Sharon Tallach Vogelpohl broke into advertising at 4, making commercials for the family car dealership, Edward Motor Co. in Hot Springs.
In one of those TV ads, her dad, Ed Tallach, appears in the cab of a Dodge pickup, which starts moving slowly. Little Sharon comes into view, grunting and straining to move the truck. “He says, ‘Sharon, what are you doing?’ and I reply, ‘Dad, you said to PUSH the trucks.”
The ad business has fascinated her ever since. “I knew, even then, that advertising was ‘it’ for me,” Vogelpohl said.
While studying and starring in volleyball at Centenary College of Louisiana, she asked her dad — whom she lists as one of her top business mentors — to help her get an internship at a Little Rock ad agency for the summer. She got one, at Mangan Holcomb Partners, forerunner of mhp.si.
“The rest is history,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years and have never had the same day twice. In fact, the business has changed more in the past five years than it did in the first 25.”
And all those years have been at the same company. After the PR internship at MHP in 1994, she became a full-time employee in 1996. The firm promoted her to public relations director in 1999, and by 2005 she was a principal in the firm and vice president of PR. She has been president and CEO since 2010.
Her proudest accomplishments include her firm’s honors for being a psychologically healthy workplace and one of the state’s best places to work. It won two Arkansas Business of the Year awards from this publication, and PR Daily named her among the Top Women in Communication.
She boils down the secret of success to eight words: “Do right in all things. Success will follow.”
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