Marta Pauer-Tursi: Borealis PR

Marta Pauer-Tursi: Borealis PR

Marta Pauer-Tursi has a BA in Political Science and an MA in Applied

Linguistics/International Studies. After she graduated from college she worked at The New Yorker magazine. She stayed there for ten years and she considered it to be her dream job. She moved to Vermont and had to change her momentum, as there wasn't much in the state for publishing. She stated in an e-mail that, “PR was a seamless transition.”

Marta has been in the PR field for twenty years. She spent ten of those years in corporate communications and focused on crisis media. She also worked for a Fortune 100 company. She found this interesting because they had plenty of crises, so there was never a dull moment.

She runs her own consultancy called Borealis Pr in the Burlington area. It has been in business for five years. She has a team that works with her. Her employees have many sub specialties, which keeps them on top of a lot of different situations. Borealis Pr focuses more on strategic communications and issue advocacy.

Her typical day goes something like this. She wakes up at 5:30. Checks her social media, and catches up on the news. She reads tweets that have value to her clients. Once in a while, she spends the morning writing a speech or a ghostwritten piece. Sometimes, she may work on internal communications for a client. She likes to catch up with other team members on timelines and deliverables. She likes to go out for a walk at least once a day. She says, “stepping out of my environment actually helps to clarify ideas I may be working on.”

I asked Marta what she likes best about being in PR and she responded, “I enjoy what I do because it gives me the opportunity to meet people from very diverse environments. I also enjoy problem solving and creating effective communications for clients.”

Marta says that her tip to a student thinking about going into PR is to “learn what you can about PR, but also develop a specialty in an area of your interest. Many agencies have moved from genelists to specialists. An agency that specializes in health care will more likely hire someone with some knowledge of the physical sciences. If you go to the PRweek website you will see that breakdown. So my advice is do a minor in an area that you might consider working in at an agency or company.”

I asked Marta what she remembers as her most interesting PR assignment, she said, “flying in to a crisis zone by helicopter, getting a quick brief from the folks on the ground and then doing a live interview. This was a chemical explosion at a plant.”