Live Your Bucket List: Founder, CEO, LGBTQ+ Advocate Does The Work and Wins

Monica C. Smith, CEO and Founder of Marketsmith, offers winning insights into work, life and giving back.

At her first job at Walden Books after graduating college in 1990, Monica C. Smith, CEO and founder of Marketsmith, would walk into one of their stores filled with books and magazines and feel overwhelmed.

“Monica C. Smith, CEO and Founder of @marketsmithinc offers winning insights into work, life and giving back. #femaleCEO #careeradvice”

“It would become my best tool,” says Smith, who was severely dyslexic since childhood and was not able to read effectively until she was 18.

“I would read everything about any entrepreneurial business. And there were no women to be found in magazines like Inc.,” she says. “I would read the stories and I would cry and say, ‘I don’t know how you get there.’ I was always looking for someplace to read about how do you get there.”

““I would read everything about any entrepreneurial business,” says Monica Smith, CEO of @marketsmithinc. “I would read the stories and I would cry and say, ‘I don’t know how you get there.’” #femaleentrepreneur #careerpath”

Smith not only found a way, but paved a way and is constantly paving the way for so many others as the founder of one of the largest women-owned and operated independent media and marketing agencies in the country and a philanthropic powerhouse.

“Monica C. Smith, CEO of @marketsmithinc, is constantly paving the way for so many others as the founder of one of the largest #womenowned and operated independent media and marketing agencies. #femaleentrepreneur”

NJBIA’s 7th annual Women Business Leaders Forum recently announced that Smith will be honored in September with the New Jersey Business & Industry Association’s 2021 Caren Franzini Leadership Award.

“NJBIA is pleased this year to be honoring Monica C. Smith because she is an executive who leads by example in the boardroom and in the community, just as the namesake of this award did,” NJBIA President and CEO Michele Siekerka tells Insider NJ.

Awards for Marketsmith go beyond the CEO and founder Insider NJ reports, “The largest independent, full-service marketing agency in New Jersey, has been recognized with five 2021 Telly Awards, which honor the world’s top video and television campaigns. Marketsmith’s winning entries – earned on behalf of PSE&G New Jersey, PSE&G Long Island and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities – were selected out of more than 12,000 campaigns across the world.”

“We sought to turn these large, often faceless utility companies into brands people view favorably. The real power of our commercials comes from the emotional connection they make through human stories,” Smith tells Insider NJ.

Raised in South Orange, N.J., the only daughter with five brothers, Smith went to College of Mount St. Vincent in Riverdale, NY, graduating with a degree in communications and psychology. At Walden Books, she says it was “like earning an MBA. I was part of a team that started the video by mail catalog.”

Smith loved her work there and says in retrospect staying only two years was not long enough. “I always thought you had to move around to make your way,” says Smith.

Her next job was at Mark Fore and Stroke, and she helped launch the Boston Proper brand. “I have a great relationship with all those folks still,” says Smith. “They made a big difference.”

Her next position at R.R. Donnelley, an integrated marketing communications company, was in the New York office and she says she was traveling constantly.

“All my jobs had a common thread of data, consumer information, how you select it, who gets it and how you tie that to entrepreneurship,” Smith says.

She was offered a corporate job there based in San Francisco, but her father had suffered a stroke and she wanted to be closer to home.

An LGBTQ+ activist and advocate, Smith says at the time, though she was “active and open, I wasn’t out at all, I wasn’t even sure that was an option until it became an option.” Twenty-five years ago she married her partner Amy.

“An #LGBTQ+ activist and advocate, Smith says at the time, though she was “active and open, I wasn’t out at all, I wasn’t even sure that was an option until it became an option.” #workplaceculture”

While she did not disclose her personal life at work, she says she was fired for coming out and disclosing her marriage. “A few days after it happened, I thought this is not how I want it to be. I was making good money for my age, but at the end of the day, spiritually, when people show you who they are, you listen.”

Starting her own business in 1999, Smith says she was driven by her mission. “I wanted to live my bucket list. I didn’t want to harm anyone professionally ever. And I had to be true to myself.”

Smith has built a “business on its patented analytics software and human ingenuity, giving the agency and its clients the data to inform every decision from strategy to media to creative,” according to company resources. Marketsmith is founded “on the idea that technology and humanity are inextricably linked when it comes to creating successful consumer-centric marketing. Her mission then, as now, was to provide clients with the most advanced tools to build powerful marketing models that mitigate risk, maximize ROI, and drive growth.” 

Clients include Tumi, a specialty retailer with $1.6 billion in sales. Smith also created i.Predictus, a data visualizing software that aggregates media and customer data and predicts sales results with 93% accuracy.

What motivates Smith is also creating spaces that are fair to all people regardless of identity. Businesses are not openly “racist, anti-woman or anti-gay,” Smith says, “but the biases exist where people have been underexposed and undereducated.”

“What motivates Smith, CEO of @marketsmithinc, is creating spaces that are fair to all people regardless of identity. “Biases exist where people have been underexposed and undereducated,” she says. #workplace #inclusivity”

Having experienced such biases in the business space, “the soil is becoming looser” and “the more people line up, humanity is much kinder than people think it is,” says Smith, a co-parent of five adopted children with her wife, Amy.

A business-led effort to pass the Equality Act this year “is part of an aggressive, bipartisan and expanded lobbying fight on Capitol Hill over the long-stalled gay rights measure that proponents hope will finally reach President Joe Biden’s desk this year. The political window to move it forward is narrowing,” reports Bloomberg Law.

According to Bloomberg, “At least 112 entities have lobbied on the Equality Act this year, compared with 68 in 2020, a Bloomberg Government analysis of lobbying disclosures shows. The measure has garnered support from corporate America, industry associations, and groups across the ideological spectrum.” Those companies include “Unilever PLC, AT&T Inc., Marriott International Inc., Cardinal Health Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Home Depot Inc.”

“The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in the U.S., is leading a coalition of more than a dozen other groups to galvanize support for the bill and push back against its critics,” Bloomberg reports.

“Though the number of women leading Fortune 500 companies is a record-breaking 41 this year, only two of those women are Black and only one is openly gay. As we look at the bigger picture and move to elevate more women to the C-suite at top corporations, the need for intersectional representation is stark,” NBC reports.

Putting her worldview in practice not just personally and professionally, but also philanthropically, Smith 15 years ago started One More Smith, a nonprofit “sanctuary forever home for un-adoptable animals.” They now have 100 animals on the property.

“Putting her worldview in practice not just personally and professionally, but also philanthropically, Smith 15 years ago started One More Smith, a nonprofit “sanctuary forever home for un-adoptable animals.” #philanthropy #womenleaders”

Ten years ago, Smith started the nonprofit Bring Dinner Home, focusing on Thanksgiving dinner for children whose families were hungry. It now delivers coats, gloves, hats, diapers and food to 800 families. Because of her early learning disability, Smith adopted a local school to promote literacy.

“When you have the support of your family and you know things are possible, the next thing is showing up and doing the work,” says Smith. “I wanted these things and nobody told me not to go for it.”

““When you have the support of your family and you know things are possible, the next thing is showing up and doing the work,” says Smith. “I wanted these things and nobody told me not to go for it.” #careersuccess #womenleaders”