Sheryl Oliver - Professional Background

Sheryl Oliver has an eclectic background in media with over 20 years of experience. She began her career in radio in the Washington D.C. market; writing commercials, selling syndicated radio programs and working for top rated stations including NBC and ABC owned stations. In New York, she worked at Ogilvy and Mather in Network TV Buying and performed special projects for ABC network sales and CBS network marketing departments. She enjoyed a successful 14 year career at The Washington Post Newspaper and managed the largest revenue generating category of $150 million dollars and created and facilitated training for the advertising sales department. Sheryl’s additional experiences include: local television sales and public television grant writing. She currently serves as a consultant in the industry and is the leading Advertising Professor at Howard University in Washington, DC.

1/07 - Present
JOHN H. JOHNSON SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATIONS                          
WASHINGTON, DC
Assistant Professor – Department of Journalism

• Provides classroom instruction and lectures for various advertising courses
• Develops, creates and executes group exercises and projects that facilitates learning and professional development
• Creates exams and assessments needed to test students’ understanding of key concepts  presented in class
• Mentors, counsels and provides leadership and career guidance to JHJ School of Communications students
  

12/05 – 11-09
NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION of AMERICA                                             
WASHINGTON, DC
Advertising/ Marketing 

• Project manager on various marketing initiatives
• Media expert and responsible for developing key relationships with high level media planners and buyers
• Presents media research to major advertisers and advertising agencies
• Develops and facilitates media training to advertising agency media buyers, planners and newspaper sales executives

4/05-12/05
WASHINGTON EXAMINER                                                                    
WASHINGTON, DC
Director of Retail Advertising

• Manage largest revenue categories of business (Major accounts, Local Territory accounts) at the newspaper
• Leadership, training and coaching responsibilities for 20 sales representatives and 2 managers
• Creator of company’s sales performance management tool and sales training curriculum
• Trained team on interactive and online sales process.

4/04-4/05
WJLA-TV ABC 7                                                                                         
WASHINGTON, DC
Account Executive, Sales & Marketing

• Awarded Salesperson of the month; 2 months and 5 days after hire date
• Creator of high-profile Broadcast TV campaign that generated $200,000 in exclusive new TV business.
• The new business initiative took marketshare from The Washington Post Newspaper.
• Lead sales representative on major station initiative (Family Caregiver Expo) Creative and marketing consultant to various clients

10/90- 4/04          
THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY                                                
WASHINGTON, DC
Trainer, Advertising Professional Development

• Responsible for training Washington Post personnel and assisted in the professional development of approximately 400 advertising sales representatives and support staff.
• Facilitated, developed and executed numerous custom-made sales, marketing and professional development related courses to entire advertising staff and support departments that assisted in generating revenue for the company.
• Researched/monitored broadcast and print competition in order to develop courses, “on-demand” that increased company’s market-share.
• Coached sales reps in developing ideas for generating new business and overcoming challenges regarding selling against the competition.

Sales Manager, Recruitment Advertising

• Responsible for P&L of $150M+ advertising department and managed 3 major business units (Print, Online and Career Fairs), supervised staff of 20 sales reps, sales supervisor, managed over 12,000 advertising accounts, responsible for creating, developing and executing new sales strategies and revenue streams
• Developed, implemented and executed The Washington Post’s first major Recruitment “Mega Employment” sales initiative that generated over $5.25M in incremental revenue vs. previous year ($15M 3-year total). 
• Managed 20 sales reps representing 6 different sales groups (Inside, Inside/Outside, Outside, Off-Site, Online and Career Fair representatives. 
• Responsible for setting separate revenue budgets, goals and incentive plans for these teams.
• Coached and trained sales reps regarding how to successfully execute a sales call and attended numerous sales calls with reps. 
• Created and developed the company’s first virtual online job fair, “Mega Employment Virtual Job Fair” which generated over $100K in new business.
• Developed and implemented the redesign of various components of the employment print product including the creation of the Technology and Healthcare sections. 
• Created over 6 premium position pages in these products in tandem with an aggressive pricing structure that generated over $250K in one year. Successfully negotiated career fair contract with Lendman/Kaplan. 
• The partnership generated thousands of dollars in new business due to the execution of several technology career fairs and special sections.

Washington Post Magazine Unit

• Generated new business and incremental revenue for TWP Magazine.
• Responsible for generating, implementing and executing new advertising opportunities for more than 5 sales teams, approximately 45 sales reps and hundreds of accounts. 

Major Accounts Unit

• Responsible for selling advertising to major retail accounts.
• Managed high-profile $7 million + account list.
• Generated over $1.5 million of new advertising business on account list (Publisher’s Award).

Automotive Advertising Unit

• Responsible for selling advertising to national, dealer association and local accounts.
• Managed high-profile multi-million dollar accounts and account list (GM, Ford etc.).
• Generated well over million plus dollars in incremental revenue on national account lists.
• Created multiple new business opportunities and generated approximately $70K in incremental revenue in underdeveloped territories (Publisher’s Award).

01/89- 10/90     
WKYS RADIO, NBC                                                                                
WASHINGTON, DC
Account Executive

• Responsible for generating over $400K in new advertising business for the station.
• Managed both agency and direct account lists and created new revenue streams by tying in multiple advertisers to major events.
• Prepared and developed Scarborough research sales proposals highlighting station’s demographics and ratings.

9/87- 12/88     
WMAL RADIO, ABC                                                                                  
WASHINGTON, DC
Account Executive

• Responsible for generating new business from local retail accounts
• Created successful “Moen” co-op advertising opportunity that generated more than $100K in new business. Included partnerships with over 10 different businesses. 

8/86- 8/87        
OGILVY & MATHER, INC.                                                                             
NEW YORK, NY
Assistant Media Buyer-Network Television

• Responsible for buying network and cable television advertising for multimillion dollar accounts totaling $45M (Hershey’s, Exlax, Sandoz Corporation)
• Assisted in the negotiation during “Upfront” buying season with ABC, CBS and NBC networks   

Summer ‘86  
CBS TELEVISION NETWORK
NEW YORK, NY

Marketing/Regional Sales/Proposals Division

• Developed sales proposals for news and sports account executives.
• Disseminated pertinent information from secondary broadcast research data to CBS Network President    

8/84 - 5/86      
WHMM TV
WASHINGTON, DC

Research Development Department

• Responsible for writing major grant and funding proposals to underwrite station programming
• Ascertained over $200K of corporate funding for station