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The Voice of Business,
Industry & the Professions Since 1942
North Carolina's largest
business group proudly serves as the state chamber of commerce
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November 2004 Executive Profile
Energy
to Learn
Linda
Staunch launched two new careers
by working hard and believing in herself
By Kim C. Brafford
If
Hollywood were to chronicle the life of New Bern public relations expert
Linda Staunch, the Energizer Bunny, Indiana Jones and Superwoman all
would have to be cast just to portray the petite force behind Linda
Staunch & Associates.
Staunch’s boundless energy, I-can-do-anything attitude and adventurous
approach to life and business catapulted her through the glass ceiling
into a successful career at the top of her field, one that was
traditionally open only to men when she began.
In 1967, when Staunch graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, public relations
was not a college major — and wouldn’t become one at the university
until 1990. “It was not even a consideration,” Staunch, 59, says.
“When I went to school, you majored in education, nursing or you were
a secretary. Those were pretty much your options.”
So Staunch majored in education, landing a job as a first-grade teacher
in Atlanta just after graduation. Thus, her path to the presidency of
her own public relations agency began in a classroom, where her
“clients” finger-painted and drank Kool-Aid.
While in Atlanta, she met Dick Staunch, who was attracted to the pretty
young woman from Pollocksville, N.C., with a giant smile and ocean blue
eyes. Dick was 26 and instantly smitten. “I had good friends who asked
me what I did that weekend, and I told them I had met the girl I was
going to marry,” he says.
The Staunches, who have been together for 36 years, had Ashlea, their
first of three daughters, while in Atlanta. But grandparents and a
family business beckoned from New Bern, and the Staunches moved there to
be closer to both.
Linda’s father owned Jenkins Gas Co. and Dick went to work for his
father-in-law. It wasn’t long after their move that Linda was asked to
start a kindergarten at a private school. During those teaching years,
she gave birth to twins Austin and Andrea and earned her master’s
degree in education from East Carolina University. Her future seemed
set, but it was all about to change.
In 1983, Craven Regional Medical Center was experiencing internal
problems. The hospital’s director of public relations had left the
newly formed department, and the hospital needed a replacement —
someone with people skills who was connected to the community. Staunch
was teaching at a community college when a friend suggested she go for
an interview. “I was not sure I wanted to work full-time,” Staunch
says. “I had no medical background or public relations background. But
I was intrigued.”
The hospital was equally as intrigued with Staunch. Her intelligence,
charm and deep roots in the community helped land her the job — that
despite a lack of experience, and in a male-dominated field, no less.
“I started working ... at a time when women my age were not working
full time,” she says. “A lot of my friends weren’t working full
time. It was a time when people stayed home with their children and
their families.”
The learning curve was steep. “Ignorance is bliss,” she says. “I
didn’t know how much I had to learn until after I had already gotten
there.” To learn all that she could, she joined national professional
societies. She absorbed information like a sponge. She spent time
listening to patients’ and families’ problems as there was no
chaplaincy program in place at the time. Twelve years and many accolades
later, she left the hospital as vice president of public relations,
marketing and development to start Linda Staunch & Associates.
“I was age 50 at that time and I thought, ‘I’m age 50 and women
after age 50 are not very marketable,’“ Staunch says. “I thought
there was not another job that was equal in visibility or challenge to
what I was leaving, and so I figured I had to create it.”
With support from her family, she launched her downtown New Bern firm.
“It was natural for her,” says Staunch’s only sibling, her sister
Carol Mattocks. “She’s so very good at meeting people.”
Starting anew, Staunch did not have the resources that she had had at
the hospital. But after 25 years in New Bern, she did have her
reputation. “I started (the company) with my name because that’s
what I had in this community — name recognition,” she says. “I was
lucky enough to land a couple of key clients right from the beginning
that I knew from my hospital experience, and I kept the hospital as a
client until my replacement was hired.”
Staunch decided to make her company a broad-based public relations firm
that included media and community relations, advertising, marketing and
event planning. And she would coordinate it all herself.
“I went right straight from a very large organization where I was
resource rich to being on my own as a consultant and doing it all,”
Staunch says. “It was quite an adjustment. (But) I am a solo
practitioner by choice. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to hire, but I
don’t want to be a big firm. I want to be who I am. I don’t want to
get away from doing what I like to do and become a manager of other
people doing what I like to do.” Instead, she contracts with others
who provide services that complement her own so that her company can
offer an array of options to its clients.
