IRMA TYUS-MITCHELL
Founder Publisher, New York Global.biz, Publicist, Ad
Agency Specialist, Playwright, Literary Consultant, Founder/
President of Sing Your Song Singer-Songwriters' Fundraisers
Irma Tyus-Mitchell, Publisher of New York Global.biz’s Magazine, recalls that day after New York’ City’s July 1977 Black-out when she ignored warnings not to arrive at her first New York City secretarial assignment. Long before publishing her 1992-93 TV Events Manhattan Guide, her unprecedented career legacy thrived obligingly.
Irma''s Johnson & Johnson's J&J’s (Secretarial Training Certificate landed her first secretarial position at Livingston College, NJ. . She attended New York’s School of Technology; play-writing workshops at the New York’s Negro Ensemble Company and various continuing education courses. Irma’s secretarial aspirations, formulated as a 17 year-old, Neighborhood Youth Corps' clerical worker, reporting to New Jersey’s first female Mayor Patricia Sheehan, of New Brunswick, NJ (her hometown). At 19, Irma, left her full-time, keypunch operator job, in Summit, NJ, the same night after leaving her coveted, part-time, female, floor-modeling job, at Bambergers’ in Plainfield, NJ, (before this national chain store became Macy’s-Bambergers). She was the non-aspiring model and, single mother, promoted from her Bambergers’ part-time cashier job. She delayed accepting Bamberger’s chain’s first Black floor model, for two weeks, until she read The Model Trap.
At age 20, at J&J the world's leading health care manufacturer who employed her six months prior, after Roy Epps, an Urban League of New Jersey President scheduled her placement interview financially awarded and and featured Irma in J&J'S Corporations' Bulletin Magazine. During their fifth year after employing Blacks in their office, the magazine Irma as J&J first offie clerical employee to revised and upgrade a standard office’s monthly resulting in the Corporation's saving. Irma's modification of J&J's Specification's Division's procedure, process and material catalogs, resulted in their hiring one less employee, utilizing less paper, and four days less to complete..
In January 1975 Irma refused a press card from Carl Offord, Publisher of his dazzling, Black American Newspaper, in New York. Unfazed about Irma’s denial that she wasn’t a journalist, but a secretary, writing short-stories and poems, he explained his assumption that he thought she wrote for Innervisions Agency, after extensively asking him several questions during their meeting with Claude Spivey, President of NJ’s Innervisions’ and her recently met cousin, Donald Tyus, also of Innervisions. Before that meeting, Spivey asked Irma to question Carl, because he himself could not respond to her inquiries, despite his plans for a New Jersey Black American Newspaper Bureau. They rode with Irma, in her Firebird’s first drive to New York. Both men urged her to accept the distinguished publisher's press card, after Carl promised Irma, he’d advised her to study journalism or English, if her first article required much editing. Soon Irma’s Morse Donaldson School of Ballet in Newark, NJ, feature was published in the Black American Newspaper. 1975 ended with Irma’s NJ’s Forum Newspaper articles, published by Jonathan Blount, an Essence Magazine’s publisher/founder and her Moments ‘ (Ray, Goodman & Brown) cover story in publisher’s Jimmy Smith’s Happening Magazine.
Aside from writing plays and more, since 1981 Irma’s freelance articles featured actor Calvin Lockhart’s hosting Dr. Bob La Prince’s National Council of Culture & Arts’ fundraiser, in the Amsterdam News. Thereafterm Graphica, Caribbean News, Daily Challenge, Enlightenment, Carib Life, Gladiator Magazine, Harlem Times Magazine, Black Noir Magazine, Beacon, Harlem News, etc.
Carolyn Byrd, Bubbling Brown Sugar’s Broadway’s star helped launched Irma’s publicity career for the humanitarian, Mother Clara Hale’s 1981’s first Hale House Celebrity Fundraiser, at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Months later, President Ronald Reagan and Alphonse D’Amato cited Mother Hale, A Great American Hero, and recipient of $2MM government funding.
PARTIAL LIST OF PREVIOUS PR, AND SALES AND MARKETING CLIENTS
Austin Sutton’s “Ms. Entertainment New York pageants; Trinidadian/Tobago's; Ambassador Jacobs’ at Rockefeller Ctr;"Eubie BlakeTribute”on WWRL’S FM Radio's Host/Producer Bob Law’s "Night Talk Radio"; Wall Street’s first music video, Wall Street Rap, by Dr. “T”; Produced New York’s first Elected Officials and Private & Health Care Panelist’s Health Care Made Affordable Forum, for Sam Dunston’s National Allotment Insurance Agency; Executive Producer of Dow K. Buford’s “Black Innovation’s That Built…” African-American inventors’ first, educational, RB/Jazz music CD; Nelson Farmer's "More Than Just Golf/It's A Golf Thing" Tutorial and Sports Training Program;;Direct Sales and Network Marketing Entrepreneurs' Event Promotions, Card Resources Merchant Services, Regional Manager, with prestigious IGT//NY Times restaurant clients: LaMediterranee, P. Diddy Combs’ Justins’, Italian restaurants, etc; Spanish Yellow Pages' only non-speaking Spanish account executive, recipient of two top sales awards, occupying top 20% of its sales force for five months; Dottie Media’s Black Noir Magazine’s advertising/marketing director’s 60 accounts (2005-2008).
Secretary of the Month Awardee for a six-month Fedex Corp assignment. During AOL/Time Warner’s merger, negotiations she recorded Time, Inc.’s unions’ and Warner Brothers’ meetings. “In-demand” assignments included Ogden'a 100 Conglomerate’s Corp.'s PR Vice President, Altman Stoller Weiss, Ogilvy & Mather, Y&R and Richmond Ad Agencies; WPIX-TV’s President’s Office; Eastman Dillon,Raoul Lionel Felder and LeBeouf, Lieby, Lamb & McCrae law firms.