Globetrotting to Empower Women

Written by Carol Carter Friday, November 04 2011

Snapshot: Mary Schnack, president, Mary Schnack & Associates
As president of the public relations firm Mary Schnack & Associates, Mary Schnack gives speeches and conducts communications training worldwide, helping people and businesses let their voices be heard. She conducts training for The Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women through its Peace Through Business Program.

Schnack recently created a partnership in Nairobi, Kenya, to do communications training in Africa, and she formed Asia Business Connect to assist businesses in that region. She launched Up from the Dust to sell items made by women in countries including China, Afghanistan, Egypt, Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana.

Schnack has won awards for her writing and public relations work from the Associated Press, International Association of Business Communications, Public Relations Society of America, and the Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Association. This year, she won the “Gutsy Gals Inspire Me” award from an independent media content company of the same name.

She is on the board of The International Alliance for Women and a National founding partner and on the executive advisory board for Women Impacting Public Policy.

Schnack is the author of PR Works, which provides 44 real life examples of easy-to-implement public relations strategies that prove public relations works for small and big businesses alike. And she is a seven-time cancer survivor.

Womenetics: Tell us about the training you do for The Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women. You have called this one of your most enriching life experiences. Why?
Mary Schnack: Rwanda has always had a special place in my heart because that was my first life-changing trip. My first trip to Africa was in 1994 for an NGO. I went over there to handle the communications for them during the Rwanda genocide. We worked out of Nairobi where the media was based and out of the refugee camp because it was before the war was over so we weren’t going into Rwanda.

To help empower the Rwandan women and to help them find their voices and learn the business skills and become economically empowered, and to see the effect that that has had on Rwanda 18 years after genocide – oh my gosh! Rwanda is like a model for the world, and I think the reason for that is because the women took the reins.

Womenetics: It’s been said that you pepper your presentations with examples from your personal experiences. Can you share an anecdote?
Schnack: Words matter, and communications is what I teach. I went over to Rwanda with the ADRA, which is the Adventist Development and Relief Agency. They had the No. 1 presence in Rwanda before the war as far as building roads, building schools, building hospitals.

They called themselves missionaries, and I said, “No. Missionaries, to the minds of Americans at least, are people who stand on the corner and proselytize for you to bring Jesus into your life. What you’re doing over there is you’re building schools, you’re building roads, so you should call yourself humanitarian aid workers.”

And when I was in Rwanda in August and a group of the Peace through Business graduates got together, I was really getting them to network. The woman who owns the bakery was sitting across from the woman who owns a farm, and I asked, “Are you buying eggs from her?” She said no. Then the farm woman asked the bakery owner how many eggs she needed.

One woman has an online women’s business magazine. I said, “You should make a column, women doing business with women.” And then there was a woman who does websites, and I asked, “Who here doesn’t have a website?” Six to 10 of the women raised their hands. I said, “OK here you go.”

Afterward they told me, “Nobody’s taught us how to connect like that before because we don’t talk about our business.”

When I was doing training at a World Bank conference in Ghana, a woman from Kenya came up to me afterward. She’d been named one of top entrepreneurs under age 40 in Kenya. And she said, “Oh I could never publicize that.”

I said, “OK so let’s talk about it. Can you do this?”

“No.”

“Can you do this?”

“No.”

Finally what we broke it down to was this: I said, “Could you put a line in your email signature?”

She said, “Now that I can do.”

So instead of accepting, “We don’t do that in our culture,” I say, “Where can we meet part-way so you get your voice out there?” This woman is now a leading entrepreneur in Kenya, has won many, many awards, and she started the Kenya Association of Women Business Owners.

Womenetics: What is Asia Business Connect, and what is your role?
Schnack: I have two partners in China, and we work with businesses and governments outside of Asia that want to do business in Asia or businesses in Asia that want to do business outside of Asia.

Womenetics: Tell us about Up from the Dust.
Schnack: I target U.S. women in business or business owners, and say, “Look, let’s help our sisters worldwide grow their businesses.” We sell jewelry, scarves, and home furnishings like pillow covers, table runners, and place mats on the website, and I also sell the products at home parties or at conferences in the United States.

Womenetics: You co-produce Women’s Festivals. What are they?
Schnack: Patty DeDominic is a past president of NAWBO, (the National Association of Women Business Owners). She and I started putting on Women’s Festivals where she lives in Santa Barbara. This year will be the fifth, and those have kind of spread throughout the world, slowly, in honor of International Women’s Day. We encourage women to get together and look at all areas of their lives – the professional, the philanthropic, the personal, and to look at how fabulous they are and celebrate themselves.

Womenetics: Describe Mary Schnack & Associates.
Schnack: We do public relations, social media, community outreach, media relations. I have a variety of clients. Some are women-owned businesses, some are corporations, some are nonprofits. Next year will be my 20th year.

Womenetics: You started your career as a reporter. How did you go from there to where you are today?
Schnack: I was a reporter, and then I was a freelance writer and a freelance TV news producer, and my daughter was 1 1/2, and I was just finding myself jumping all over. I had freelanced for about eight years, and the next logical step was to write a book, and I wasn’t ready to write a book so I took a job writing for two hospitals in Los Angeles and that ended up being an eight-year job. One hospital was inner city and one was not, so it was a great experience, and I was promoted up to being director of public relations. Having the reporter’s background really helped.

I was a real pioneer in crisis communications. I became know in Los Angeles for that. I’m one of the first who told people they couldn’t say, “No comment,” to the media. I said, “You have to give an interview within reason.”

Womenetics: Regarding women’s issues, what kind of change, for the better, have you observed?
Schnack: I like going back to the women who have been in my classes who give their testimonials about how they let their voices be heard. Now with Hillary Clinton and all there is such awareness of what a difference empowering women can make.

Womenetics: Does your work instill you with a sense of optimism about the future, or pessimism? And why?
Schnack: Optimism. We’re moving in the right direction.

Womenetics: Describe Mary Schnack as a young girl.
Schnack: I remember when my brother and sister-in-law had three boys in two and a half years, and the boys were in the back seat of the station wagon really being rowdy. My sister-in-law said, “Oh, if only I had had girls.”

And my mom said, “If you had had girls like Mary it wouldn’t have made any difference.” As a girl, I grew up on a farm in Iowa. In most of the country I would have been called a tomboy, but in Iowa girls were as involved in sports as boys, so I think it really helped that I grew up that way where there were no limits on what I could do as long as I was willing to work hard – you know the good German work ethic. I learned all about team sports, and I had a real desire to honor and learn more about things and people that were different. Growing up in a community where everybody was the same and you were really pressured to be the same, I didn’t want to be the same. I wanted to learn more about the people that weren’t the same.

Womenetics: When you aren’t working, how do you relax?
Schnack: I like to hike, watch movies and sports, and have dinner parties with friends. I have a wonderful daughter, 29. She’s a real joy.

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Carol Carter was a founding staff member of Atlanta Business Chronicle in 1978. During her 18-year tenure, she served as editor not only of the Chronicle but also of seven Chronicle special publications including the award-winning Counterpart, a magazine for Atlanta businesswomen; ChopTalk, official magazine of the Atlanta Braves; and Atlanta Now, which serves the Atlanta convention and visitors industry.

Carter is the author of Junior Dragster Dreams: How Sam Found His Own Ride, the first only children’s novel about junior drag racing. She also wrote Hope & Healing, the 125-year history of Saint Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta. She was an on-air reporter in Atlanta for WXIA-TV’s Noonday show for two years and was writer and editor of the Optical Data School Media team that produced award-winning videos for classroom use. Carter is an alumnus of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.