Olaf Growald
A press release from September of last year announced the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce had hired Angela Hall as its new vice president of marketing. According to the release, the role would “serve as the leading voice of business in the nation’s fastest-growing city.”
First thoughts: Sounds like one heck of a crucial job.
From putting on events to gathering content for newsletters to interacting with members and agencies, Hall’s main charge is finding and effectively communicating the right message, which is key to the mission of the Fort Worth Chamber: to be the city’s biggest advocate for local businesses.
“It’s pretty important that someone in my position be able to actually get their hands dirty with planning events or writing articles or looking at the long-term marketing effects,” Hall says. “[Chamber president] Steve Montgomery, my boss, is often quoted as saying, ‘We have a small but mighty team,’ which is true. We turn out a lot of stuff for a small team.”
Hall grew up in Grand Prairie, that I-30-adjacent mid-city, where she says her family is deeply rooted. Initially electing not to venture far from home, Hall went to the University of Texas at Arlington, where she started out a chemistry major. But the subject, and its career opportunities, didn’t quite align with Hall’s extroverted ways.
“Even in high school, I would sign up to volunteer to plan different events for the student council and for the band,” she says. “So, I took a career aptitude test at UTA and it said, you should be in business and you should own your own business. And I was like, okay, I have no idea what that looks like”
After taking a slate of business courses, she landed on marketing as the one she “hated the least.” Few decision-making methods are more effective, and she wound up loving it.
Hall would then do the life-in-my-20s thing: graduate college, start work, get married, have kids, and check out another city for a while. She moved to Madison — “the Austin of Wisconsin,” as she puts it — where she’d double down on the events and experiences aspect of marketing and launched her own business.
“I focused mostly on weddings,” Hall says, “but I did do a variety of corporate events, and then I got some full-time jobs, planning festivals and fundraisers and things like that.”
She'd move back to the metroplex and receive her MBA at SMU. What followed were jobs in a hodgepodge of industries that have proven helpful in her role with the Chamber — commercial real estate, healthcare, marketing for a consulting firm.
“I kind of consider myself a marketing generalist at this point because I've worked in a lot of different industries, but a lot of the skills transfer as far as understanding Fort Worth,” Hall says. “I think that's probably my biggest skillset is understanding the business climate and how to market to Fort Worth.”
And what makes Fort Worth so different?
“It’s more personal,” Hall says. “I did a lot of marketing and Dallas, and it’s more transactional (there). In Fort Worth, as anybody who’s been here longer than five minutes can tell you, it’s ‘Where did you go to school?’ ‘What nonprofits are you serving on?’ People have a real pride about their relationship with Fort Worth. Whether it's a long one or a short one, they're always proud of it.”