Douglas Ford grew up in Fayetteville, Georgia where his father was an orthodontist and his mother taught the special-needs class at church. Doug attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he let his hair down but still graduated with a B.A. in French in 1994. He worked many jobs, travelled many places, and met many people before attending Mercer Law School in Macon, Georgia, graduating there in 2005. Doug has greatly improved his Spanish with the help of his Colombian-born wife Ximena. They added Emma in 2010.