We celebrate six up-and-comers, from a chef with all the ingredients of success to a local politician making waves in Annapolis.
Carrie Fox
33, owner of C.Fox Communications
Shortly after Carrie Fox founded C.Fox Communications, she met with several high-profile executives on behalf of Balducci’s, the upscale grocery chain her public relations firm represented.
Just 25 at the time, Fox walked into the meeting confident she could handle any question thrown at her. But there was one she wasn’t expecting: “Is your boss going to be joining you?”
Now 33, the petite woman with the angular bob is no stranger to proving herself in a field of older, more experienced colleagues. She was hired as communications director for Cal and Bill Ripken’s Ripken Baseball during her junior year at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. Two years later, she became a junior associate at Prism Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., a firm co-founded by longtime political strategist Don Foley.
Foley was so impressed by Fox’s “finely honed” business skills and acumen that he now works as a senior counselor for her Silver Spring firm.
Fox founded C.Fox in 2004 while doing contract work for Prism after moving to Hartford, Conn. In 2006, she relocated to Maryland and expanded her firm, netting clients such as AARP and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Fox has focused on providing services for “mission-driven organizations.” Each year, C.Fox donates up to $30,000 in pro bono services to a different area nonprofit.
David Humphries, communications director for Silver Spring-based CHF International, says the relief agency received more media coverage in a year after hiring C.Fox in 2009 than it had in the previous 58 years.
He says Fox has “a serious ability to absorb knowledge quickly and pitch it in a way that’s interesting.”
Fox, who lives in Silver Spring with her husband, Brian, and 2-year-old daughter, Sophia, says it’s really a matter of attitude.
“If you carry yourself with confidence and speak with knowledge and authority,” she says, “no one can break you down.”
