Rainmaker Media Group co-owner Kim Lawrence holds a national award her firm won this year from Reed Politics magazine. Many other prizes her company has won during its four years in business are displayed on the shelves behind her.
A former Miss West Virginia, Kim Lawrence still leads a prize-winning life as co-owner of an upstart public relations firm.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- She reigned as Miss West Virginia in 1974. At 55, she retains the regal elegance and golden good looks of a beauty queen. She also has a quick, creative mind and the efficient, sophisticated manner of a successful businesswoman. And, she radiates happiness.
Gag.
Kim Lawrence is the has-it-all type that women love to hate. Trouble is, she's too warm, bubbly and unpretentious not to like. Competitors voted her Miss Congeniality in her first beauty contest.
Daughter of television personalities from Weirton, she spent 20 years traversing the country as a beauty pageant emcee while working on her day-job career in communications and public relations. Today, she co-owns Rainmaker Media, a prize-winning PR agency in Charleston.
She attributes her good life to another woman -- Lady Luck.
"Wheeling was home. I grew up with my grandmother and mother. My mom and dad divorced when I was 13. They both had TV shows.
"Mom had probably the first talk show for women in West Virginia, a panel discussion called 'The Women's Side.' Daddy had a show called 'Movie 7.' It came on every day at 5. They would show different movies and he was the host. They were both larger-than-life figures.
"Daddy stayed in broadcasting his whole life. In her early 50s, Mom went back to school. She already had a degree but decided she wanted to go into teaching. She spent the last part of her career teaching at Wheeling Park High School. Then she got very ill and passed away at 67.
"Secretly, I saw myself in show business, but it was all just a dream. Mom and Grandma kept me very well grounded. I went to West Liberty and went into liberal arts because I didn't know what I wanted to do.
"That all changed the summer before my junior year. I found out the journalism office was looking for summer help. I spent the summer basically like an intern, following people around and learning how to lay out a newspaper. I was hooked. I knew I wanted to write and be involved in journalism.
"I was always interested in sports. I ended up being statistician for the West Liberty basketball team. I thought about being a photojournalist in sports. My senior year, I was editor of The Trumpet, our college newspaper. I knew then I had found my niche.
"In my junior year, I was in the Miss West Virginia pageant. I was in Fort Lauderdale for spring break. I had been in a fashion show for a place in Wheeling called Wickham's. They had bridal gowns and costumes. They called me in Florida and said they wanted to sponsor a girl in the Miss Ohio Valley pageant and wondered if would I be their contestant.
"I said I didn't think that was something I wanted to do. Mom called me in Florida and said, 'When is the pageant?' I said 'Mom, I told them no.' She said, 'Oh no, you are going to do it!' I got back and had two weeks to get a swimsuit, evening gown and interview outfit and get myself mentally ready to participate in this pageant.
"They were ready to name the finalists. They always give out the Miss Congeniality award. Well, I won that. I thought: Miss Congeniality never wins the pageant. But sure enough, I won that pageant. Winning automatically entered me in the state pageant. Two weeks later, I was in the Miss West Virginia pageant.
"There were two girls I knew who could easily win it. One was Miss Marshall University and one was Miss West Virginia University. It gets to the end, and there were five left. They named the second runner-up, Miss Marshall, and the first runner-up, Miss WVU. One of the three left standing was the new Miss West Virginia. Sure enough, Kim Nuzum, Miss Ohio Valley, was the new Miss West Virginia. All this happened in a matter of three weeks. Next thing you know, I'm getting ready for the Miss USA Pageant in Niagara Falls.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- She reigned as Miss West Virginia in 1974. At 55, she retains the regal elegance and golden good looks of a beauty queen. She also has a quick, creative mind and the efficient, sophisticated manner of a successful businesswoman. And, she radiates happiness.
Gag.
Kim Lawrence is the has-it-all type that women love to hate. Trouble is, she's too warm, bubbly and unpretentious not to like. Competitors voted her Miss Congeniality in her first beauty contest.
Daughter of television personalities from Weirton, she spent 20 years traversing the country as a beauty pageant emcee while working on her day-job career in communications and public relations. Today, she co-owns Rainmaker Media, a prize-winning PR agency in Charleston.
She attributes her good life to another woman -- Lady Luck.
"Wheeling was home. I grew up with my grandmother and mother. My mom and dad divorced when I was 13. They both had TV shows.
"Mom had probably the first talk show for women in West Virginia, a panel discussion called 'The Women's Side.' Daddy had a show called 'Movie 7.' It came on every day at 5. They would show different movies and he was the host. They were both larger-than-life figures.
"Daddy stayed in broadcasting his whole life. In her early 50s, Mom went back to school. She already had a degree but decided she wanted to go into teaching. She spent the last part of her career teaching at Wheeling Park High School. Then she got very ill and passed away at 67.
"Secretly, I saw myself in show business, but it was all just a dream. Mom and Grandma kept me very well grounded. I went to West Liberty and went into liberal arts because I didn't know what I wanted to do.
"That all changed the summer before my junior year. I found out the journalism office was looking for summer help. I spent the summer basically like an intern, following people around and learning how to lay out a newspaper. I was hooked. I knew I wanted to write and be involved in journalism.
"I was always interested in sports. I ended up being statistician for the West Liberty basketball team. I thought about being a photojournalist in sports. My senior year, I was editor of The Trumpet, our college newspaper. I knew then I had found my niche.