One such client is Pepsi, which has hired Staunch to coordinate the
Pepsi America’s Sail 2006 in Beaufort, an event that’s expected to
draw 150,000 people. The cola maker hired her because it was pleased
with the job she did in 1998 planning a public celebration of the 100th
anniversary of Pepsi, which was born in New Bern. Tom Barnes, vice
president of marketing for Carolina Pepsi Bottlers, says Staunch’s
work blew him away. “She was outstanding,” Barnes says. “She’s
familiar with the people in the town, she’s familiar with the
businesses, she has a great relationship with all of them. If you want
something done, Linda is the kind of person to go to. She is the most
dynamic person I think I’ve ever met. Her ability to get the job done
is just unsurpassed.”
Getting things done is indeed Staunch’s specialty, and she prefers to
do them before crises erupt rather than after. “There’s a difference
between crisis management and issues management,” she says. “If you
manage issues well, you avert a crisis.” For example, most media leaks
about something awry in a business come from the inside. If a business
knows and cares what its employees are thinking, it’s likely to be
able to address an issue before a crisis occurs.
Still, some people don’t understand public relations, Staunch says.
She offers this anecdote she heard years ago: “Suppose that the circus
was coming to town, and you were supposed to let everybody know about
it. If you put up signs on posts, that’s advertising. If you talk the
owner of the circus into getting the elephants to march down Main Street
for a parade, that’s promotion. If while the elephants are marching
down Main Street, they knock over and smash all of the neighbors’
newly planted flower pots, that’s publicity. And if the mayor smiles,
that’s public relations.”
Sometimes it’s difficult
to believe Staunch doesn’t have super human powers, given her
schedule. She serves on a dozen boards, including NCCBI’s small
business advisory board, of which she is vice chair. She gives lectures
on media relations. She writes a column for a community newsletter and
is host of her own TV show, “Around Town with Linda Staunch.”
“I was approached by the owner of the local cable station (C-TV 10),
who said he’d like to have some local programming and would I be
interested,” Staunch explains. “I thought it would be really fun to
showcase our community and what’s going on.” The show, which airs
monthly, has been on the air in Craven County for six years. Last year,
it expanded to seven other counties on Fox TV. The unscripted show runs
monthly and requires about one full day of Staunch’s time to conceive
a topic and conduct interviews. It’s time she thoroughly enjoys.
“The television show
gives me a chance to learn about things I’ve wanted to learn about,”
Staunch says. She has seen filmmaking in Wilmington, a hot air balloon
rally in Stateseville and has interviewed the rich and famous, including
Steve Forbes, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Bill Friday and Nicholas Sparks. “I
have had quite a few real celebrities, along with regular people who are
celebrities in their own right,” she says. “I’ve learned from
them. To come in and talk with people and listen to them and find out
what they did and how they did something — that’s just fascinating
to me.”
Staunch’s love of people is vital to her success. And her personal
climb to the top of her field has marked several professional milestones
for working women.
“I hope that I have been a fairly good model along this time for women
in business,” says Staunch. “I didn’t try to come out being the
first doing so and so. It wasn’t my goal to be the first female in
administration in the hospital, but I sat down in administrative council
as the only female for a long, long time. And I wanted to make sure I
represented the other women in my organization in a professional,
dignified manner.”
Perhaps the only thing Staunch can’t do as well is say no. “It’s
not something I’ve mastered,” she says laughing. “I believe you
need to choose to do the things that you’re passionate about. I’m
probably passionate about too many things.”
Drop by Staunch’s
office, and you’ll see where the main passions of her life — career
and family — come together. Sprinkled around Staunch’s office are
memories — photos of her daughters’ weddings, a trip to Peru, of
Staunch swimming with a dolphin in the Bahamas last Christmas.
When her daughters were little, Staunch was an involved mother, writing
stories she read to them at bedtime, participating in their school
activities, making Halloween costumes.
“I taught my daughters that you can do anything if you want to,”
Staunch says. “If you’re willing to work hard at it and dream and
have vision, you can do anything you want. I really believe that. My
parents instilled that in me.”
