Barb Rozgonyi WiredPRworks |
As part of #Blogher13 and the first ever #MultiCulti Community Celebration Friday July 26 ~ 9pm I've been talking to my friends about culture and embracing who you are!
Barb Rozgonyi, of WiredPRWorks, Social Media Club Chicago, and who often contributes during our CHICAGONISTALIVE shows is the first visitor to the HOUSE during BLOGHER WEEK!
THANKS BARB!
Tell us a bit about
Barb the teenaged girl. How did your culture affect your young thoughts and
dreams?
Small towns can be confining; dreams can help
you think bigger.
Knowing that my family tree on my mother’s
side traced back to Mary Queen of Scots and that my father’s parent’s roots
were deep in Hungary gave me a worldly view beyond the farmlands of central
Illinois. Our family name, Rozgonyi, is in our Hungarian hometown’s tourism
brochure. In the course of researching for this guest post, I found Telkibanya
on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/telkibanya Thanks for the prompt
to reflect and remember, Dwana!
Where did you see
yourself when you were 20, 25, 35?
As a 20-year-old college student at the
University of Illinois, I was my sorority’s social chair. My job was to plan
parties/exchanges with fraternities. We had 15 events that year, up from three
or four the year before. We also entered a recycling content and broke national
records for the most empty beer cans collected.
To win, we negotiated deals with bars, beer
truck drivers and fraternities to help us out. I thought, at that time, that I
would be in sales for the beer company. But, on the morning of my interview, I
overslept, which was probably a good thing.
At 25, I was managing the regional office for
a Dun & Bradstreet subsidiary. In addition to managing the inside sales
team, I made up to 150 calls per day. Talk about being productive! I planned to
pursue a corporate marketing or sales executive path.
At 35, I had two children. I’d been a business
owner for a few years. At night, I typed in a mother’s journal I called LtlOne;
it’s never been published and is about 30,000 words.
At this age, I saw myself as a creative writer
and partnered with another playgroup mom, a graphic designer, to work with
clients on marketing and PR projects.
Together, we produced an award-winning ad for
the world’s largest organ and bone marrow transplant reinsurer. Also in this
year, I created a video sales training program for a pharmaceutical company. My
father passed away when I was 35 and we sold the home I’d grown up in.
This was a very transitional year. My family,
two small children and a loving husband, kept me grounded. Going through
everything [and I mean everything] in my childhood home drew me closer to my
heritage.
What about your
culture defines you.
There are few Rozgonyis [about 35 on LinkedIn]
in the world. My married name is Svoboda, which means freedom and is more
common in Eastern Europe. The Rozgonyi family is mentioned on Wikipedia and in
a tourism brochure from Telkibanya, Hungary. Someday soon I would love to take
my family back to our homeland.
My grandmother arrived at Ellis Island on
Christmas Eve. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to leave her
home. She talked about how she left beautiful things there. When she left, she
was training to be a pastry chef for a baron in Hungary. So many immigrants
interrupted their good life in the old country for the promise of a better one
in America.
Every morning, she made bread dough and let it rise in a feather bed. My dad said her pastry was so thin you could read a newspaper through it. As a little girl, I remember her being more comfortable speaking Hungarian than English. Like my Grandma Cory, Grandma Rozgonyi had long hair that she wore in bun during the day and in braids at night.
Both grandmas were revered as fantastic cooks.
Both of my grandfathers passed away before I met them.
Whether it was cooking, sewing, gardening, or
carpentry, working with their hands was important.
My uncle, Joe Rozgonyi, was a talented violinmaker
who crafted instruments for professional violinists in Chicago. My father
enjoyed working with wood; his profession was cutting meat.
Were your parents and
close family members very pride-oriented when it came to your heritage or were
they more focused on blending into American ways?
In all these years, no one from our family has
visited Hungary. My grandparents wanted to fit in in America. They lived in a
town called Westville where many languages were spoken. Everyone was very proud
of their heritage, but few people were interested in going back.
What languages were
spoken?
My grandparents, my aunts and my father spoke
Hungarian. My husband is half Hungarian and half Czech. When my mother-in-law
met my family for the first time, they all spoke Hungarian together. It was
quite a conversation!
Tell about our career
path. Did your heritage impact your choices?
With a degree in marketing, I started out as a
telemarketer/insides sales rep for a group health insurance company.
After a few years, I advanced to become the
office manager and then moved on to working in direct sales for a group life
insurance company.
After winning the group sales leader award, I
looked for a new challenge and moved on to become a national sales trainer for
a company that provided financial services for Blue Cross and Blue Shield
plans. I loved my job, including all the travel, until I became a mom.
On my first Mother’s Day, I woke up alone in a
hotel room and decided that I would find a way to merger motherhood and my
career.
After going through career counseling and
learning that I should be a florist or a writer, I decided to go the writer
route and opened CoryWest Marketing Communications in 1990.
Three kids and over 20 years later, I can say that
my wake up moment was well worth it!
I’ve been so honored to work with so many
leading edge clients who’ve given opportunities to help them reshape the world.
And, I’ve been close by to watch my kids grow up all along the way.
Although my Hungarian/Irish/Scottish heritage
didn’t closely impact my career choices, my family’s culture definitely
imprinted my lifestyle by underscoring the values of a strong work ethic,
making beautiful things, finding joy in cooking and sharing stories.
Probably the biggest impact on me was stories.
That’s why I named my company CoryWest Media. To honor my family’s storytelling
legacy, I combined my mother’s [Cory] and grandmother’s [West] maiden names.
2 comments:
Thanks so much for the opportunity to guest post, Dwana! What an inspiring assignment; encouraging everyone to take a few moments to reflect and connect with their roots and heritage. :)
Barb
@wiredprworks on twitter
Barb! Thank you so much for contributing <3
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