Mompreneurs: Mastering Public Relations With Adrienne Alexander
Source: Mompreneurs: Adrienne Alexander / other
Adrienne S. Alexander—author, publicist, and grandmompreneur extraordinaire—sat down for this week’s episode of Mompreneurs with host Nancy Redd. The PR maven and founder of The IPY Agency (I’m Promoting You) opened up about the unexpected journey that blossomed into a thriving career, and how she found purpose in adversity.
Even before launching her PR career, entrepreneurship was always the goal.
Alexander, who has a background in journalism, dabbled in various business ventures before discovering the path that would lead to her success today.
Her PR journey began unexpectedly—while interviewing The Wire actor Nathan Corbett, she offered to be his publicist, free of charge. She was up for the challenge, wanting to gain experience in this new career path. “All I had was the gift of gab, the gift of writing, and a dream,” she recalled. And from there, “the rest is history.”
Alexander’s biggest career breakthrough came with the popular children’s series, Gracie’s Corner. While searching for educational content for her young granddaughter to watch, she came across the show on YouTube and immediately saw the vision.
The publicist reached out with her pitch and from there, helped the program reach new milestones. While she’s no longer working with the show, “it was a phenomenal time in my career.” Gracie’s Corner has won multiple NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Children’s Program, with over five million subscribers on YouTube. “Representing Gracie’s Corner was such a turning point,” said Alexander.
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The publicist and author created her own opportunities.
With more than 20 years in the industry, Alexander built her career and The IPY Agency into the all-encompassing PR firm it is today—offering a one-stop shop for public relations services, from media outreach to brand management.
She also authored several books including The Accidental Parent, Public Relations Ain’t Free, and Creating a Middle: Conflict Tips for the Modern World.
Alexander channeled her experience growing up with parents who “both struggled with alcoholism and addiction,” into A Guide to Talking to Children About Drug Addiction and the children’s book, My Parents Have a Drug Problem. As an adult, she realized that she could give a voice to people who had the same experience growing up as children of addiction.
Alexander is a mother of three, but her role as a mother figure extends beyond her biological children.
Kinship care—when children are raised by relatives or chosen family instead of their parents—has been a throughline in her story. Raised by her grandparents, she in turn has cared for other children besides her own. “I’ve raised me some kids now,” she laughed.
Looking ahead, Alexander is manifesting her own talk show about kinship care. “I want a show that focuses on advocacy for kinship care and parenting in extreme circumstances. You can become a parent in a lot of different ways. And as a grandma-preneur … we need a platform as well, we need an outlet,” she told Redd.
For Alexander, entrepreneurship isn’t just about business—it’s about freedom.
“As an entrepreneur, it affords me the opportunity to make memories,” she said.
But success hasn’t come without challenges. Her advice? Stay flexible and keep going. Failure is a part of the journey. “It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be challenging, but always be able to bend. If you need to pivot, do that,” she said. “ If you don’t try it, you won’t know. You can’t be afraid to fail anymore.”
“Those failures taught me what I needed to learn to move forward. And if not for the failure, I wouldn’t have the success.”
Catch new episodes of ‘Mompreneurs’ every week.
Every week, we celebrate beautiful Black entrepreneurs who are simultaneously amazing business moguls and awesome moms. Join host and New York Times bestselling author Nancy Redd as these mompreneurs share their life stories and inspiring advice. Catch new episodes of Mompreneurs every Monday on MadameNoire’s YouTube channel. Or listen to the podcast online on the Urban One Podcast Network.
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