Meet Abby Draper | Strategic Communications Expert

We had the good fortune of connecting with Abby Draper and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Abby, what do you attribute your success to?
To me, the most important factor to all that I do — professionally and personally — is to treat others how I want to be treated. “The Golden Rule” if you will. I was raised that way and every day I strive to maintain that simple but impactful mantra. I am proud that my personal and professional brand allows others to view me as both tenacious and kind in everything I do and I believe that has led to a lot of the incredible opportunities I’ve been able to pursue. From moving across the country to open a west coast office, to the amazing brands I’ve partnered with to working with other successful strategists that I’ve admired for decades. I believe those things have been made a reality because I live by the golden rule.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I would say that my “art” is in my words. I make a living off of words, be it through media relations for a client, creative writing for publications, copywriting, et al, so words are powerful and important to me. In fact, I have never used an emoji because I feel like replacing words with what are essentially stickers somehow doesn’t work.
I started my career at a boutique agency in Baltimore where I was focused on traditional media relations. This was at the advent of brands being curious about leveraging social media to cast a wider net and I became passionate about learning more. With tenacity, I proactively absorbed everything I could about marrying traditional PR outreach with social media on behalf of the agency’s clients. After persuading my boss to let me try a few things I was able to prove success and in turn, created the agency’s first social and digital media department.

A larger agency in the area caught wind of what I’d done and poached me to work for them. I proved to be an asset to some of its largest clients and accelerated my career pretty quickly. Ultimately, I was managing a fully integrated client based in Orange County so the company asked me to move to LA to open its first west coast office. I did and after two more successful years, I took a breather from agency life and practiced PR, social media, influencer marketing and networking on my own.

Since then, I’ve continued to grow my portfolio and Rolodex and spend my days collaborating with brilliant minds to do exceptional work.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
This is a tough one, because there have been so many people that have done incredible things to support me along the way. From the day I spoke my first word, to today, when a mentor of mine spent time (on a Sunday) helping me work through a hiccup without question.

I would say the person in the last few months that has really been an incredible support system to me is the president of agency, Humble & Wallop, Matt McDermott. Matt has been a dear friend of mine for 20 years and recently we came together to collaborate on some very cool things. In addition to being my friend, he has also been my “agency hero” for a long time, so to be able to create, ideate, debate and succeed together is an enormous act of generosity on his part. As someone who places a lot of value on words, I have always been drawn to the way that he writes — it’s absolutely sensational — and simply being in the room with him is an exceptional gift. He makes me better, and that definitely deserves a shoutout.

Website: abbyleighstudio.com

Instagram: @abbydraper

Linkedin: linkedin.com/abby-draper

Twitter: @abbydraper

Facebook: facebook.com/abbyldraper