We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexis Walkenstein a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alexis, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I started my business to change the media culture in which we live. I began AWE PR so I could be more selective about what and who I represent. That meant I had to step out and begin a business and do something I’ve never done before. That was a bit scary but I’ve had help along the way from friends, peers and mentors who have inspired me toward this mission. I began my career in television news covering murders, fires, storms, sports and every sort of human tragedy. I always found myself looking for the story of human resilience and the shocking turn arounds in people’s lives that made people want to tune in to our station’s coverage. What is the point if the story ends in tragedy? For many in local news it’s run and gun and ambulance chasing and the “get” of the most tragic story. I was of course part of that but deep within me, I never wanted to leave our audience in a place of darkness. Was I lifting people up or dragging them down? So, to look for the pearl in the oyster, or a radical turn around, a miraculous story of overcoming in adversity – those type of stories became a challenging pursuit for me within my career. I believe those early days in TV news made me see the power of storytelling and the influence of media in general. Media has the power for great good and for great evil. Over time, and with some twists and turns in my career, I flipped from news gathering to a different type of storytelling through PR, publicity and even producing. When you can control the message and you find a story worth sharing, you can inspire entire audiences – be it families at home, young people, and those looking for the good, true and beautiful in the world. That became my goal and guiding star, to tell stories that are worthy – be it real or fictional characters that make us better people and that inspire us to do good in the world. I don’t want to do anything less than bring light and truth to the world through media.

Alexis, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I began my news career in Washington D.C. interning at WRC-TV (NBC) during my Washington semester in journalism at American University. I began my prestigious semester with strep throat and couldn’t even talk to position myself for a coveted D.C. internship. My peers were already set up with internships at the White House and with powerful senators, and I felt like I was so far behind. I had my heart set on NBC and when I finally pushed through sickness and my way through the door to the news execs, they told me they no longer took interns because a former student was hurt in a car crash on the way to a shoot. I begged and said no one would see me if they hired me for nights and weekends. So with that kind of grit, I convinced WRC that they needed me and I in turn gave up my DC weekends altogether and one night a week. After graduation from Regis College in Weston, MA I started out at WHDH-TV, the NBC station at the time and worked there for ten years with a stint in between at WCBS-TV in New York. I went from overnight assignment editor to assignment manager and while in New York I netted an Emmy Award for “Best Breaking News.” During my time in Boston I was lead field producer for the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church with Boston at the epicenter. After my last major field assignment covering the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, I was tapped to lead communications for the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach. There was still residue of scandal amid reform, so there were many days that were dominated by crisis PR. But the storyteller and evangelist in me, desired to, once again, not let darkness be the so-called end of the story. I began to see how film could connect within the Church and bring powerful messages of faith, hope and love to niche communities, like a faith audience. This vision began to unfold when my Bishop presented me with the film “Bella” and wanted our diocese to collaborate on a pro-life message and later for a documentary film project on Bishop Fulton Sheen who hosted the Emmy Award winning show “Life is Worth Living.” From my early days in TV and then later during my season as spokeswoman for the diocese, I began to evolve and saw the power of media to influence people for good, and in a more direct way than through a newscast. I was theatrical and grew up as a stage performer, but never really saw film or TV as a viable career. news seemed more stable, ha! But little by little and step by step, I was being led toward the film industry. After my time in Palm Beach I was VP of media and communications for two national PR agencies and through some new opportunities, I was led to Los Angeles where I began my own boutique PR agency. Why depend on others for the projects you want to pursue? If I ever owned a business I wanted a literal boutique, you know, a feminine brand that fulfilled my love for fashion, beauty. and friendship – I never aspired to own my own business in this way, but I was led every step of the way to really challenge myself to lead and not follow. It’s not always been easy, but the right projects always come and I have been blessed with incredible clients, team and collaborators. My business has taken on a life of its own – check out AWE. PR at BeInAWEPR.com. I’ve built the AWE PR brand on strategy, influence and publicity. We are highly creative, strategic and engaged with people our clients want to know and run with. Relationships and storytelling are at the heart of all we do and with my hard news background, crisis PR is a primary sweet spot for us as well. We are also surprisingly international and have represented clients from the Vatican, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and Poland. We represent movies, TV shows, personalties, and businesses. It’s always so inspiring to take the smallest seed and grow businesses and take them to the next level. It’s the builder in me that delights in seeing this type of growth. We are out of the ordinary and view our clients. as the. same: no two clients. are alike and it’s our gift to understand who our clients are and bring their greatness. into the world. We take flaws and turn those weaknesses into growth opportunities. We take resistance and make it work as an advantage to gain new territory and we take some of the most challenging goals and bring them to fruition.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Reputation and relationship. For the longest, I didn’t even have a website and was literally too busy for one. Part of me didn’t want to grow and thought I’d just keep it small. People don’t believe me when I say the work just keeps coming and coming and we don’t pitch business – it comes to us. I believe if you do good work, good clients will follow and I believe that comes down to reputation. If you kill it on one project, respect your clients and push for them and win, that word gets around. Most of our business is because of someone knows of us through a friend or a client said amazing things about our work.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I would say, I was working mostly for others – especially in the film world and it became challenging for me when I had so many creative ideas, so many goals and so much of an opinion on the work that I wanted to do and accept. It was important to me to align with people of character and skill.. More so character because I could teach people. With good character, you can create an incredibly talented team. So for me the big pivot was actually stepping out and starting my business. I was afraid. There is so much competition. I didn’t have anyone in my own family to teach me how to start a business, but I just kept putting one foot in front of another. And I got on my knees and prayed and said, “Lord, if you want me to do this, you have to send the business.” One project at a time, these huge opportunities kept coming. One movie project was called MULLY and that very movie inspired me to totally step out and bring something from nothing. If you want to do something great, you have to eradicate fear, fear of the unknown and just begin.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.BeInAWEpr.com
• Instagram: @lexiwalkenstein
• Twitter: @walkenstein

Image Credits
AWE PR