Deborah Schupack
I am a writer. Always have been. Always will be.
As a writer, I’m used to working in solitude, digging in and going deep. But I also play well with others, bringing verbal insights and impact to teams of strategists, designers and all-around creative thinkers. For many years, I’ve partnered with the talented folks at InterbrandHealth, Suka Creative, and Ideas on Purpose to do some high-octane brand strategy, nonprofit naming, long-form publications, advertising and major capital campaigns.
Before I was a copywriter, brand strategist and development writer, I was (and still am) a novelist and a journalist.
After getting a degree in religious studies from Dartmouth College and a Master’s in fiction writing from NYU, I started as a reporter at UPI wire service, covering all manner of important and weird news that broke in North Carolina. I hung out with Jimmy Carter when he motored through on this newfangled project called Habitat for Humanity and with Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker when their crooked televangelist world came crashing down. I left UPI to freelance and published articles in the New York Times (including this piece that coined the term “starter marriage”), Working Woman, Seventeen, and other joints. Those journalism skills have proven invaluable: asking the right questions, listening hard for the spoken and unspoken, honoring deadlines, and being obsessed with clarity.
The best narratives are often, at their core, simple (and yes, there should be an apostrophe in “it’s,” but sometimes you have to work within the limitations of your form). That’ll be 13 points.