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Today's Featured Biography

 
Anne Killingstad Holmes

Wow! What to say to quickly condense 30-plus years!

(No wonder Kristi (Hobbins) Alpanalp said she'd get back to us on this!)

OK, at East, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to study journalism or art, but in the end, I’ve combined both.

It all started when I enrolled at the UW – Madison, with intent to graduate with a BS in textile and apparel design from what was then called the School of Family Resources and Consumer Sciences, but is now known as the School of Human Ecology.

(No L&S degree for me, I was looking for a way to avoid taking any more math classes – and I loved fashion. The College of Agriculture didn’t require 4 years of high school math!)

The coursework involved spending my junior year in New York, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Very cool, I thought!

I spent a lot of my freshman and sophomore years hanging out at the Rathskeller, with a bunch of other EHS alumni, which made college a lot like an extension of high school... Though I also pledged a sorority (Chi Omega) and started dating Bill Boyden, a guy from Green Bay, whom I met through my sorority’s homecoming activities.

But my career plans got rewritten in 1972, when I realized Bill and I would be getting married after my junior year, so spending 1973 in New York just wasn’t going to be possible. So I sort of re-wrote my program, stayed in Madison, and took all those newly freed-up elective credits in journalism. Actually “ag journalism,” with an emphasis on consumer relations! And I liked that course of study so much, I got a Master’s in it.

But by the time I graduated the second time in 1975, Bill had taken a job in Rock Island, Illinois, working as a computer programmer for a division of the Department of Defense that was located on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River, at the Rock Island Arsenal! (A pretty weird choice of employer for him, since if his draft number had been lower, I am sure he would have relocated to Canada.)

Well, my mixed bag degrees in fashion design and consumer relations really confused potential employers in the Quad Cities, no one had any idea how to pigeon-hole me! So my first job was as a media buyer for an advertising agency. A job which required a fair amount of analysis, and even – math! And my only options with regard to fashion design were related to sewing my own career wear!

I actually enjoyed that job – I got to spend millions of dollars of “other peoples’ money,” and had the pleasure of working in a creative environment with other highly creative people. So the die was cast, and I’ve spent most of my career working in some aspect of marketing – with a couple of detours.

•    Those detours involved two less-than-successful attempts at full-time motherhood, a year as a sales agent for Metropolitan, and two years as an HR trainer for a free-lance human resources company.

During my career, I was lucky enough to work in all aspects of marketing and experience all aspects of business: from prospecting and landing clients, and creating award-winning client work, to feuding and cheating partners, employers declaring bankruptcy, clients declaring they loved the work but still refusing to pay. All the highs and lows. And I loved it!

Eventually in 1994, I started my own public relations and marketing company, Anne Holmes & Associates, and by 1995 we were well-known in the Midwest as a web-design and internet marketing consultancy. We quickly grew to employ a staff of 12. Major corporations, like AT&T, sought us out. It was heady stuff!

Steve and I still run that company today. And as Kristi Alpanalp says in her bio, “It’s been quite a ride!” Along the way we learned to hang on, enjoy, persevere – and actually thrive.

For example, 9/11 nearly killed our business. Those first few months afterward, we had so much corporate overhead and so little money coming in. But we were creative and actually turned that situation into a benefit.

Which is why since the latter part of 2001, we have operated as a virtual company, with all of our staff working out of their own homes. Productivity has soared, everyone loves working from home, we’ve figured out how to handle the lack of a corporate office – and we’ll never go back!

In fact, I made a presentation on how we did this at a national PRSA conference in 2002, and by 2004, I’d discovered that there were a lot of people who also want to own and operate their own home-based businesses -- especially if they can be web-based.

So these days I do a lot of coaching – helping others achieve this dream. Baby boomers looking for a way to deal with an impending retirement are my area of expertise – and why not? There are so many of us, none of whom are really interested in retiring! Actually, it’s fortunate that we Boomers are still so energetic, since too many of us actually can’t afford to begin to consider retirement.

I intend to do more with this business coaching. If you’re interested in the details, check out my blog, www.boomerwire.com


Oh! Here’s a synopsis of the personal stuff that happened while I was working on my career. All of it important, and dear to my heart:
•    Bill and I had two children, but sadly, divorced on our 10th wedding anniversary.
•    I was a single mom for five years, then met and married Steve 20 years ago.
•    It was a whirlwind courtship – we got married four months after we met! I’m still amazed we did that! Smartest move I ever made, however.
•    Bill was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma shortly after we were divorced, fought if off, but then relapsed and died two years after Steve and I were married.
•    A year after that, Steve adopted the kids – jumping from step-father to “dad” – and the kids became hyphenated. Their new last name: Boyden-Holmes
•    Our daughter turned 30 recently and was married in Milwaukee this summer. She works as a copy editor for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
•    Our son is a free-lance news photographer, currently based in Tampa.
•    No grandkids yet, and so far, none anticipated.

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