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January 14, 2009
The Vitality of Human Experience: Elizabeth's Biography
Elizabeth Coplan’s professional life includes over 30 years of corporate writing and marketing. A degree in English Literature from the University of Texas prepared her for a brief stint teaching creative writing. Later she worked with the offices of prime ministers, presidents, numerous chief executives, international companies, labor organizations, and institutions of higher learning and religion as managing editor of Chief Executive Magazine in New York.
However, life at the top of Fifth Avenue’s Olympic Tower meant long hours and no social life outside of work. Elizabeth followed her dreams of Hollywood screenwriting fame to Beverly Hills. In Los Angeles, she wrote technical manuals for Collins Foods International, a Fortune 500 company, while working on her screenplay, attending UCLA writing classes at night, and collaborating with famed literary agent Florence Fieler, on a historical romance novel.
While international fame eluded her, Elizabeth was promoted to marketing manager for Collins Foods preparing presentations for the Board of Directors, stockholders, financial analysts, and employees. As a company spokesperson, she dealt with every PR expert’s nightmare, 60 Minutes, when the television show investigated the death of another restaurant’s customer from an overdose of sodium bisulfate, a common ingredient in salad bars.
After moving to the Pacific Northwest, Elizabeth became Director of Communications with Touche Ross (now Deloitte). A pioneer in the field of professional services marketing, Elizabeth promoted accounting, tax, and consulting services. She established Touche as the premier business consultants to the Seattle Times, the Puget Sound Business Journal, and the Daily Journal of Commerce.
While at Touche, Elizabeth met and married her soul mate Scott Coplan and later left the firm to join Davis Wright, a then little-known local law firm. Her marketing and public relations strategies brought the Northwest law firm into the national limelight as the firm grew from 150 attorneys and 5 offices to 300 attorneys and 10 offices in less than five years. Her groundbreaking techniques of community service promoted the firm through sponsorship of public television and radio, an unheard of approach for marketing professional services at the time. She worked with the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times and developed television and radio marketing opportunities for the firm.
Since the mid-1990’s, Elizabeth has focused her career on business development consulting including presentation training, mentoring programs, individual marketing plans, and personal coaching in addition to a variety of corporate writing projects. Through COPLAN AND COMPANY, Elizabeth has built a client list that includes professional service firms, public and private companies, non-profits as well as individuals.
Elizabeth is also co-creator, editor and writer of A Wild Ride, a website and blog for parents of challenging children. Her personal essays also appear in an upcoming anthology Don't Let the Sound of Your Own Voice Drive You Crazy: Midlife Musings.
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