Stacey Bender, CEO of Bender Group Public Relations, will be coming to speak at Seton Hall on Sept. 25 at 6:30 p.m. in Schwartz Hall Room 105. Those interested in her discussion will witness a PR professional that seems to defy expectations. According to NJBIZ, Bender founded her company in 1995, as a mother to four children all under the age of seven. The article frames her as a woman dedicated to both family and business.
These values are evident down to the very structure of her company. On the company website, the Bender “team”, seemingly all upper management, is comprised of only four people, with Bender included. In addition, Bender’s brother, Barry, serves as the company’s CFO. This is not to say that Bender blindly promotes her family members, necessarily. In his bio on the website, Barry Bender has a notable list of experiences, including his eight years as the director of internal audit for Tropicana. This is the main point at which Bender defies expectation. She seems to maintain a wide range of clients and a high degree of professionalism while still keeping a relationship with her clients, at least that is how she describes her day-to-day business in the NJBIZ piece.
However, Bender is not the only one who says her company has a personal touch. A quick search on Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees and interns share their experiences at a company, finds that many people note Bender Group PR’s small staff as a positive feature. Glassdoor lists the company size as no more than 50 employees total. It is likely less. The company also announced in June via Twitter that they welcomed in office dog named Sadie, adding to the personal feel.
One Glassdoor user explained that the staff size presents a challenge to consistently stay on top of the workload but that it, overall, served them well as a first experience in the PR world.
The company’s size begs the question of how such a small firm could attract names like Freshpet and Frank’s Red Hot to be among their clients. Perhaps these questions and more will be answered at the discussion!
Bender Group PR is located in Montclair, NJ. The PR professionals there specialize in media placement, crisis management and social media among other facets of the PR world.
All are welcome to attend the discussion regardless of year or major. However, PR and journalism students are encouraged to attend.
Julie's Corner 