First PR Job: as Kmart's "Blue Light Special" girl (a promotional feature the company has recently rejuvenated) in high school. Asked to demonstrate, Ness Judy booms,
"attention Kmart shoppers! Ten percent off wigs in ladies' wear for the next ten minutes!"
Early PR jobs: After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin (River Falls), Judy landed a temporary position on Reagan's second inaugural committee. She
then spent five years on Capitol Hill handling communications for a Michigan senator. Eventually, she crossed the political fence to work for the American Bankers Association.
Specialty: Judy is a media relations guru who has gone where fewer and fewer PR pros have gone. On media tours three weeks out of every four at ABA, Judy hung around newsrooms
in the top 50 media markets nationwide.
Current Responsibilities: most important function is to guard the integrity of her employer, debt-relief nonprofit myvesta.org. "Because this organization is financial and
exists for our clients, our reputation is the most important thing," she says. Judy cranks out one press release per week that packages financial information reporters can use
verbatim -- and they do. For instance, a release about how to plan a vacation on a budget made it into USA Today . Hundreds of other daily papers picked up the story, too. Judy
sits in on executive meetings to give external perspective to the creation of internal programs and policies.
Media Relations Advice: There are four notes to hit when dealing with the press: fast, funny, accurate, and accessible. "If you break any of these fundamentals, except maybe
funny, you lose your credibility with a reporter. Judy has built up an extensive network of national press contacts, some of whom pass her along as a reliable source to their
peers.
Crisis Experience: Judy once handled one of the biggest media frenzies that can afflict a communications professional: revelations of marital infidelity by her Capitol Hill
boss. She has also intercepted angry protesters who stormed the ABA to demand a meeting with the organization's president. Soon after, Judy created an ABA consumer affairs
division to prevent tensions from reaching the boiling point.
Quote of note: "Don't throw mud because it just makes you lose ground."
Looking Ahead: myvesta.org was getting so much time in the limelight that the CEO had no time to do his job ("once we had to say no to CNN!"). Partly to mitigate time lost due
to visits to media companies for interviews, myvesta.org is building a full-fledged in-house TV studio. It will be used for media interviews and to produce VNRs. "This whole
studio costs less than producing one VNR," says Judy. "Now when CNN calls, all I have to do is have my boss walk down a flight of stairs."
Nancy Ness Judy
Public Relations Director
http://www.myvesta.org
Rockville, MD
301/762-5270