Margaret Wilesmith – My love of reading was apparent at an early age when my mother’s nightly exhortations to “turn off the light” were invariably met with “just let me finish this sentence…”, which actually meant the whole book.
I began my career as a copywriter for Sheraton Hotels and went on to become Group Creative Head at Saatchi & Saatchi, Bermuda where I enticed people into all manner of vacation fun and frivolity with my witty and captivating copy for American Airlines and the Bermuda Department of Tourism. In 1993 I moved to Palm Beach, FL where as Chief Creative Officer of Wilesmith Advertising & Design I continued to dazzle with advertising that made an endless cornucopia of products and services irresistible – sometimes irrationally so – to the consumerist masses. I must have done something right because my work has won over 300 awards that are now in storage somewhere. My better self is on the board of the Arts Creation Foundation For Children in Jacmel, Haiti, FL, a SCORE volunteer (Mentors to America’s Small Businesses), a Guardian ad Litem in training, and author of “Not Just for Fortune 500 Companies Anymore: The Importance of Branding for Non-Profits” published in the PR News Guide to Best Practices in Nonprofit Communications. My “What’s It all about, Alfie?” moment prompted me to earn my Masters of Science in Strategic Communications at Columbia University in New York City. I was their token senior citizen. I plan to go into the sunset teaching young communications aspirants what it took me 30 years to learn. (As a guest lecturer at Cal State U, I was called “wicked awesome!”)
On a Proustian note, my favorite past time is standing in drugstores reading magazines. My pet peeve is people who leave the supermarket cart in the parking lot. My motto is “Brevity is the soul of wit” although you wouldn’t know it from this bio. My favorite punctuation is the ellipsis…
