MILLSTONE — Elizabeth Barry is a “make it happen” kind of girl.
Barry, who graduated from the Millstone Township Middle School and Allentown High School, has already made a name for herself in the world of marketing at the age of 34.
The enterprising young woman founded Elizabeth Barry & Associates, which she described as the first strategic marketing company specifically for dance, in 2006. Her Hoboken-based business has helped her climb the ladder of success, which has included Barry being named the recipient of the Business Woman of the Year award by the Hoboken Chamber of Commerce in November 2012.
That is just the icing on a cake piled high with layers of achievements that now have Barry working in a penthouse office in Hoboken, overlooking Manhattan.
In an interview, Barry said that before she moved into the world of advertising and marketing, she spent years as a dancer and dance teacher.
After graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in communications and marketing, Barry took a position as marketing director of Cape Cod Life magazine and has not spent one minute looking back. During that time, she also worked as a dance teacher at Falmouth Dance Academy in Cape Cod.
“Life was good,” she said.
After working for Cape Cod Life for three years, she took a position at Dance magazine in Hoboken as marketing director, where she remained for a year. In that position she promoted New York sales as a representative for the magazine.
“And I became a New York career woman,” she said.
During the time Barry was selling ads, she came across a variety of lessons that led her to the idea of forming her own marketing company.
“I traveled to Los Angeles and met with many clients. Many of them were owners of small businesses. I became very careeroriented. I was selling high-end ads and space and I found myself helping the clients, consulting with them on the side,” Barry said.
“I began to feel bad because I was selling high-end ads that were not up to par. I saw a different career niche for me at that time. I wanted to help people create what they needed. I wanted to create strategic marketing plans that included verbiage, imagery, graphics and websites.”
She found out that she really liked the life of a city career woman and took a job with a firm that published Dance Spirit, Dance Teacher and Pointe magazines. During that time, she was getting what she called “messages” from the universe that led her to open her own company.
“The universe was conspiring. First it threw me pebbles, then it stared throwing me rocks,” she said.
Finally heeding the message, Barry quit the world of publishing in February 2006 and opened her own firm in March.
Barry said her firm has created brands for entrepreneurs and the owners of small businesses, including leading lights in the entertainment, artistic, philanthropic, and health and wellness fields. Many of her clients have appeared in movies, on television and even on Broadway, in the person of Jarrod Spector, who plays Frankie Valli in “Jersey Boys.”
She is also responsible for launching an email publication, “gendance,” in 2008, creating what she said the dance industry needed — a venue to tell the stories of dancers and choreographers in a “snippet format” that was web savvy and concise.
“And we did,” she said. “No one ever considered these stories before.”
The email publication expanded to the point that it is now a website and an email newsletter that inspires more than 30,000 dancers, musicians and other artists across the globe, according to Barry.
Although she is no longer dancing, Barry maintains her connection to the world of dance and to the area. She has served as marketing director for ICON Dance Complex in Englishtown for the past four years and said she helped the studio reach the next level. Barry said she built a brand for the company that is called “Hip Hop Geo.”
Barry said she is bringing innovative and influential TED (technology, entertainment and design) talks to Hoboken through TEDxHoboken. She also handles new business development for the lifestyle magazine hMAG.
The young entrepreneur still comes home to Millstone Township to visit her parents, Jim and Carol Barry, and her sister, Judy Barry.
Barry said she loves what she does.
“I get excited every day to go work,” she revealed.
So what does the future hold for this enterprising young woman who does not seem to skip a beat from the time she awakens to the time she closes her eyes at night?
“We will continue to move forward as a boutique market, to build a much bigger clientele.” To put it simply, Barry said, “We will keep doing exactly what we are doing.”