
She founded AdEase in 1999. By the time she renamed it Civilian, Stacey Nelson Smith had turned the agency toward a different assignment: persuading people to do something useful for their communities.
An unpaid placement pulled Maria J. Rodriguez away from finance and into public relations. Decades later, the Vanguard Communications co-founder is making sure other students can afford their own change of direction.
The former bank president turned a Bismarck communications shop into a national network - pairing financial discipline with a stubborn belief that useful messages must first earn attention.