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Executive of the Month


Terrie Williams
CEO The Terrie Williams Agency

 

She is a social worker by training. She is a public relations professional by design. She is a published author, lecturer, deal maker, community activist.

 

Terrie opened The Terrie Williams Agency in 1988 with superstar Eddie Murphy and jazz legend Miles Davis as her first clients. Today the Agency is considered one of the country's premiere public relations and communications firms and specializes in public relations, corporate affairs, community relations, marketing, corporate diversity and special events management. The Agency has handled such clients as Time Warner, Inc., AT&T, HBO, Revlon, Scholastic, Inc., Schieffelin & Someset Co. (distributors of Moet & Chandon Champagne and Hennessy Cognac), Essence Communications, Inc., renowned attorney Johnnie Cochran, talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael, Janet Jackson, and civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton.

 

In September 1994, Warner Books published Williams' The Personal Touch: What You Really Need to Succeed in Today's Fast-Paced Business World. The best-selling book on developing business practices in now in paperback and includes a foreword by Bill Cosby and a preface by Jonathan M. Tisch, the president and CEO of Loews Hotels. The Personal Touch has been used as a guide at business workshops, lectures and corporate success courses given across the country.

 

Terrie is currently working on a version of The Personal Touch for teenagers entitled Please & Thank You & Other Life Lessons for Teens that will be published by Scholastic, Inc. in August 2000. She is also writing an inspirational self-help tome called A Plentiful Harvest: Creating Balance and Harmony Through The Seven Living Virtues, due out in 2001 by Warner Books.

 

Williams is one of the country's most highly sought-after speakers, and has shared her own brand of success and personal development strategies with numerous Fortune 500 companies, New York University Continuing Education Program, The New School for Social Research. The National Football League, The National Basketball Association and The National Hockey League. A licensed social worker, Williams also counsels professional athletes, at-risk youth and non-profit organizations that work with young adults and children. She also devotes good portion of her professional life to assisting individuals who want to pursue a career in public relations and communications.

 

Williams' success story has been featured in numerous publications including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Crain's New York Business, The New York Daily News and People, Essence and Adweek magazines. Among the numerous awards and honors she has received include: The New York Women in Communications Matrix Award in Public Relation (she was the first and only woman of color to be so honored in the 30-year history of the award): the PRSA New York Chapter's Phillip Dorf Mentoring Award; and The Citizen's Committee for New York Marietta Tree Award for Public Service.

 

In 1996, Terrie was the first person of color honored with the Vernon C. Schranz Distinguished Lectureship at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Established in 1979, the Lectureship is recognized as one of the most preeminent in public relations. The lecture is re-printed in leading public relations journals and used in public relations classrooms on a global basis.

 

In 1998, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Terrie Williams Agency, Terrie donated her collection of business and personal papers to Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. The donation was the center's first gift of material specific to the public relations field. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center is the world's largest, most comprehensive repository of information and materials about and by people of African descent, housing works by such legendary figures as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, W.E.D. Dubois, Alice Walker, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

 

In September 2000, Terrie was recruited by People magazine and American Online to be a part of "The Digital Heroes Campaign," an innovative new program designed to expand the concept of mentoring to uner-served young people via the internet. Terrie joins more than 100 participating personalities -- such as Gen. Colin Powell, Gregory Hines, Michael J. Fox, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Russell Simmons and Martha Stewart - in the first e-mentoring program to involve such a high-profile group of mentors. The program gives Terrie and the other mentors the opportunity to share their insight and life experiences with young people who can most benefit by their support.




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