Hartford Business Journal: Adams & Knight Principal Jill Adams hasn’t always been in advertising. A very broad variety of experience, from flipping burgers as a high schooler in Kansas City, to flying on Air Force One as a congressman’s assistant, shaped Adams’ career path.

By Laura Schreier

Hartford Business Journal

Staff Writer

10/22/07

Jill Adams’ first job in communications had her hobnobbing with U.S. congressmen and women, receiving visiting dignitaries, flying on Air Force One— a far cry from her previous job slinging burgers in Kansas City, Mo.

Typical of most kids starting out, Adams held a number of unglamorous jobs in high school and college. But as a student in D.C., Adams heard abouta job opening in a California congressman’s office, applied, and shortly after graduation found herself writing press releases and information packets about Rep. Glenn Anderson during the Ronald Reagan administration.

The job included attending events with D.C. politicos, and Adams was once sentas an Anderson representative to a “baptism” ceremony for a submarine in Groton. She went in style, flying on Air Force One, and spent the ceremony sitting behind then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.“As a 24-year-old, that’s pretty exciting,” she said.

Today Adams is president of Avon’s Adams & Knight Advertising, but her path wasn’t a straight one.

Her job on the Hill was one stop in a slightly scattershot career and academic path. In high school she doled out burgers and fries at a family-owned hamburger joint in her hometown in Missouri. Adams was the middleman, relaying orders from the counter to the cooks in the back during packed lunch hours when the line trailed out the door.

“When things got crazy, it was ‘Jill to the middle,’” she said.

She was called upon to do a little of everything in the restaurant, and learned firsthand just how much work it takes to keep a small business running. “When I look back at it, it was a really good way to learn how to run a business,” she said. At the time, Adams wasn’t thinking about the larger business lessons — she was only concerned with how it made her smell like burgers when she’d go out after work.

Smell Of Success

In college, she worked an old-fashioned switchboard for JC Penney in D.C. She sat facing a panel bristling with cords and plugs, moving switches quickly toconnect callers and meanwhile learned more about how to think clearly under pressure. Instead of a line of hungry customers, she had a slew of impatientcallers to deal with.

Adams spent much of her college career trying out a number of work-study jobs and majors, even going pre-med at one point. She settled on an English degree largely because, after dabbling in a number of studies, it was one of the few viable options that would still get her graduated in four years — but it also proved to be a good foundation for the work that would follow, she said.

From her college days, she went straight to the Hill. Hobnobbing aside, she likedworking in communications but didn’t want to stay forever immersed in the D.C. political life. Instead, she lived abroad for awhile, teaching English to businesspeople and schoolchildren in Madrid for about eight months.

As a small-firm employee, Adams also got the chance to do a little copywriting, some account service work, and found that the ad agency life suited her.Eventually, she decided to go to Boston University’s masters program in communications and dove into the advertising business. After working for a Boston ad agency and Monarch Financial Services in Springfield, Mass., she decided to start up her own businesses with her husband, himself an ad man.