TGC alumna seeks PR students' skills
By Ashley Anderson
Whitney Wolff with her dog Tucker
Photography by Karen Elizabeth Photography
As a public relations professional and owner of Quest, Chico’s newest outdoor adventure destination, Whitney Wolff has mastered the art of intertwining her successful communication skills and passion for fitness.
For the majority of Wolff’s career, she has owned her own public relations business, Wolff Publications, specializing in marketing and sales. She has also been the general manager of Fit One Athletic Club and marketing and sales director of a few local businesses including Sun Oaks Tennis & Fitness Club, Oro-West and Chico Racquet Clubs, and PacifiCom Technology Solutions for Business.
Wolff, a Chico State alumna, learned these valuable public relations skills from working on one of the first Tehama Group Communications teams in the spring of 1991.
Now, almost 20 years later, Wolff has returned to her roots at TGC seeking public relations assistance from a 2009 TGC team. TGC is helping to produce a highly interactive Web site for her newest business venture, Quest.
Wolff describes herself as always being a person to explore different opportunities as they sprout up along the road of life.
“I’m a risk taker and have an entrepreneurial spirit,” Wolff said.
Tehama Group Communications was established in fall 1990 and is one of the oldest student-managed public relations agencies in the nation.
TGC allows students to see that the skills learned in major courses are truly valuable, Wolff said. The clients students work with are likely to use the plans and materials that students created.
“All of the major classes were the ingredients, and TGC was the cake,” Wolff said.
As a public relations professional, Wolff has produced hundreds of publications, advertisements and marketing materials, made possible, in part, by her skills learned through TGC.
“Back then we used black and white Macs with 12-inch screens,” Wolff said. “Page layout programs were just getting popular, and I was the production manager.”
One of the clients Wolff worked with as a TGC member was so impressed with the final product that the client hired her. She landed her first job as a special projects coordinator for Tri-County Economic Development Corporation, now known as 3Core.
“That really connected the dots for me,” Wolff said. “As a student, you think you have a long way to go to catch up to the real world.”
The Quest Challenge Web site will aid in challenging and motivating people to explore new opportunities for every aspect of their lives including body and health, career and prosperity, and relationships.
“I thought it would be great to have the input, ideas and excitement of a younger, more technology-minded group of people who are on the cutting edge of their careers,” Wolff said.
In TGC every creative idea is a possibility no matter how extreme it may be, Wolff said. This is the type of innovative thinking the current TGC team will provide for Quest.
“Quest is the most exciting project that I have ever had the opportunity to start,” Wolff said. “It’s the accumulation of my career and interests.”
The Quest account team has a chance to experience firsthand the possibilities for success that come from being a part of the TGC agency.
“It’s exciting to see a TGC alum who is so accomplished,” said Jozlynn Rush, current TGC account executive. “And to know she got her start at TGC makes me hopeful for my own future.”
In the world of public relations, not all client are going to have a clear idea of exactly what they want. Wolff has left a lot of the creativity up to the TGC team.
The Quest team is learning valuable public relations skills that can be transformed into the real world. Wolff has taught them that it is OK to think outside the box, said Megan Alley, current TGC editorial assistant and account executive.
“We don’t have to be afraid to be creative,” Alley said. “I’ve been able to think of ideas that I never thought I would be able to come up with, for example, an interactive avatar that reflects a Quest member.”
Transforming the TGC experience from student to client is exciting, Wolff said.
“I’m an ideas person and I get a real charge from out-of-the-box thinking,” Wolff said. “Chico State is a great place to find that spark again and go full circle.”
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