Her conviction paid off. “I would very much attribute a positive self
esteem to her and my father,” says daughter Andrea Green, 31, a
publications coordinator for an international teaching journal. “She
absolutely charges full force with anything that she wants and she
always gets it. It’s not by any means of manipulation ... or anything
other than just being capable and talented and driven.”
Daughter Austin Staunch, 31, who lives in California, spends half of her
year as a whitewater rafting guide and the other half on a snow ski
patrol. She appreciates her mother’s faith in her choices. “The
nicest thing about mom is that she never tries to make me be anything
that I’m not,” Austin says. “She kind of likes the fact that her
daughters are into different things.”
Staunch’s oldest daughter, Ashlea Humphries, 35, is a licensed
clinical social worker and stay-at-home mom. She says her mother’s
career change taught her that there doesn’t have to be a set path.
“There’s flexibility to go with what makes the most sense at the
moment,” she says.
Staunch taught her daughters they could do anything because that’s
what her parents instilled in her. Staunch was born and raised in
Pollocksville, a social little town of about 250 people in Jones County.
Her father, John D. Jenkins, was an entrepreneur who owned a furniture
company with his brother before branching out on his own to start
Jenkins Gas Co. in 1953. “Not having sons, he spent his time with
daughters, and so he taught us sports and an appreciation of sports, and
probably an appreciation of business and a wonderful outlook on life,”
Staunch says.
Staunch’s father was an active Rotarian. Later, Staunch not only
became the first female Rotarian in the community, but the
organization’s first female president.
John Jenkins died about 25 years ago, but under the leadership of his
sons-in-law, the company he founded grew into the state’s largest
independently owned propane gas company, serving more than 35,000
customers.
Linda was a shy child, her sister Carol remembers, but adds with a
chuckle, “I don’t think that lasted very long.” The family spent
its summers on the Bogue Sound on the Intracoastal Waterway, a tradition
she and Dick continued with their daughters. “We were all water rats
when the girls were born,” Dick says. “We water-skied, we swam, we
boated. We spent a lot of time on the coast.”
Fifteen years ago, the Staunches bought a house at Atlantic Beach, where
they live from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Linda says the 45-minute
commute to work is worth it. “sometimes
you really have to get away, and crossing that bridge, for me, is my
getaway. I’m a beach girl and being able to go and walk on the beach
and swim in the ocean and contemplate, it’s real relaxing for me; it
gives me my time away from the office.”
Of course, her relaxation doesn’t come at a sacrifice for clients.
“Linda’s really good at setting her own priorities,” Dick says.
“She keeps her clients first in line and she makes everything else
work toward that. We’re all proud of her.”
Striking a balance between work and family is something Staunch has
nearly perfected in her 20 years of public relations work. But it
hasn’t come without work. “Juggling family and career is a real
challenge,” Staunch says.”I think—early in my career—I was
trying to prove that I could be the best wife, mother, family person,
the best friend and the best professional that I could be.
“It will kill you,” she says matter of factly. “One day someone
looked at me and said, ‘Linda, it’s time to retire the cape.’ I
realize that I cannot do it all, but I do believe that if you try real
hard you can do a pretty good job at what you need to do.”
Fittingly, Staunch’s advice for newcomers to her field reads like the
poem by Robert Fulgham that’s displayed on posters everywhere titled
“All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” She
says:
Believe in yourself.
Learn everything you can learn; be very cutting edge.
Listen.
Look at your own image and the image that you project and what you want
others to see. What other people say about you is more important that
what you say about yourself.
Don’t be afraid to try.
Learn from your mistakes.
Go out there and do it.
There is still so much Staunch wants to do. Her ultimate goal is to
write a novel.
“A dream of mine would be to take a month off to go somewhere and just
read and write,” she says. After the death of her mother, Virginia,
last year, she has also considered writing a book on the agony of losing
a parent. But for now, her daily writing at work takes priority. And
it’s something she hopes to keep doing for a long time. “I will
never retire,” Staunch says. “Never. I just may start doing some
different things.”
Her husband hopes they can travel more. They’ve seen much of Europe,
but there are many other places to go.
“Linda Staunch & Associates can go as long as Linda Staunch
can,” she says. “If I decide I need to change it and tweak it a
little bit and slow down and travel more -- then I may slow down from
doing some things and pick up some others. Right now, my plate is
full.”
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