It”™s not that Wendy Marx couldn”™t decide on a career. She could. It”™s just that one career seemed to open a door into another career, which opened another door, which opened another until, she thinks, she”™s settled into a career that pulls together bits and pieces of all the others into a virtual business in Trumbull. “I wanted to bring together these diverse careers and use all I”™ve learned in them so I can be more astute when working with clients,” she said of her Marx Communications Inc. boutique public relations agency.
Those careers, by the way, weren”™t things Marx just jumped into on a whim; she has three master”™s degrees that gave her a footing in each. “I”™m happy to show anyone any of the degrees,” she said with humor.
“I”™ve always been academically inclined,” so much so that her early ambition was to obtain a Ph.D. and teach English at the university level. Either that or become a lawyer. “My father was a lawyer, and I was thinking about emulating him.” But “somehow things never turn out quite the way you expect,” she said, and she chucked both the lawyering and university teaching paths, choosing instead, social work.
“I always loved psychology and really had a strong desire to help others, like a lot of young people do,” she said. “I realized the Ph.D. route was going to take many years, and I felt I wanted to do something a little more practical, where I felt I had a direct impact on people”™s lives. I thought as a social worker I”™d be able to do that.”
So after obtaining a bachelor”™s degree in English from Brandeis University, she followed her then husband to Philadelphia and earned a master”™s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. “Then my husband got a residency in a New York City hospital, and we moved there,” she said. “I got a job as a social worker at a geriatric facility in Riverdale,” staying there for five years until she decided social work was too draining emotionally. “I would get attached to people, and they would get worse. It”™s very hard to be dispassionate all the time as a social worker. And I felt I could take a lot of the knowledge I had learned and use it as a journalist.”
Fluid career changes
“I”™ve always enjoyed writing,” Marx said of her decision to switch careers from social work to journalism. “I thought at the time I would be able to write about some of the pressing issues affecting older people,” so she nailed down a fellowship to Columbia University to study housing problems the elderly poor face in New York City, walking away with a master”™s in journalism. “I thought I would be able to write about the elderly and become a crusader,” she said. Back then Woodward and Bernstein were being worshipped in the media as some sort of godlike superheroes. “Newspapers were in their heyday, and I decided I was going to be part of all that excitement.”
But “when you come out of school, you don”™t necessarily have that much choice,” Marx said. Instead of a crusading newspaper reporter, she wound up writing for an agribusiness newsletter at McGraw Hill, “covering the politics and economics of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” The job was fun, she said, but the startup publication folded after three months and she was out of work. She moved to eastern Connecticut to cover “the sleepy town of Ledyard” for the Norwich Bulletin until “I tired of the low pay,” she said. “I figured out that for what I was making, I could be making more flipping hamburgers at McDonald”™s. And deadline pressure doesn”™t help your writing.”
Marx perceived, however, that there was money to be made in journalism, but it wasn”™t in reporting. “I thought I”™d become an executive at a newspaper company,” she said, and went to the University of Michigan for her MBA. Armed with her latest sheepskin, she began looking for executive level jobs in newspapers, but “just couldn”™t find any, so I ended up going to work for AT&T” in Basking Ridge, N.J.
Virtual people
She was, she admits, “ahead of my time” as far as careers go. While her contemporaries were more apt to stay with one employer for a lifetime, she was hopscotching from career to career. “I think that today people do switch careers much more fluidly,” she said. But her fluidity served her well. At AT&T she was part of a small group that developed the Universal Card, staying with the unit until it moved to Florida and she decided to remain behind. She joined a GE-owned bank called Monogram Bank, working in the bank”™s credit card business in Stamford, where she was an assistant vice president.
While at Monogram, she said, “I was actually doing a little freelance writing for the Stamford Advocate and was networking with some Columbia people,” one of whom was freelancing for an IBM newsletter. “I realized there was an opportunity to do a lot of writing for companies because this was a time when companies were outsourcing,” she said. And because “I always wanted to have my own business, I realized that here was an opportunity to start up a business writing for companies in the area,” including GE, Champion, Fleet Bank, Pepsi Cola and IBM. It was 1993, and Marx Communications was born.
“At the same time I was writing, I started to get requests for help with public relations,” She said. While she was at AT&T, she did some PR and market research, so she tucked that into her portfolio, along with newsletter writing. But she was also doing quite a bit of technical writing for IBM, Information Week and Computer World magazines, “so I was writing about the Internet before a lot of people knew about it,” she said. “I”™ve always been fascinated with computers and technology.”
That fascination has helped her create her virtual business-to-business agency. “I”™ve assembled a number of virtual people working for me, a group of senior level, very experienced people who help provide high-level strategic counsel and implementation plans,” Marx said. If her virtual people were full-time in Trumbull, “the talent would be extraordinarily expensive, but I can have top-flight talent available and flexible.”
“It”™s a marvelous time to be in public relations,” she said. “For good or bad, I”™ve been where the action has been at the time ”“ newspapers, corporations and now public relations. In the past, you would have had to have a big building to have the sort of agency I have now. Today, you can have a virtual shop” that links clients with potential business worldwide.
In the past, she said, “people found out about you by reading a newspaper article. Now the first place they go is a search engine.” And while public relations agencies have been technologically phobic in the past, she said, “this Internet-driven world has given public relations the opportunity to have a major role in communicating with and responding to this worldwide conversation that is developing. With all these changes, I foresee a tremendous opportunity to grow my business.”
