So Susan the way we normally start these is, can you go back and tell us the tale of how you started at Walsworth? How did that whole journey start?

Sure. It was because I got a job filling in for (Walsworth Marketing Specialist) Meredith Rosenbaum while she was out on maternity leave in 2005. Meredith was friends with (my husband’s) sister. That’s how I even knew about the position. It was one of those positions that wasn’t even posted. I just happened to know about it and I was looking for a job.

Was it intended to be a temporary thing?

It was temporary. But I also knew that Meredith’s husband was studying for his pharmacy exam and he had a job waiting for him if he passed. And with that job lined up, Meredith wouldn’t need to come back to work and could stay home and raise their two sons. So no pressure on him at all whatsoever. I used to joke that I would make him flashcards. (laughs)

But he passed and she didn’t come back. That kid is now 21. That’s how long it’s been.

20-plus years. So what was your original title?

My first title was SalesXpress Project Manager. It was that specific. At that point, Meredith had done some other things in marketing, but then the SalesXpress program grew and there needed to be a manager for it.

Then when SalesXpress went away, I became a Marketing Specialist. Then I was named a Marketing Supervisor, and Craig Bonnett and Kit Department reported to me. Then became Commercial Marketing Manager. 

You’ve worked on a lot of different projects in marketing and been responsible for a lot of different things.

Right, so SalesXpress was the program schools could use to sell books to parents. It was the precursor to yearbookforever.com. It was before we had an online sales website. We sent mailings home to parents and we had a call center and we had a data entry center that would take the written order forms and keystroke them in. I would then take all of that data and provide it to the plant in Marceline.

And then I was doing all kinds of various projects on the yearbook marketing team like manage the JEA booth twice a year. And Adviser Academy when it used to be an in-person event. And I would manage projects like the Planning Kit and Photo Contest.

How many years now has it been that you’ve been working in commercial?

It was February of 2020, right before the world closed. That was a challenge because I moved over to commercial and it was like learning a whole different business, a whole different company. Because you had completely separate sales managers and sales team and at the time three other plants to learn, as well as learn all about commercial printing, like our capabilities for the whole platform.

I learned so much more about the whole company that way, because previously I just was focused on Marceline. And then I had to learn about the rest of the company.

That’s a vantage point that not everyone gets, but you feel like it’s helped you quite a bit?

Absolutely! From my perspective, it gave me a much bigger view of Walsworth. I saw the full scope of how big we are. Before, in yearbook, you’re very focused on one specific area of the company and one specific area of the business. With commercial, it’s open to so much more opportunity.

And you always kind of heard about it, anecdotally, that the commercial business came about to fill in during the off-season for yearbook. So, business wise, there’s a lot of things that yearbook allows us to do on commercial, like all of the special applications we can do to covers and hardcover books, which sets us apart. Because not all of our commercial competitors have the same level of capabilities. 

When you meet people and explain to them what you do, how do you describe your job?

Like total random stranger on the street? I just say I’m the marketing manager for a commercial printing company. We make books, magazines and catalogs. The good slash bad thing about saying you’re a marketing manager is that people already think they have an idea of what that means. And usually they don’t press any further and ask, well, so what exactly is it that you do? So, I don’t really go into much more detail than that. 

But if they do. I would say that I work with a small but mighty team to build awareness of who Walsworth is and the printing partnerships we offer our commercial customers. We target certain segments of businesses that fit the profile, the customers that stay with us the longest. It’s more complex than that at its core, but it’s basically what we do here.

Let’s talk about your career before Walsworth. I know you worked in the agency world, and I know you worked in sales for a while.

Okay, so the job that brought me to Kansas City from Texas – I’m originally from Texas – was a job in sales. I was 22 and had just graduated from the University of Texas with a business degree in marketing, so I looked for a job in marketing but landed a job in sales. This was pre-internet. The internet existed, but you were still going and getting newspapers and looking at classified ads. This was 1997.

