We recently connected with Lauren Stewart and have shared our conversation below.
Lauren, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
As I near my upcoming 35th birthday this December, the notion of creating a legacy continues to grow stronger in my mind.
While many people hope to leave a legacy through the lives of their children, or their philanthropic work resulting in their name being carved into a building, it is my greatest hope that my legacy will be something far less tangible, but much more impactful.
I want my legacy to be a feeling of hope, compassion and light. For people to remember me — and my work — as someone who made them feel seen, understood and heard.
In a world cluttered with material items, I want to be known as someone who made life a little more enjoyable and accepting for everyone I’m connected with.
Lauren, 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’m a PR, communications, branding and digital marketing professional with 13 years of strategic, management and tactic experiences in the sectors of higher education, nonprofits and foundations. More so, I also have seven years of major gift and annual fundraising experience in higher education.
Communicating and fundraising for good is what I’m passionate about– my entire career has centered around creating work that uplifts our communities.
As a PR strategist, I have a birds-eye view of how to effectively lead businesses to where they want to go, all through the great power of communications.
I like to tell folks that I started my career in the PR industry when I was only seven years-old. At the time, I was in a music class at my elementary school that had a notoriously mean teacher who was always very rude and cold to children. The teacher was so mean one day in class, I came home off the bus in tears. As my mother consoled me, I begged her to not make me attend the music class anymore. She explained to me that unfortunately there was nothing she could do, as it was a required part of the public school curriculum, which is set by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Not willing to be defeated by this, with typing help from my mother, I wrote a letter to the Virginia Governor trying to persuade him to change the curriculum so that the music class would no longer be mandatory. A couple of months passed, and I received a letter in the mail from the VA Governor. He said that while he couldn’t implement my request, he encouraged me to continue speaking up and out for the causes and issues I care about the most. While I didn’t even know what “PR” was at the time, it was a defining moment in my life where I first began to recognizing the great power of effective communications.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Staying focused on the work and not on what other people think. As long as you stay focused on doing good work, people will eventually notice and validate your credibility. And that builds a strong reputation.
If your’e only focused on what other people think, or just trying to prove that you’re “successful,” you’ll never get ahead.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
A big lesson I had to unlearn was to keep a low profile. As a woman, society teaches you from the moment you’re a child to be seen and not heard. And this toxic and sexist rhetoric only intensifies as you become more successful. As such, you stay quiet when you shouldn’t; you doubt your own ideas; and you end up dimming your own light, just to make others feel more comfortable. This has been an on-going unlearning process and one that will probably be a life-long learning lesson.
Contact Info:
- Website: stewart-media.com
- Instagram: @stewartmediapr