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Steve Toms has more than 40 years of experience
delivering quality
marketing communications expertise
Steve Toms is fortunate
to work with a select and growing family
of clients
and
academic institutions that
appreciate quality
marketing communications.
This year, he celebrates having taught
more than 5.000 undergraduate
and graduate students.
They consistently rate him in the top 1% of top/best professors in their study
programs.
Steve works with all types of organizations,
from non-profit institutions
to worldwide
multi-national corporations. From a regional chain of Mexican
restaurants to the largest
worldwide provider of corporate aviation services.
Seminars develop
critical thinking skills
 Steve successfully
integrates proven marketing strategies
with innovative
communications.
Client seminars and classroom instruction
utilize the
latest computer and presentation technologies.
His PowerPoint Master Classes show others
how to structure and deliver information to keep
audiences turned on, and tuned in..
Currently, he is working in several
departments
at MD Anderson Cancer Center, coaching
faculty
and students how to better organize
and present
complex research data. He's a recurring
lecturer
on behalf of the MD Anderson Postdoc Association.
Steve also consults with the Houston
Airport System,
providing "best practices" in oral and written communication,
and input on branding strategies.
He currently serves on the faculties of
several universities
and teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
He is also a frequent
speaker at local, state, and
national conferences.
Business and education require
a global perspective
Steve has a true grasp of what it takes to do business
abroad.
He holds a Diploma of
Hispanic Studies from the University of Barcelona (Spain),
a Masters of
International Management from the American Graduate School (Arizona),
and post-graduate studies at the University of New South Wales in
Sydney, Australia.
His undergraduate
double major at The Ohio State University was Spanish
and Communications.
During his senior year, he worked as a producer/director for instructional television.
He has taught English and marketing to
visiting government dignitaries, businesses, and student
groups from Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, Japan, Spain,
France, China, and Scotland.
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question?
To build a quality academic
program,
you have to recruit the best students
Steve initiated and grew an undergraduate marketing
degree program
at one of Houston's
most prestigious
private universities.
Working closely with a faculty
colleague, he researched
equivalency courses at local
community
colleges and
designed custom 2+2 Program brochures
for each
college,
making it easy for students to transfer into his
program.
When Steve switched to part-time teaching to
pursue
full-time
consulting,
his undergraduate
marketing major
was the
fastest-growing campus
program.
Steve is currently a communications coach
for the
University of Texas MBA+ Program in Austin, Dallas,
and Houston.
He shares PowerPoint skills and tips on
his website,
and at campus-sponsored workshops.
From ad
pro to successful entrepreneur
Steve has been fortunate
to work with top advertising agencies in Chicago,
Dallas,
Houston,
and Columbus (Ohio).
For more than a decade,
he worked
on packaged goods and service industry accounts,
such as the Ohio State Fair, United Airlines, Kentucky Fried Chicken,
and Phillips Petroleum.
In 1991, he formed
ProComm, a consultancy dedicated to the fine art of
business communications. After 13 successful years, he now operates
under stevetoms.net.
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question?
There are no rewards for efforts,
only for results
Steve feels that
one of most challenging aspects
of working with first-time clients
and new students is overcoming a resistance to change.
A simple axiom says: If you do what you
did, you'll get what you got. To that, Steve adds:
Less is more, but presentation matters most.
Steve has the
ability to break down barriers keeping others
from realizing their true potential.
He believes that when you
begin communicating from the point of view of your reader or audience,
a major shift takes place.
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At the start of the Clinton
Administration,
the Associated Press ran a story
featuring the official
postcard of Socks,
the presidential cat (shown here).
Steve
noted
a punctuation error
and wrote
a short note to The White House.
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STEVE
TOMS
“Is there a remote
possibility that your printer erred
in placing the end quotation marks for 'First Cat'?
There are situations when they should be placed inside,
such as the question mark above. In this case, invoke
the ProComm axiom whenever quotations appear on either
side of a period or comma: When in doubt, put them out.
That way, your client's response will be ‘purr-fect.’” |
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About
a week later, Steve got a call
from
White House Communications
Advisor Roger Goldblatt,
thanking him
for assistance in correcting
the error.
For
the remainder of Clinton's presidency,
Socks sent grammatically-correct
postcards (shown here).
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Postscript:
On February 20,
2009, Socks passed away. He
was 18 years old (almost 88 in human years).
Socks had moved into the
Maryland home of Betty Currie, President Clinton's
personal
secretary after the Clintons left the White House in 2001.
We
know Ms. Currie gave Socks much love
and a great home, and trust
the posting above keeps alive
the tremendous joy that Socks gave to those who wrote to him. |
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