June 2016 Member Spotlight: Margaret Ritsch, APR

June 2016 Member Spotlight: Margaret Ritsch, APR

Name: Margaret Ritsch, APR

Job Title/Company: Director, Roxo, and instructor at TCU

College/Degree/Graduation Date: University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A. Journalism 1987. College of William and Mary, B.A. English, 1980

Hometown: Greenville, S.C.

Position within GFW PRSA (i/a): Member

Childhood ambition (what did you want to be when you grew up?): An actress, believe it or not!

Current livelihood (what you’re actually doing as a grown-up): I oversee a student advertising/public relations agency at TCU called Roxo. I also teach courses such as Strategic Communication Campaigns and Diversity and provide academic advising to a few dozen students.

First PR job: Straight out of college I got a job as an assistant advertising manager at a rapidly growing video-electronics company, Erols, in Northern Virginia. I established its first employee publication, which grew quickly in popularity and won the CEO’s direct involvement. I’d like to consider this my first PR job!

What you know now that you wish you’d known then: I was unaware that internal communications is an important subset of the public relations profession. I had majored in English at a liberal arts college, which offered no coursework in professional fields like public relations.

Best piece of advice you’ve ever received: Trust your gut.

Greatest professional or personal accomplishment: Building a wildly successful student advertising/public relations firm at TCU.

If you weren’t in PR, you’d be: A creative director at Droga5 in New York!

Desired legacy: To inspire young people to pursue not only a career in public relations, but also a way that they can contribute to the social good.

Why did you originally join PRSA: I had landed a job as the director of communications for a small company in Delaware, and realized I knew nothing about corporate communications! I owe my entire education in public relations to PRSA workshops, conferences and seminars.

Finally, tell us about your hometown and what makes it cool: I don’t really have a hometown. I was born in Greenville, S.C. but have no memories and we moved frequently during my childhood. I have lived longest in the Washington, D.C. area (11 years) and in Fort Worth (12 years). Fort Worth is much cooler than D.C.! To me, D.C. means traffic, a high-pressure work culture and too many people who believe they are very, very important. I absolutely love Fort Worth’s big sky, slower pace, lack of pretension, friendly people. This is now my hometown.