Carol Montoya

Position: Chief operating officer, Potomac Management Resources (PMR), an association management and event planning company in Alexandria.

Career highlights: Director, client relations, PMR; outreach director, Literacy Council of Northern Virginia; vice president, marketing and advertising, ZGS Communications; account supervisor for the U.S. Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency, Lisboa Associates.

Age: 33

Education: BA, political science, Hood College.

Personal: Lives in Alexandria with husband, Rolando, and their daughter, Sofia. The couple is expecting a second child in August.

How did you get to where you are?

Throughout my career, I've been blessed with managers who gave me the opportunity to grow. I'm always looking to try something new, do more. They allowed me take on new challenges and gave me the guidance I needed to go on to the next level.

My senior internship in college led to a full-time position at Lisboa Associates, where I was an assistant account executive for government social marketing accounts. In the four years I was there, I progressed to the account supervisor position, managing the account teams and serving as the primary client interface. I was challenged and fulfilled by the need to juggle multiple projects, manage deadlines and ensure that clients were satisfied. The vice president was very supportive of my desire to grow within the company and take on new tasks and spent a lot of time mentoring me. I think it was at that point I discovered that client service was a strong suit and something I really enjoyed. It required people skills, attention to detail and high levels of organization and exposed me to people in a variety of jobs and positions. I think I take something away from each client I deal with.

Feeling I had reached the highest level I could within Lisboa, I moved on to ZGS Communications, another social marketing firm. My role there was similar, with regards to managing clients and a staff team. The challenges were the same as well, and I realized that I was ready for a change. . . . I began consulting as I explored the possibility of starting my own business. The problem was that client service isn't a business in itself, and I wasn't sure what type of services I wanted to offer. I also had to weigh the potential risk of starting a new company.

I had been a member of the Advertising Club -- a local organization for advertising professionals -- since my days at Lisboa and served as the secretary for three years. It was my first exposure to the rewards of volunteering for a professional organization. My job at ZGS was a result of an Ad Club connection. Through the Ad Club, I also met Noelle McGlynn, founder and president of Potomac Event Productions, which we later re-branded as Potomac Management Resources. I began working for Noelle on event planning projects. Within a year, we began taking on association clients, adapting the skills of event planning to the business of running the back office of associations. Coincidentally, or not, our first association client was the Ad Club. What I didn't realize then was that I was on the ground floor of an emerging business, one in which I could combine my desire to manage a company with my client service skills.

We've been able to grow, without the pitfalls that can affect small-business partnerships. We've had controlled growth, continuously adding to our roster, but at a pace that allows us to properly transition each client to our systems and learn the details of their particular operations. Today, we manage 10 associations and have a staff of nine. I am most proud of the fact that almost all of our new business has come to us via referrals. . . . We started with a niche of managing local associations, local chapters of national associations or regional-based groups of the same size and scope. In the past two years, the new clients we added are all national in scope. Once again, we took our skill set and expanded it in order to expand our services and client base. Our most valuable asset is our people.

-- Judith Mbuya