I got a job offer for Hillshire Farm. You know, the smoked sausage. But they said you are going to have to relocate to either Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, or Kansas City. And I said, “Well putting them in order of my preference, I would say Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City.” And I got my fourth choice. (laughs)

But it moved me out of Texas and the only reason I didn’t say Kansas City is I just didn’t know anything about it. And I didn’t know a single person when I moved here. So that was interesting to go from a university setting, living on a campus of 50,000 people into living alone in an apartment and I didn’t know a single person and there was no automatic way of meeting people. I had to figure out how to meet people. Because I worked out of my apartment. My sales territory was all of Kansas, half of Missouri, half of Arkansas and all of Oklahoma.

How long did that job last?

I was in sales for three and a half years and then moved into an ad agency. I worked for a couple of ad agencies. At one of those our client was the Missouri Division of Tourism. That’s why I know a lot about Missouri. Because we got to travel all over, right? Not just got to, but we had to by contract actually load into a minivan and travel the state and see all the sites and get wined and dined, which was cool. At the second ad agency I worked for I worked on the accounts for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and Raytheon.

You’ve been here with Walsworth for 20+ years now and found a home, so what do you view as this company’s strengths that have allowed it to say in business for going on 90 years?

It’s sounds trite, but it’s the people. Really, you become lifelong friends with the people who work here. Walsworth attracts and creates lifelong friends who get to spend sometimes decades working side by side. I think that’s what the real magic is.

I was just literally telling (a co-worker) yesterday as she’s wondering where her next step is going to be with the company, “number one, you don’t know because, you’ll talk to anybody who’s been around here long enough and they’ve worked in several roles and moved around in different spots and there’s things that you can’t even perceive of how the department or the company is going to change with as we change with time.” But, really, I think the magic is with the people that work here. 

This can be specific to marketing, or this can be regarding the company as a whole, but how do you see the future right now and what do we need to do to get better and grow?  

Well for the company, I think we are on the right path right now. We’re working on breaking down those silos between the different departments. We’re pulling people into the same room that definitely have never sat in the same room together and talking about the issues that each one has and trying to find processes and develop processes that may not even exist that work for everybody.

And I have been in on more than my fair share of those at this point. And it is awesome how it works. Because even leaving the room with a kinder perspective for that other person and understanding that you’re all working towards the same goal and that you’re all in this together and you’re trying to work this out, those meetings have been really amazing.

And then the success will be what we learn from that and then building towards filling in those gaps so that we can have a streamlined process through all of our locations.

That’s a nice transition to another question I wanted to ask. As a manager who has been responsible for hiring decisions, when you meet and interact with younger generations, do you think the world of print and printed materials still resonate with them?

I think the tactile experience of print does. I think there’s so much exhaustion from all the digital noise out there. The way to break through that will be the tactile experience of print.

And I think with younger generations, if you start to point out to them how much print actually still exists, like if you point to signage and course materials and things like that, and how there’s so much print all around them that they may take for granted, they get it.

I think I’ve had this conversation three times with people recently, but back in our day, it was important to get a college degree. That was the way that I was raised, that you graduated high school, then the next thing is, you go to college and then you graduate, then you get a job.

I think with the onset of AI, the trades are going to become more important. And within trade, I would put manufacturing near the top. There’s a lot of opportunities in the manufacturing world to be a lifelong job and a good career for people. And I would say that the amount of robotics that we’re putting into our facilities is the type of thing that’s going to resonate with the younger generation who have grown up with video games.

Let’s talk about life outside of work. What are your interests?

I could probably boil down most of what I do outside of work into a love for gathering people. I like to make plans and bring people together. Network people amongst themselves. I don’t have kids, so I feel like my legacy will be the connections I’ve helped create between people who may not have otherwise met.  

I love to host parties. I have a dinner club that we’re now in our 12th year of getting together once a month and checking out new restaurants.

I have an old house that’s 101 years old, so it is full of “character” everywhere you look, which is code for saying there’s stuff that needs to be done to it everywhere you look. (laughs) But I think it represents me well. My friends call it a community center. They like that my house is the place where people can gather. So it worked out really nice.

Like you mentioned earlier, you’re originally from Texas. Grew up in Texas, right? Is any of your family still in Texas?

No, none of my family is in Texas anymore. They’ve all weirdly gravitated to Clarksville, Tennessee.  

But yeah, I grew up in Texas in a small town named El Campo. Home of the Fighting Ricebirds. And my family’s really tiny. Like, I can count my immediate family on two hands. So that’s another reason why I’m so connected with people at Walsworth because they basically have become my family.

