In her office at NorthGate, MotionMasters CEO Diana Sole Walko cuddles her beloved sidekick, Toby. In Washington to conduct interviews for a documentary on U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, she discovered that Sen. Bob Dole brought his dog to work. "I thought, if Sen. Dole can take his dog to work in Washington, I can take a dog to work in the woods at NorthGate."
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- She started with a one-room, one-phone third floor office on the boulevard.
Today, spacious upscale headquarters nestled in the woods of NorthGate reflect the company's remarkable success. Walls lined with awards, photos of VIPs and souvenir shots of her world travels attest to the firm's expertise and broad reach.
MotionMasters, makers of documentaries, commercials and educational videos, celebrates its silver anniversary this month.
Diana Sole Walko, the multitasking hands-on CEO, looks back with wonder on her climb to the PR pinnacle. An imaginative mind, a thirst for learning and an eye for innovation kept her consistently ahead of the curve.
Documentaries she produced on the Rev. Leon Sullivan took her to Africa five times. In India, watching a sunset reflected across the Indian Ocean, she marveled at the places her work has taken her.
A woman who promotes the art of commercial storytelling has quite a story to tell herself.
She's 52.
"I grew up on a small farm outside Weirton. My dad was a steelworker. Everybody's dad was a steelworker. The only question was the role they played. My dad was a master machinist.
"I didn't know what I wanted to be. That's odd now, because I have journals from the time I was a kid, and I would pour out my thoughts and write all these interesting stories. I didn't realize then that writing would become my passion.
"I went to Salem College first. My first week there, I was really confused about why they were calling the professors doctors. I came from such a blue-collar background that I didn't know there was a doctor of anything except medicine. I was the first in my family to go to college.
"I started in political science. I was fascinated by government. I thought I might want to be a lawyer. I transferred to Marshall and spent my sophomore year taking liberal arts classes and trying to figure out the right thing to do.
"I volunteered at Big Brothers and Big Sisters. They needed someone to plan activities and promote the organization and recruit people to be big brothers and big sisters. I took that on as a volunteer and loved it. It helped me find what I was looking to do professionally.
"My junior year, I majored in journalism and public relations. They recruited some professionals to guide me. One was Ed Knight with Ashland Oil. He said I needed to look at public relations as a career path.
"I worked at Channel 13 as a news producer and reporter and took classes in public relations and broadcast news. I worked at 13 back when Matt Lauer was there. He was a nice guy, very talented. Joe Johns and I went to Marshall together. He worked at WSAZ. I knew neither one of them would be here long.
"I went to work for an advertising agency in Norfolk, Va., but I was gone less than a year before the mountains called me back.
"In junior high, I was a delegate in the Hi-Y Youth and Government program, and I was fascinated with it. So Charleston was where I wanted to be when I came back, and that's where I built this business.
"I looked for the first thing I could get back here. I worked in marketing at Camden Park one summer. They're still one of my clients. I worked as promotions director for WVAH-TV when they were just signing on the air.
"In 1984, I went to Charles Ryan Associates. I was pregnant with my first child, the first pregnant woman to work there. After my first son was born, I went to work in what was the audio-visual department of Charles Ryan.
"This was back when we produced slideshows for clients. There was no such thing as doing video. We grew the department to where it became a separate subsidiary. I led the subsidiary and bought it, and it has been a 25-year run now.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- She started with a one-room, one-phone third floor office on the boulevard.Today, spacious upscale headquarters nestled in the woods of NorthGate reflect the company's remarkable success. Walls lined with awards, photos of VIPs and souvenir shots of her world travels attest to the firm's expertise and broad reach.
MotionMasters, makers of documentaries, commercials and educational videos, celebrates its silver anniversary this month.
Diana Sole Walko, the multitasking hands-on CEO, looks back with wonder on her climb to the PR pinnacle. An imaginative mind, a thirst for learning and an eye for innovation kept her consistently ahead of the curve.
Documentaries she produced on the Rev. Leon Sullivan took her to Africa five times. In India, watching a sunset reflected across the Indian Ocean, she marveled at the places her work has taken her.
A woman who promotes the art of commercial storytelling has quite a story to tell herself.
She's 52.
"I grew up on a small farm outside Weirton. My dad was a steelworker. Everybody's dad was a steelworker. The only question was the role they played. My dad was a master machinist.
"I didn't know what I wanted to be. That's odd now, because I have journals from the time I was a kid, and I would pour out my thoughts and write all these interesting stories. I didn't realize then that writing would become my passion.
"I went to Salem College first. My first week there, I was really confused about why they were calling the professors doctors. I came from such a blue-collar background that I didn't know there was a doctor of anything except medicine. I was the first in my family to go to college.
"I started in political science. I was fascinated by government. I thought I might want to be a lawyer. I transferred to Marshall and spent my sophomore year taking liberal arts classes and trying to figure out the right thing to do.
"I volunteered at Big Brothers and Big Sisters. They needed someone to plan activities and promote the organization and recruit people to be big brothers and big sisters. I took that on as a volunteer and loved it. It helped me find what I was looking to do professionally.
