About Margie

Hi!

You might well be wondering who the heck I think I am to have a website with my name as the URL. As my blog categories reveal, there are a few key passions in my life.

My job

Currently, I am the Director of Marketing, B2B Client Services, at Clayman & Associates, which is located in Marietta, Ohio. My grandfather started our company back in 1954 and in October of 2013, our company was purchased by Alliance Industries, also headquartered in Marietta.

I wear a lot of hats in my position. I do a lot of copywriting and research, I run clients’ social media campaigns, I plan and place media, and I put together annual marketing plans for our clients. The unpredictable nature of marketing and the business world means that I always have to be on my toes, and attention to detail is essential. These days especially, if you are offering marketing services, you must be perfect, because increasingly, almost anyone can put together something that is “serviceable.”

Learning

Via my book reviews and many of my other posts, you will see that I have a great passion for learning. I of course love learning things that help me do my job better, but my most steadfast love affair has been with history. If it happened in the past, I’m interested in it. I earned my Masters in History from Kent State University and focused on the 19th century, even though my thesis was actually about the slave poet Phillis Wheatley, who lived during the American Revolution. I tend to weave my love of history into my posts.

I also love learning about the wider world in general. You will see these interests reflected in a lot of the books I choose to review here.

Awareness

Although I do not have achondroplasia, which is the most common kind of dwarfism, at 4’5 I am considered a Little Person. While I strive not to let this facet of my life define me, I do take seriously spreading the word about prejudice against anyone who is “different” – it is something I have attained a sensitivity to over the course of my life. I also try to bring awareness to other issues that I feel are important that don’t seem to be getting a lot of attention. These issues can be international or domestic. I try to at least put a word in for justice whenever I can.

Crafting

Finally, I love doing all kinds of crafts. My main hobbies are knitting, crocheting, and cross stitching. Most of the things I make go to charity. I have created a group that is based on Facebook called Homespun Helpers, and we pool our efforts so that we can cheer each other and and track how many items we as a group have made and donated over the course of the year. Watching this group grow over the last three years has been extremely rewarding.

Ultimately I want to learn quilting as well, but there is only so much storage space right now, and most of that is filled with yarn!

The following are some accomplishments I’m particularly proud of.

Fourth in State of Ohio, Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking, 1994 and 1995

National Qualifier, Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking, 1995

Girl Scout Gold Award Recipient, 1996

Phi Beta Kappa Junior Admission, 1999

Masters In Library And Information Science (Kent State University), 2000

Masters in History (Kent State University), 2003

Featured in Kikolani’s 125 Fearless Women Bloggers (November 2010)

Named one of Twitter’s Top 75 Badass Women by BitRebels.com (February 2011)

Featured as #followfriday by Gini Dietrich at spinsucks.com (July 2011)

Named as one of 40 most approachable A-Listers on Twitter by Business2Community.com (July 2011)

Featured in top 10 Most Influential in Customer Service on Twitter by MindTouch (August 2011)

I think that’s enough about me. Now, how about you?