Features

AAPRC Weekly: Sheila Eldridge

Sheila Eldridge
Founder and President
Miles Ahead Entertainment
Hillsdale NJ


What started as a passion for music has brought public relations and marketing guru Sheila Eldridge to the head of her own firm and the brink of major broadcast ownership.

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Eldridge often visited family in New York during the summer. When she stayed with her great-uncle, jazz trumpet player Roy "Little Jazz" Eldridge, the only music allowed in the house was jazz, and young Sheila developed a sincere appreciation for the music. By the time she arrived at Howard University she was completely devoted to jazz and, especially, to radio. She was determined to work at the university's commercial radio station, WHUR-FM. WHUR, though, didn't hire students.

"I couldn't understand the concept of 'students don't work there,'" says Eldridge. "I was like, that doesn't work for me. I'm paying my money to go to this school and you’re telling me that I can't work here? So I pushed my way in the door."

She became the station's first student intern and later had her own contemporary jazz/R&B show. Eldridge graduated in 1976, part of one of the first classes at Howard's School of Communications. Later, she worked for Washington's NBC affiliate, but shyness sent her back to radio. She headed west, to Los Angeles and KACE-FM, where, for three years, she worked weekends doing a show called "Sunday Brunch." Eldridge had decided, though, that as much as she loved music, she wanted to do more than just spin records. In 1978, Eldridge took a job doing promotions for Casablanca Records, where the mettle that got her in the door at WHUR would come in handy.

"I did not like having to take records into radio stations every week, and get ads every week," says Eldridge of her first foray in the music industry. "The pressure of that was not comfortable for me. The fruits of my work weren't dependent on me. They were dependent on someone else. That really bothered me."

Still, Eldridge pushed through, promoting artists like Cameo, Parliament, Donna Summer and Cher at the height of the disco era. While at Casablanca she enrolled in a two-year program at UCLA, studying public relations and crisis management. She also landed a publicity position with Elektra Records. "It was entry level, but it was PR. It was great. I was going to school and I had this hands on job," Eldridge recalls. "They had just started this division called the Jazz Fusion division, and that's when they had Patrice Rushen, Lenny White and Dee Dee Bridgewater––a lot of the artists were jazz but had a fusion feel to them."

Unfortunately, Elektra's Jazz Fusion division only lasted for two years and Eldridge found herself out of work. "That's when I decided to start my own company. A lot of the artists I had worked with said, look, if you set up we'll come on board, and they did," says Eldridge. "My first clients were Patrice Rushen and Cameo and my second major client was Phyllis Hyman."

Eldridge founded Orchid Communications in Los Angeles in 1982 through a state-run small business incubator program. The program provided low cost office space, phone service and help with other overhead expenses, Eldridge sold her car and other items to finance the start-up costs. "I believe the biggest asset you can have in a business are your people…That's the biggest hurdle when you're starting up, having the financing to hire people so you can service the business," says Eldridge. "And then being able to service the business, but at the same time go out and continue to generate new business opportunities."

It was a juggling act, but Eldridge managed. "Networking works," she likes to point out. "The people that I got business from were all friends of mine that I went to school with. I'm a firm believer that networking does work."

Orchid Communications' client list eventually included a who's who in entertainment, including Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, The O’Jays, Ice-T, En Vogue, and Yolanda Adams among others. But Eldridge wasn't content to rest on her A-list laurels. "I could see where the record industry was going," says Eldridge. "I knew I was not going to be able to grow my business on just the record industry, so I started going after corporate business."

Eldridge expanded into the marketing realm and began creating programs that she would then go and sell to corporate clients. In 1984, this strategy paid off in a big way. That's the year the Olympic Games came to Los Angeles. While the city prepared to step into the global spotlight, Eldridge paid attention to a story in the Los Angeles Times in which an African-American mother expressed concern about what would happen to her children during the games. Many of the city's recreational facilities––a significant number of them in African-American neighborhoods––were being turned over to the Olympic athletes, leaving scores of inner city kids without summer activities and certainly without the financial resources to attend Olympic sporting events. "I read that article and said we need to come up with a program that supports and gives activities for inner city kids, because these kids are going to be left out," Eldridge remembers.

