Ellen Temple has been named the 2009 Ralph W. Steen Memorial East Texan of the Year. The 2008 recipient of the award, former Woodville Mayor, Jimmie Cooley, made the announcement at the DETCOG annual membership meeting Thursday in Lufkin.

"There is one irrefutable fact about Ellen - She loves Deep East Texas," said Cooley. "She is a person who has strived to continuously improve the lives of those around her. She has strong principals and a commitment to serve and make a difference in the community. All of her adult life has been devoted to efforts for the region and the state," continued Cooley.

"To return to Leadership America in a Senior Advisor role is an unexpected joy for me.

The opportunity to work with younger women leaders at The Museum to influence and shape a program to meet the expectations and needs of a new generation of women will be educational, exhilarating, and exciting for me.

The world is vastly different place than it was 21 years ago when Leadership America arrived on the scene in 1988. The leadership landscape is much broader—women leaders emerge at far younger ages, and thankfully, they are more diverse in terms of cultural backgrounds, interests, academic disciplines, and ethnicity.

So the challenge is before us — to design programs that will prepare the new woman leader to be agile, flexible, knowledgeable, and responsive as she conducts business in the marketplace, influences policy in the halls of legislatures, and gives fresh focus to a variety of not-for-profit endeavors in varied arenas around the globe."

I was a Regional Sales Manager at OxyChem searching for a new career position that would further my marketing experience and open doors of opportunity to continue to move up the ladder. The Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News business section published 2 full pages about Quaker State Motor Oil Corp moving their corporate headquarters from Oil City, PA to Dallas. As I read the article I decided this company would be a great target for me to pursue.

I read the article several times and chose two remarks the new CEO had made that I felt pertained to my background. I wrote a cover letter addressing those remarks and attached my resume. I realized I needed to stand out among the hordes of people applying for new jobs and was trying to come up with something very different. The DMNews article was written with a celebratory slant since the company was having a lot of success moving in a new direction. So, when people celebrate they drink champagne. I wrapped my resume and cover letter around a bottle of champagne, tied it with a gold ribbon and attached a hand written note that said, "While you are sipping this champagne celebrating your success at Quaker State would you please take a moment to read my resume I would like to work for your company." I took the champagne in a box addressed to the CEO to the post office and sent it registered mail. Two days later I received a phone call from the SVP HR, we set an interview, and a month later (after three more interviews) I was the new marketing manager for the commercial oil products.

I am incredibly grateful to have worked at Quaker State because of the marketing experiences, skills and successes it brought to me as well as raising my confidence and acumen in two fields I love dearly, marketing and sales. I have used other similar tactics to stand out in a crowd of people applying for jobs, contracts, etc and been very successful with it. I would encourage everyone to do everything possible to constructively showcase their talents, expertise and abilities.