And you used to be a softball player?

I used to play all kinds of sports. I went to the University of Texas and played on the handball team there. I even taught it. You may not realize that you are talking to a 1996 collegiate women’s handball champion. (laughs)

No, I did not realize that.

Yeah, there was a national tournament in Cincinnati that year. And I won my bracket, which is not to say I was the overall champion, but I was the champion of my bracket, which was like the B or C bracket.

And growing up, I played volleyball, basketball, softball, too. So yeah, sports was a big thing. I played softball for 35 years because I started at nine and it’s my true sports love. But I retired a few years ago. I pitched and my reflexes were not what they used to be.

What’s one thing, or an interesting fact, about you that most people would not know?

I think most people wouldn’t know that I’m an advanced certified scuba diver.

When was the last time you went on a scuba diving trip?

I haven’t gone on one that was specifically a scuba diving trip in a long time. But the last time I went scuba diving was in 2020 in the Cayman Islands.

Along those lines, what’s the best vacation you ever took?

Well, Spain. A trip I just got back from. It was my first time to Europe. It was just such a cool experience. I went for the eclipse, on the line of totality and had perfect weather with clear skies. I got to see it perfectly on a hill overlooking where the last scene of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was filmed, that cemetery scene. I was part of a small tour of seven people and we picnicked and then laid on our backs and watched the peak of the Perseids’ Meteor shower, with shooting stars in all directions. I mean, it was just epic.

But the second probably would be my trip to China in 2018. And that was just experiencing a completely different place. The culture, the language, the food. The history, where you were looking at stuff that was from 200 BC. It was just really eye-opening for me.

Do you have a favorite book?

I am good friends with a weird amount of librarians. And so for me to say that I don’t ever read books is kind of embarrassing. But my favorite is probably Helter Skelter, that book that was about the Manson murders. In college, I saw the author of that book speak. He was one of the prosecutors of that case. That was interesting.

What’s your favorite movie or TV show?

Do you know the movie Harold and Maude? It’s this movie from the early 70s about this guy who is 18 and rich and lives in a mansion and his parents are trying to get him married off. And he continuously fakes his own death and his mother is just over it.

It’s funny because it’s that dark humor or whatever. He starts going to funerals for people he didn’t know. And he starts to notice this old lady that used to also go to these funerals and they start hanging out.

And they basically fall in love and the interesting thing about it is that he’s 18 and she’s 79. And that’s the whole point of the movie is she’s embracing the last parts of her life and she’s going all in and she’s teaching them just to embrace life.

Do you have a favorite meal or type of food?

There’s no way I could pick it. There’s no way. I like trying all kinds of different food. Like an unusual amount.  

What if you were to do the whole “last meal” thing?

All right, the answer that I’ve given to that question since high school would be a T-bone steak and a baked potato.

If you had a personalized coffee mug, what would it say on it?

“Tell your cat, I said, pspsps.” I’m a cat person and have two.  

Do you have a favorite memory of your time at Walsworth or maybe an accomplishment that you’re particularly proud of?

There’s no way that I can narrow it down to a favorite memory because there’s 21 years of memories. Really, really great memories. But I would say that I’m personally very proud of the fact that I worked 15 years on the yearbook side and then moved over to the commercial side because that has broadened my understanding of how the company works, and it’s become much bigger to me.

I became more invested because it wasn’t just focused in on one side of the business. When I was in the yearbook side, I didn’t really realize how narrow we were looking when we were just talking about yearbook, while there is so much more to this company. And specifically, I didn’t realize how good we are at printing until I moved over to commercial and went to the GraphEx Awards for the first time. I cried when we won some of the big awards of the night because… we’ve always given the glory on the yearbook side to our customers and their staffs, and rightfully so for the content, for sure. But the actual printing that we do is so high quality that those schools would not be winning those awards if the books were printed poorly. So I think it gave me just a broader appreciation for Walsworth and where we fit into the printing industry. It’s no surprise to me now that we are ranked so high in our industry. We are the 5^th largest book manufacturer, 3^rd largest in magazines and 4^th largest in catalogs. I’m very proud of that.

But it was really working both sides that gave me the ability to kind of broadly see what direction that we’re heading. And I believe that there has never been a better time to work here.