Michele Litzky

As the story goes, Michele Litzky sent out 200 resumes when she graduated from American University in 1975. If she did not accept a job in the publicity department at Bantam Books, she would be casting TV commercials (well, at this point in her career, perhaps feature films).

Bantam led to her first agency job at New York’s Softness Group – a medium sized shop that enabled Michele to get a taste of sports marketing as the Media Director of the Colgate Women’s Games. From Madison Square Garden she headed south to Winston Salem, NC as the new (and first) PR manager at L’eggs Hosiery; it was a lot more sports (the company had embarked on a 15 city road racing circuit for women only that culminated in the L’eggs Mini Marathon in NY’s Central Park) and publicizing what at the time was still a revolutionary product – stockings sold in grocery stores.

Her next stop was Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance where she ran UConn’s Connecticut Mutual Classic holiday basketball tournament. But insurance was just not her thing so when she had the opportunity to return to a New York agency to handle the Hasbro business, she jumped at the chance. 

She later joined Griffin Bacal Inc., Hasbro’s ad agency and started its first in-house public relations and special events department. (She also ran Mr. Potato Head for Mayor of Boise, Idaho but he came in 4th out of 6 so we seldom talk about it. She’ll tell you the story if you ask.)

She left the agency in 1986 to become the Media Director of the Ralston Purina Meow-off. (It’s another great story that she’ll be happy to share.) In 1987 she became the VP/creative director of Van Vechten & Associates, a pharmaceutical PR agency that was looking to build its consumer package goods business. 
    
Michele did that for about a year and decided she wanted more accountability. So, she founded Litzky Public Relations in 1988 with one client, Matchbox Toys. She’s never looked back. Her client roster grew. So did her staff. 

She also never imagined she’d be at the helm of a 20 year old agency with an amazing view of the New Yorkskyline from her conference room.