• Columnists

Hope Katz Gibbs, Founder, The Inkandescent Group

PUBLISHER, BE INKANDESCENT MAGAZINE
PRESIDENT, THE INKANDESCENT GROUP, LLC

Prior to founding Inkandescent Public Relations in 2008, Northern Virginia freelance writer Hope Katz Gibbs worked as a newspaper and magazine reporter since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. After studying for her master’s degree in Educational Leadership at The George Washington University, she launched her freelance writing business in 1993.

25 years experience as a journalist —,Hope’s articles have appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Miami Herald, The Costco Connection, The National Press Club’s Wire, and dozens of association, business, education, and general interest magazines, and many alumni publications including her own alma maters, the University of Pennsylvania and The George Washington University. See more on her freelance writing website, www.hopegibbs.com.

Awards — To date, Hope has won two awards for feature writing from the Florida Magazine Association, and six other honors for newsletter writing and design from the National School Public Relations Association. She has been listed in Who’s Who in Media & Communications since 1989, and Who’s Who of American Women since 1993.

Foray into PR — In 2002, she landed a job as the director of communications with the City of Fairfax Schools to help Superintendent George Stepp and the City School Board pass an $86 million bond to rebuild Fairfax High and Lanier Middle School. She launched City Schools Close-Up, an eight-page newsletter filled with articles and photos that helped the community learn more about the good work going on in the schools. The bond passed by 81 percent and Hope began working full-time with the superintendent and architects to coordinate the construction project.

She continues to work with the City Schools today, and in November 2009 her company launched a new website for the School Board: www.cityoffairfaxschools.org.

When the schools construction project was completed in 2006, she began doing PR for the futurist research and consulting firm Social Technologies. Her media outreach efforts helped get the staff onto CBS’ “The Early Show” three times (for reports on the Future of Men, the Future of Youth Happiness, and Helicopter Parents), MSNBC, Fox News, and ABC. The futurists were also quoted regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine, Business Week, TV Week, and others.

The Inkandescent Group, LLC

InkandescentPR — In 2008, Hope founded Inkandescent Public Relations, a PR, publications, media relations, marketing firm that helps small businesses get the visibility they need. Along with her award-winning team, she creates high-end marketing materials, writes and edits press releases, newsletters, and white papers, and works closely with reporters to help get the word out about her clients.

Hope also plans and organizes events, co-writes and ghostwrites books, and maintains her clients’ websites so they are up-to-date and provide an accurate, impressive image. Learn more about Inkandescent Public Relations: www.inkandescentpr.com.

Be Inkandescent Magazine — In January 2010 she launched Be Inkandescent Magazine: The ezine for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. It features columns by her clients and other entrepreneurs, as well as the Entrepreneur of the Month.

Inkandescent Books — Hope is working on developing a book publishing entity for The Inkandescent Group, LLC, which she incorporated in January 2010. The first title, “100 Truly Amazing Women Who Are Changing the World,” will be written by Hope, designed by Michael Gibbs, and photographed by Steve Barrett. Be on the lookout for more information on that title.

View Hope’s published journalism clips www.hopegibbs.com.

Send Hope an email: hope@inkandescentpr.com.

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”

– Alfred Adler

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon

Tolerance and patience should not be read as signs of weakness. They are signs of strength.”

– The Dalai Lama

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

– Corita Kent

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

– Gandi

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

– Audre Lorde

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

Almost anyone can start a community, but it takes real talent and commitment to get people to show up and keep coming back.”

– Andy Sernovitz

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

The best hobbies are the ones that take us furthest from our primary occupation.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”

– Jim Butcher, White Night

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

The goal of Life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature.”

– Joseph Cambell

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

‎Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

– Booker T. Washington

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

– Winston Churchill

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

– Basil King

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

– Voltaire

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

The awakening to the mystery of life is a revolutionary event; in it an old world is destroyed so that a new and better one may take its place.”

– J.J. Van Der Leeuw, The Conquest of Illusion

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

– Christopher Robin to Pooh

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

– John D. Rockefeller

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which obstacles vanish.”

– John Quincy Adams