Karen Moore Start Here Summary

Start Here: Karen Moore is founder and CEO of Moore Communications Group. She started the company in 1992, after leaving her dream job at Florida State University. She stated in the lecture that she woke up one morning and decided she wanted to do something different and she walked into the dean’s office and gave a three months’ notice so she could start her own company.

Moore had no experience running a company; in fact, her degree was in History and, according to her, it was not really useful in the real world. She had been working in the marketing department at Florida State University and she found her skill set was in high demand and due to her lack of a PhD she was unable to teach at Florida State and she had no desire to go back to college

One thing I learned for sure is that education is not everything and your life and work experiences can sometimes take you down a completely different path than what your original plan was. She is highly competitive and driven which are very in demand attributes in her field and those attributes helped her firm become one of the top public relations firms. Being competitive and driven, especially as a female, is not always easy, but they are characteristics we need to hone so that we have the edge over our competition. Another take away from her lecture was being willing to take risks and let fear be a motivator. Some people may feel that using fear as a motivator would have a negative impact, but in Karen’s case it was one of her driving forces. Without the fear of not having an income and having to go beg for her job back at the university, she would not have been as motivated to achieve the success she did. Something else I took away from the lecture was to have strong corporate cultures and values. For instance, she refused to work for any tobacco firms because she represented The American Cancer Society. Another take away was that I need to be able to prove a tangible work experience, which is her case especially was more beneficial than her college degree. I work in education and I know that a lot of times people do not end up getting a job in the field their degree is in. Proving tangible work experience is very valuable to future