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What Success Looks Like: Gwen Moritz, “Smart”

What Success Looks Like: Gwen Moritz, "Smart"
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“What Success Looks Like” is a 10-part interview series that will be published weekly here on Earn Spend Live. Our intern, Anna, traveled around the South to find a variety of successful women and get them to tell their inspiring stories. She began each interview by asking these women to identify a word that best describes them.

Gwen Moritz is a very influential woman in the field of journalism in Arkansas. She’s precise and extremely intelligent — things that make her excel in what she does. Analyzing business statistics and keeping up with the ebb and flow of companies across Arkansas is a daunting task and she does it with ease.

Name: Gwen Moritz
Location: Little Rock, Arkansas
Title: Editor
Company: Arkansas Business
Educational Background: BA in journalism, Harding University

Early Life

Gwen grew up in North Little Rock at a time when the houses were small and the families were large. Her father was the assistant superintendent of the North Little Rock school district and her mother worked as a secretary for extra money to put the children through school.

As a child, especially being the youngest child, Gwen grew up in an overwhelmingly loving home. She says that her family life made her “confident, probably not realistically that way, and it took [her] a while to realize that not everyone adored [her].” But that confidence boost was just what she needed to plow through the competition and become the successful woman she aspired to be.

Career + Continuous Learning

As a young journalist, she admired women who could be concise and confident in their writing. I think these qualities can be broadened to almost all leaders who are confident in their decisions and seem to know exactly what they need to do to get the job done well. As a continuous learner, Gwen values intelligence in a leader—because obviously you can’t be a total boss without some brains.

Gwen said her boss is a lifelong learner like herself and has taught her to look at situations from a different perspective. She referred to her as one of her role models because she excels at anything she puts her mind to. “She ended up selling advertising and she didn’t know anything about it, so she read every book she could find about selling advertising and she read every book she could find on sales techniques.”

Although 60% of college graduates are females, Gwen noticed that many women don’t do anything with their degrees after graduating. For someone like Gwen, who believes in continuous learning, this is a hard fact to accept. “It’s just been years and years watching this,” Gwen told me, “waiting for what I assume to be true to happen. That women would just continue to make inroads into the business leadership and it takes a while to realize what’s not happening.”

Gwen taught me that acquiring skills through experience and determination can be equally as rewarding as being taught in the classroom. I, for one, want to be the kind of hard-working, self-taught woman like Gwen and her boss.

Follow Anna on Instagram: @annamariedepoyster

Last modified on January 5th, 2017

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