WILLIAMS, Terrie (Michelle) 1954-

PERSONAL:

Female. Born May 12, 1954, in Mount Vernon, NY; daughter of Charles and Marie Williams. Education: Brandeis University, B.A. (cum laude), 1975; Columbia University, M.A., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Terrie Williams Agency, 1500 Broadway, Suite 502, New York, NY 10036. E-mail—info@terriewilliams.com.

CAREER:

New York Hospital, New York, NY, medical social worker, 1977-80; Black Filmmaker Foundation, program administrator, 1980-81; Black-owned Community Alliance, executive director, 1981-82; World Institute of Black Communications, executive director, 1982; Essence Communications, Inc., vice president and director of corporate communications, 1982-87; Terrie Williams Agency, owner, 1988—. Member, National Corporate Advisory Board, and American Heart Association communications committee.

MEMBER:

Brandeis University Alumni Association, Women in Communications, Stay Strong Foundation (founder).

AWARDS, HONORS:

D. Parke Gibson Award for Public Relations, Public Relations Society of America, 1981; Building Brick Award, New York Urban League, 1987; Entrepreneur of the Year, National Association of Market Developers, 1990; Matrix Award in Public Relations, Women in Communications, 1991.

WRITINGS:

(With Joe Cooney) The Personal Touch: What You Really Need to Succeed in Today's Fast-paced Business World, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Stay Strong: Simple Life Lessons for Teens, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2001.

A Plentiful Harvest: Creating Balance and Harmony through the Seven Living Virtues, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Entrepreneurship is in Terrie Williams' blood. When her father lost his trucking job, he and a partner started their own trucking firm. She also learned personal responsibility from both her parents. Her father had been working since his own father walked out on the family, and her mother had overcome the hardships of life as a sharecropper to earn an undergraduate and graduate degree at a time when most sharecroppers children couldn't finish high school. As an adult Williams has made a career of helping others reach their potential.

After earning a masters degree in social work, Williams went to work for New York Hospital, helping people struggling with terminal illnesses, but soon realized that hospital work wasn't really for her. After coming across an ad for a YMCA course in public relations, she signed up, and then volunteered at a local radio station to gain some media experience. Building on the contacts she made there, she went on to jobs as program director of the Black Filmmaker Foundation, executive director of the Black-owned Communications Agency, director of the World Institute of Black Communications, and then a PR job at the prestigious Essence Communications, before opening her own public relations agency in 1988.

Despite a distinct lack of experience in running such an agency, Williams used her engrained work ethic and attention to detail to lure two big clients, Eddie Murphy and Miles Davis. Since then, she has attracted stars like Janet Jackson and Sinbad, sports figures like Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and politicians like David Dinkins and Sharon Pratt Kelly to her agency, which focuses on providing honest advice to celebrities, primarily African American, in protecting their public image. That may include telling them things they don't want to hear, a strategy she calls the "Emperor's new clothes phenomenon." Williams's firm was recognized as one of the most important African-American-owned businesses in the country, and as a speaker she has often been called upon to address the obstacles facing minorities and women in the business world and the best means of overcoming those obstacles.

In The Personal Touch: What You Really Need to Succeed in Today's Fast-paced Business World, Williams draws on her own life experience to help aspiring business leaders succeed, offering everything from tips on how to remember people's names to advice on how to recognize other people's needs and build them into your business plan. More recently, she has published A Plentiful Harvest: Creating Balance and Harmony through the Seven Living Virtues. This book uses the seven virtues of Kwanzaa—calling, thrift, responsibility, community, love, spirituality, and creativity—to provide readers with a strategy for balancing out their work life with other commitments. "The material is clear and accessible," concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, November-December, 2002, Mondella S. Jones, review of A Plentiful Harvest: Creating Balance and Harmony through the SevenLiving Virtues, p. 48; July, 2001, Nicole M. Palmer, review of Stay Strong: Simple Life Lessons for Teens, p. 53.

Booklist, May 15, 2001, Linda Perkins, review of Stay Strong, p. 1742.

Publishers Weekly, October 14, 2002, review of A Plentiful Harvest, p. 75.

School Library Journal, June, 2001, Jana R. Fine, review of Stay Strong, p. 182.

ONLINE

Terrie Williams Agency Web site,http://www.terriewilliams.com (March 18, 2004).*