Influential Woman · Education Integrated Communications and Design
Shelly Newman
Director of Marketing Communications/Senior Illustrator, NORTH SHORE CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
Sea Cliff, NY
Her Story
About Shelly
I've been working for the North Shore Schools for 20 years, hired right as I adopted my daughter, and I kind of combined my love of marketing with my love of children. I work directly for the superintendent doing all the traditional and digital marketing for 5 schools. Every single day I'm taking pictures, working with teachers and directors to promote our students, whether they're winning awards, having events, or learning. I go in and out of classrooms, awards ceremonies, and graduations. I do most of the photography and writing for the website at www.showschools.org, all the social media including graphic design and moving videos for our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, and all the traditional materials like newsletters, calendars, postcards, and budget materials. I'm a one-woman integrated marketing team. Prior to working in education, I worked in advertising and marketing in Manhattan at big agencies including Grey Advertising, Saatchi and Saatchi where I learned all of my integration and integrated marketing at the Roland Company division, and Publicis Advertising, working on big clients like Flintstaff and L'Oreal. I graduated from Northwestern in communications and went straight into these big advertising agencies, which was my grad school with hands-on learning.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Shelly
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think being able to combine what I love, which are children and marketing, and being able to market a school district, which is very unusual, for 20 years, and get our budgets passed and learn about the community. I do a lot of community outreach and a lot of working with the parent organizations. It's not just teachers. And the fact that I learned integrated marketing from such a young age in the business, and it all kind of comes together with my creativity mixing strategy and creativity, I think is what I thrive and love to do. So, it combines a lot of my passions - children and creativity.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I work with a lot of young high school students as a mentor, and I and my daughter, I would say follow your passion, follow your dreams. If your dream is to take pictures, take pictures. If your dream is to write articles and write, do that, and find a place that you could explore your creativity, and work hard and persevere and pursue your goals. I think being in education and being with kids and watching them thrive and find themselves and follow their path, I think it's hard in this day and age, as the market becomes harder and harder, and AI is upon us. But to follow their path and follow their passion. I've been lucky to do that, and not give up, and don't let anyone ever tell you you can't do something, because my career wasn't always in a school district, it was in much more traditional advertising agencies, but you never know where life is gonna take you.
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