Eldridge and Orchid developed a free summer camp program for inner city kids called Summerscope, and took the pitch to corporate heavy-hitters like Coca-Cola and Burrell Advertising. "I said, you all are putting all this money into the Olympics, but what are you doing for the community? Look at this article in the Los Angeles Times, look at what the community is saying," says Eldridge. "I really kind of backed them up against the wall, and then I went to the L.A. Foundation and got them to give me a grant to start the program."

Summerscope, which has since expanded to six cities, celebrates its 20^th anniversary this year. Coca-Cola is still the title sponsor.

"Coming up with a program and landing the dollars and getting Coca-Cola involved in the program is when I realized 'you can do this. It can be done,'" Eldridge says. "Everybody has an idea, but to take the idea and make it into something real and tangible, that's the difference."

In 1985, Eldridge had given birth to a son, Brent, and moved her firm to New Jersey. By 1990, she'd changed the company's name to Miles Ahead Entertainment in an effort to more firmly establish herself in the marketing realm. "Orchid was so branded, especially on the West Coast, as a PR firm, that I couldn't get people to see that we can do more than just PR," Eldridge explains. "About 50 percent of my business is corporate. In the corporate world, if you just try to do PR you're going to be in trouble because they've got divisions and corporate communications in there and they want to handle everything. You've got to give them something that they can't do. Hands-on touch marketing from the Internet to street teams to sampling via a total promotion campaign. We offer more than just PR."

Currently, Eldridge has a staff of six in her Hillsdale, New Jersey offices and taps into a network of local consultants around the country when projects call for it. Miles Ahead has established itself as a boutique agency with decidedly large-scale clients: Black Enterprise Magazine, PSE&G (New Jersey’s largest utility company), Colgate-Palmolive, Coca-Cola USA, ABC Radio Network, Absolut, the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and Wyndham Hotels as well as entertainers En Vogue and Malcolm Jamal Warner.

Over the past two decades, when Eldridge wasn't building her career, the single mom was busy building a home life for Brent, who heads off to college this fall with a major in communications. "I'm so excited! I'm more excited than he is," Eldridge admits. "One thing that you have to do in this industry is stay out there. When you have children, it really changes your life. I was a single mother. I couldn't go out as much, but that’s what I had to do to spend meaningful quality time with my son and assure I was building his character as my mother did with me."

With her son in college, Eldridge, an accomplished equestrian, plans to spend more time with the two horses––Red Babe and Skatia––that she boards on her family's property in Virginia. "I'm going to do more riding and pursue more competitions," she says. "What we do is endurance riding…you ride 15 to 20 miles on a horse in a competition. You go through woods, water…just about everything, so you really have to train for it. I want to do more traveling for competitions."

But an even bigger project is Eldridge's dream of owning her own radio station, a dream that may be close to reality. Eldridge and her partners have been working on the radio project for several years and are close to bidding on two stations in the south. "I've got a great team of partners," she enthuses. "My area will be just what we do––marketing the stations as they will become clients of Miles Ahead Entertainment. That's something that I'm really excited about. When it happens I would have come full circle and assured my son a job when he graduates. What more can I ask for?”

Whatever else there is, no doubt Sheila Eldridge is ready for it. She's facing the miles ahead armed with faith in her abilities and her favorite motto: "Networking Works!!!"


AAPRC's Mission
The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development––updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment––but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

As we move into the 21st century at lightning speed, mass media and its potent messages occupy an ever-larger part of our daily lives and our collective psyche. The AAPRC is focused on helping our members gain a deeper understanding of media's force and supporting their growth as powerful participants in the global communications network.

AAPRC's Contact
GQ Media & Public Relations
1650 Broadway Suite 1011
New York NY 10019
1212 765 7910
1212 765 7905
aapublicistcoll@aol.com

Message Sheila Eldridge and the AAPRC and tell them what you think

Gwendolyn Quinn

« Perspective: Alain Alan Ket Maridueña  Survey Says #10 »

The 2-Way

Replies: 2

Archives: