Shining Stars
The biggest advantage associated with your age: At my age, I have many years of success to look forward to in the print industry.
Name: Mardra Sikora
Age: 39
Company: Wright Printing/Folder Express
Title: President
Education: University of Nebraska Kearney
Explain how you got started in the print industry: If you want the real beginning, I started in the print industry by sleeping on the shop floor, making tablets from scrap stock and giving them to my friends, playing hide and seek in the pressroom, selling folders at a stand created from cardboard boxes outside my house (like a lemonade stand—but for folders), "stuffing" folders for mailings and scrapping folder edges from press sheets with a hammer and pliers. [Then] I left for college. During and after college, I worked in early childhood education and restaurant management. Food service prepared me for the long hours printing requires and childcare prepared me for, well, people. At 24, I accepted the opportunity to work in the customer service department at Wright Printing. What I loved then is what I love now—learning something new every day, building relationships with people all over the country and a pace that is relentless.