On May 1, 1986, I took a risk and started Golden Loder Associates, now GLA Communications. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary today, I am pausing to reflect on what we have accomplished and the road taken to reach this milestone. I am so very grateful for the success we have achieved and to the people who have helped us along the way. Our first client was RCA, whose PR efforts were led by the late Frank McCann and Judy Lee Fleming who put their faith in me. I will always credit these two wonderful friends with helping me get started. The GLA team has been incredibly fortunate to work with amazing clients such as the Consumer Technology Association, CES, Philips, and Panasonic among others. Over the years we have helped launch some of today’s most successful products including HDTV, DVD, DIRECTV, Dish’s Hopper and 4K UHD TV.
I have been so fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with great PR people and reporters — too many to name here, but you know who you are. I am honored to be on the Executive Committee for PRSA’s Counselor’s Academy where I get to interact with and learn from incredibly smart agency owners and leaders. So many people have helped me and the agency get to this day. But special thank you to my family and friends and to Scott Toussaint for his guidance through the good and tough times and for sticking with me. And I am forever grateful to the two most important people in my life – my husband Murray Slovick for his love and support, for pushing me to be smarter and for showing me the world and my daughter Amanda Loder who has been at my side for 26 of these years, who understood the importance of my being a working mom, inspired me to be better every day and has given me the biggest compliment by choosing PR for her career.