"In my junior year, I was in the Miss West Virginia pageant. I was in Fort Lauderdale for spring break. I had been in a fashion show for a place in Wheeling called Wickham's. They had bridal gowns and costumes. They called me in Florida and said they wanted to sponsor a girl in the Miss Ohio Valley pageant and wondered if would I be their contestant.
"I said I didn't think that was something I wanted to do. Mom called me in Florida and said, 'When is the pageant?' I said 'Mom, I told them no.' She said, 'Oh no, you are going to do it!' I got back and had two weeks to get a swimsuit, evening gown and interview outfit and get myself mentally ready to participate in this pageant.
"They were ready to name the finalists. They always give out the Miss Congeniality award. Well, I won that. I thought: Miss Congeniality never wins the pageant. But sure enough, I won that pageant. Winning automatically entered me in the state pageant. Two weeks later, I was in the Miss West Virginia pageant.
"There were two girls I knew who could easily win it. One was Miss Marshall University and one was Miss West Virginia University. It gets to the end, and there were five left. They named the second runner-up, Miss Marshall, and the first runner-up, Miss WVU. One of the three left standing was the new Miss West Virginia. Sure enough, Kim Nuzum, Miss Ohio Valley, was the new Miss West Virginia. All this happened in a matter of three weeks. Next thing you know, I'm getting ready for the Miss USA Pageant in Niagara Falls.
"When the Miss West Virginia Pageant was televised in the '60s, my mom was the co-host. So she coached me the whole way. Niagara Falls was one of the most incredible experiences in my life. There you are, with 50 other women, going through this production that is televised live to the whole country. I didn't win, of course, but it was life-changing. It gave me a degree of self-confidence that I never had, almost like, OK, anything is possible now.
"A month before, I was a coed at West Liberty, happily working in the journalism department and then, there I was, Miss West Virginia, competing in the Miss USA Pageant. It led me to a whole other career as an emcee and singer at beauty pageants.
"The people who ran this pageant, Frank Sweeney and his wife, Marie, started their own teen pageant. I was Miss West Virginia in 1974. In 1978, they called and said they were starting their own national teen pageant and wanted me to be the emcee. The first pageant I did was Miss Indiana Teen All-America. I was very nervous. I was on stage and my heart was racing. About 10 minutes into the show, I thought, 'This is what I was born to do!'
"Halle Berry was in the Miss Ohio Teen pageant. I walked in to do the orientation, and there sat 120 girls. I could not take my eyes off her. She went on to win the national Miss Teen All-American pageant. She traveled with us for a year. She is as sweet and unassuming as she is beautiful.
"I ended up doing that for 20 years. I think I've done pageants in every state but six. I was still working full time for Ohio County Schools as their PR person. I left there in '91, and came here to work for the West Virginia Department of Education as their spokesperson and communications director. I would fly out on Friday night to wherever the pageant was.
"It finally got to be way too much for me. I quit working when Alex and I got married, because I wanted spend more time with him. But those were great years. I had no intention of going back to work. Alex and I decided to build a house. I wanted some time off.
"When I worked for the Education Department, Lloyd Jackson was chairman of the Senate Education Committee, and we did a lot of work with him. I had such respect for him. The year that Lloyd Jackson ran against Joe Manchin in the primary, I volunteered to work on his campaign.
"That's how I met Larry LaCorte, who was helping to run Lloyd's gubernatorial campaign. Larry and I worked well together, and I caught the political bug. He said he was thinking about starting his own political consulting firm and wondered if I would be his partner. That was 2005. I hadn't worked for three years. My house was finished. I was really ready to go back to work.
"We started out just the two of us in an attic of Peggy Workman's law office on the Boulevard. I had a lot to learn. I knew about PR and marketing, but I didn't really understand the art of running a political campaign. The first big race we did was Mike Green from Beckley. He was running in the primary for the Senate against Sally Susman and Bill Wooten, who had been in politics for years. Mike had no name recognition. He won the primary in a tight race then easily won the general. We've gone like gangbusters since then. We have a nearly 90 percent win rate.
"Politics was so seasonal, there were times when we looked at each other and said, 'What do we do now?' I had so much background in PR, I said we could probably expand the business. We started adding people, a couple of designers, a video guy so we can produce our videos, an entire team that could do advertising, marketing, public relations, political consulting, TV spots, everything.
We started getting some really great accounts. We helped Tri-State Casino and Resort get table games passed. We did a campaign for them called 'Show Us Your Poker Face' and won awards for that. One of our biggest clients is the natural gas industry.
"We started entering our work in several competitions. This year, we won more Addy Awards than any other agency in West Virginia, including Best of Show. We entered the Crystal Awards for the state chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and got all kinds of awards. We entered the national Pollie Awards, sponsored by the American Association of Political Consultants, and won a gold Pollie for a radio spot I wrote for the Wheeling Island Racetrack. Imagine. The best radio spot in the nation.
"This is a great new act in my life. I think luck has a lot to do with it. Like walking into the journalism department by chance. That was a lucky day for me, because it helped me figure out what I wanted to do. Then, entering the Miss West Virginia pageant; I was damn lucky.
"In Wheeling, I interviewed somebody at the board office for part of my master's degree. Afterwards, he called and said they had a position open in public information. How often does that happen, where you don't have to knock on a thousand doors?
"Now here I am with my own little company. Of course, the luckiest day of my life was marrying Alex."
Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.
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