"My junior year, I majored in journalism and public relations. They recruited some professionals to guide me. One was Ed Knight with Ashland Oil. He said I needed to look at public relations as a career path.
"I worked at Channel 13 as a news producer and reporter and took classes in public relations and broadcast news. I worked at 13 back when Matt Lauer was there. He was a nice guy, very talented. Joe Johns and I went to Marshall together. He worked at WSAZ. I knew neither one of them would be here long.
"I went to work for an advertising agency in Norfolk, Va., but I was gone less than a year before the mountains called me back.
"In junior high, I was a delegate in the Hi-Y Youth and Government program, and I was fascinated with it. So Charleston was where I wanted to be when I came back, and that's where I built this business.
"I looked for the first thing I could get back here. I worked in marketing at Camden Park one summer. They're still one of my clients. I worked as promotions director for WVAH-TV when they were just signing on the air.
"In 1984, I went to Charles Ryan Associates. I was pregnant with my first child, the first pregnant woman to work there. After my first son was born, I went to work in what was the audio-visual department of Charles Ryan.
"This was back when we produced slideshows for clients. There was no such thing as doing video. We grew the department to where it became a separate subsidiary. I led the subsidiary and bought it, and it has been a 25-year run now.
"It was a big decision to launch a production company in West Virginia. Bankers here were not familiar with the kind of equipment you needed. If you needed a loan for heavy machinery for manufacturing, they could identify with that. We had to educate the banking industry about what we needed and how it could be held for collateral.
"Our company started in one room with one phone and four people on the third floor at 1012 Kanawha Blvd. E. We built this building in 1997. We were the fifth property purchased up here.
"Starting out, we didn't have a camera or editing equipment. We'd have to rent it from places like Chicago or Atlanta. There was no infrastructure in the valley to support television production. We were the first company in the state to do television production.
"Jack Cipoletti, president of AIM Communications, was the first person outside of Charles Ryan to give us the opportunity to do work for him. Other agencies were nervous about using us. If we did work for them, they worried that we were going to race back and tell Charlie Ryan about their clients.
"An early project was for Walker Machinery. We were shooting a commercial for Charles Ryan when Walker had Gale Catlett, the WVU basketball coach, as their spokesperson. We were up on a mountain on a surface mine operation. We spent a lot of time walking Catlett through his lines. I could tell he was nervous.
"When the director said we were ready to start, I told him to wait. I took off my windbreaker and underneath it was my Marshall sweatshirt. It was the icebreaker we needed. He laughed, and the rest of the group laughed. He said he was not taking orders from anyone wearing a Marshall jersey. The shoot went off really well.
"It has been an interesting career, the places I've gone, the unusual requests. Many years ago, I sold the Heiner's family the idea of doing a commercial using a horse-drawn wagon like the one on the bread wrapper. I didn't know it was going to take me nine months to find one. I thought I was going to have to have the Amish make one. We shot that in upstate New York.
"For a Walker Machinery commercial, we had to hire an animal trainer to train ducks to walk in front of a dozer. They wanted a male duck, because males are more colorful, and a row of baby ducks to follow daddy duck. Well, baby ducks don't follow daddy duck. They follow mommy duck. We found a trainer in Florida to train the little ones to walk behind daddy.
"My first trip to Africa was in 1998 with Rev. Leon Sullivan. We went to Monrovia, Liberia, in year seven of what turned out to be a 14-year civil war.
"I was passionate about doing a biography of Rev. Sullivan. It had taken me the better part of a year to convince him that his story needed to be told and that we were the ones to tell it. He said, 'If you are going to do this and understand who I am, you need to go to Africa with me.'
"There was one plane that went in each week. There was no way out until it came back the following week. Rev. Sullivan's aide told me that for my protection, I was to be no more than three steps away from Rev. Sullivan. I said three steps was two too many. There was one hotel. I had an armed guard outside my room.
"I've been back to Africa on several occasions, all associated with Rev. Sullivan and the foundation he started before he passed away.
"I've been to India, Iceland, the Azores, Germany. I love to travel and all of it has been work related.
"We produce a line of educational videos that are sold around the world. I was in the editing room this morning watching the first part of a three-part series, Professionalism 101. It's geared to young professionals on how to succeed in their first job.
"We're successful because we're lifelong learners, always learning the technology side of our business and learning new subjects. I've written scripts for things like proper procedures for roof bolting. We're inquisitive, always stretching our creative muscles.
"There are a lot of stories yet to tell. I have a lot of documentaries I'd like to do. It's tough to raise money. You have to get corporate underwriting, and the economy is so sour, corporations don't have a lot of extra dollars to fund documentaries.
"I went back to college and got my MBA at Marshall. Down the road, I would like to teach at some level and will have my master's in place to do that.
"I mentor students from the University of Charleston's MBL program. Talk about how life takes its circles. I was assigned to a student from Liberia to mentor. When she walked in our door and saw all the photos from Africa in the hall, she actually recognized people in the background.
"On one of our last trips to Africa, we went to Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania, and I stood on shore watching the sun rise over the Indian Ocean. It really struck me how far a little company like ours had traveled."
Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.
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