senior ambassador for FEW Atlanta, and working alongside Buffy and Matt Payne of the Outer Circle Foundation, Julie has been stepping out of the background on purpose. What host Logan Lewis got was a conversation that moved from a teenage brush with death to a gala brochure emergency to the twelve-year conversation that finally made her a mom.

The Story She Forgot She Lived Through

Julie grew up in East Point, one of the few native Atlantans left, by her own count. Her teenage years, though, were rockier than her calm, put-together presence today would suggest. She experimented with drugs starting young, and one night someone laced what she was smoking. "I said, dude, I'm not feeling good," she recalled telling her boyfriend at the time. "He was like, it's fine, you'll be fine. You live right up the road, just walk home." She made it home and prayed, genuinely afraid she might die. Later came a brush with speed that left her awake for three days straight, only for her to learn that a friend who'd taken the same thing had died from it. "So whatever I took was the same thing she took," Julie said. "God intervened with me then as well." The most striking moment, though, came when Julie admitted she had contemplated suicide at eighteen and had completely blocked it from memory until she sat down to write her chapter for The Power of Yes years later. "I don't remember committing or thinking about committing suicide," she said. "I would never do that. So then I don't know if it came to me in a dream or something, but it did." She went into a room alone, prayed, and said the panic lifted the moment she said amen.

What FEW Actually Stands For

The episode title borrows an acronym Julie unpacked early on: FEW stands for the Fellowship of Extraordinary Women, and Julie is senior ambassador for its Atlanta chapter, working alongside chapter president Buffy Payne. "It's for women so that they can be compelled, be empowered," Julie explained. "We complete each other. We do not compete against each other." The group spans retirees to CEOs, offers certified keynote speaker courses, and runs its own publishing arm, FEW Publications, founded by Kimberly Joy. Locally, the chapter meets Friday mornings at 8:30 at the Paladin Chamber, with a Monday prayer call and a second in-person gathering at Hope Church in Dallas, and there's talk of adding a fourth-Friday meeting soon. "We just love helping other women," Julie said, "because it's a safe and sacred space where women can just be themselves and it's no judgment zone."

The Power of Yes, and the Friendship Behind It

Julie is a co-author of The Power of Yes, a collection of stories from eighteen women published through FEW, a book that hit number one on Amazon in its category. Her chapter, number five, tells the story of finally saying yes to having a child after twelve years of marriage. Chapter seventeen belongs to Buffy Payne, who Julie has known for almost 21 years, since their toddler sons met on a cul-de-sac before either woman realized they'd been pregnant at the same time. "Within the first reading of Buffy's book, within the first like two paragraphs, I put it down and texted her," Julie said, describing Buffy's own book, Cold. "I said, Buffy, what the hell, man, this is crazy."

The Executive Assistant Who Fixed 400 Brochures Overnight

Julie has been an executive assistant since she was eighteen, entirely self-taught, working her way from a state of Georgia secretarial job through a seven-year stint at another company and eventually into commercial real estate law, drafting lease redlines at an Atlanta firm. Now she works for Matt and Buffy Payne, supporting both Buffy's FEW Atlanta leadership and the Outer Circle Foundation, which supports veterans, first responders, and PTSD awareness. She told a story that captures why she's called "the glue" behind the operation: at the Outer Circle Foundation's first gala, she noticed the printed programs had a typo, the word "Circle" dropped entirely from "The Outer Circle Foundation." With roughly 400 folded, bound brochures already printed, Julie went home, typed a correction, cut out four hundred tiny stickers, and quietly fixed every single one without telling anyone, until Matt caught her mid-repair. "I didn't want to take credit for it," she said. "I just wanted to fix the problem."

Saying Yes to Ricky

The book's title comes directly from Julie's own story. Having grown up as the oldest child suddenly saddled with much younger half-siblings when her mother remarried, Julie swore off having kids of her own. Her husband Richard raised the subject nearly every year for twelve years before Julie finally took it to God in prayer. "God told me you're going to have a son," she said, citing Psalms 138 as the scripture tied to the decision. Six months later she was pregnant, and she didn't even realize it until an odd craving gave her away. "I grabbed a spoon of peanut butter and some junior mints," she said. Richard's reaction: "What is your problem? That's gross. You must be pregnant." Ricky is now 21, training in Chattahoochee Tech's aviation academy in Paulding County, already holding his avionics certification and working toward his airframe and powerplant license with a shot at a job at Delta waiting on the other side.

Listen to the Full Conversation

This recap only scratches the surface. Julie also runs through her go-to first-date questions, from a Lake House-loving movie pick to a dream music festival lineup of Motley Crue, Linkin Park, and Journey, plus a genuinely surprising confession about a brief first marriage she'd never shared publicly before this episode. If you want to connect with FEW Atlanta or the Outer Circle Foundation, Julie can be reached at julie@thefewwomen.com, or through thefewwomen.com and theoutercirclefoundation.org. Catch the full episode below.