AGE:38
POSITION: Executive vice president/co-owner, Advertising Ventures Inc.
RESIDENCE: East Providence
LIFELONG AMBITION: To back at my life and career with no regrets
FAVORITE BOOK: “Nineteen Minutes,” by Jodi Picoult
GUILTY PLEASURE: Chocolate Awful-Awfuls
Mary Sadlier loves her job. In her eight years at Advertising Ventures, she has helped grow the company from a tiny shop with five employees into a firm with $4 million in annual revenue, Fortune 500 clients and an international reach.
Twice the agency has made Inc. magazine’s list of the 500 fastest-growing companies, and in 2005 it also made the ICIC/Harvard University top 100 list of fastest-growing inner-city companies.
“Every day is a new, exciting experience,” she wrote in her 40 Under Forty application, “balancing the demands of a growing company, marketing challenges for our clients and giving back to the Rhode Island community. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Sadlier is the agency’s primary decision-maker in financial and employment matters, but she also gets to be creative. She’s the person behind WhatsNext4Me.com, for example, a Web site to encourage young people to pursue hospitality careers that was named one of the world’s best 10 sites last year by the Interactive Media Council.
In addition, Sadlier is active in her profession, delivering lectures and educational programs to her peers and having served as president of the Public Relations Society of America’s Southeastern New England Chapter.
And she gives extensively to the community, helping the March of Dimes Rhode Island Chapter with communications, among other things, serving on the advisory committee of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School, and participating in The Education Partnership and the Diocese of Providence’s Bishop’s Pastoral Council, among other activities.
A 1990 graduate of Tufts University, Sadlier is also an active alumna, interviewing about five applicants per year to give Tufts a first-person perspective on each student. She’s even hosted a dinner at her house, with 75 guests, that included Tufts President Lawrence Bacow.
At the same time, Sadlier is never far from her family. She works with her husband, Stephen Rosa, and she’s also a mom. They have three children: Caitlyn Mary, 7, and 1-year-old twins Michaela Margaret and Stephen Edward.
