Margy founded Akrete in 2011 with a vision to rally a team of the nation’s top B2B writers, media professionals and marketers who know how to “dive deep” into our industries of focus: financial services, professional services and real estate. Today, the “work where and when it makes sense” model Margy created has shaped a 30-person national team of diverse professionals, many of them working parents and creatives. In fact, when the rest of the world pivoted in 2020, Akrete was already nearly a decade into hybrid work.

Under Margy’s leadership, Akrete has grown to become the #2 independent public relations firm focused on real estate development and finance, according to the O’Dwyers PR firm rankings. The firm serves a client list of well-respected companies such as JLL, KeyBank, BGO, Unispace, Project Management Advisors and others in the financial services, professional services and real estate sectors. 

With 30 years’ experience as a journalist, corporate marketing manager and public relations agency leader, Margy is a trusted advisor to CEOs and senior executives of organizations of many sizes and is also a widely published ghostwriter.  Before founding Akrete, Margy led the Great Lakes office for a New York City-based PR firm as a Senior Vice President and served as Vice President at a boutique PR firm in Chicago. Margy started her career at a national commercial real estate developer, worked in the global marketing group of Cushman & Wakefield, and spent multiple years as a freelance journalist published in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Travel Channel and a wide variety of trade publications.

Margy spends much of her time outside Akrete serving on Boards of Directors. Currently, she serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of SomerCor, one of the nation’s top SBA CDC lenders, and as an Executive Committee Board Director for IMEC, a non-profit focused on manufacturing excellence. She has led multiple Board Governance Committees and has also served on the Board of the Drawbridge Community Revitalization Foundation.

Margy holds a leadership position on the Urban Land Institute’s global Marcom Forum and is a regular guest speaker for organizations such as Alliant Credit Union, the JLL Supplier Diversity Council and others.

Additional professional affiliations have included the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), Vistage, the Forbes Agency Council, Commercial Real Estate Executive Women (CREW), The Goldie Initiative, CoreNet Global, the Editorial Board of Area Development Magazine, and a variety of other community and industry organizations.

Margy lives in Evanston, Illinois near Chicago. She enjoys global travel, particularly throughout the southern hemisphere, and spending time with her family including two adult daughters and a son-in-law. She is researching her family tree that includes the two Adams U.S. presidents as well as a cast of interesting characters such as famed New York City architect John Duncan and his mysterious wife Dora.