Success and ambition are the two adjectives that describe go-getter, Carrie Welch. Starting her own public relations company, Little Green Pickle, WSU Vancouver’s new integrated strategic communication professor, is a prime example of how overcoming obstacles and taking leaps of faith can manifest incredible opportunities.
Founded in 2011, Little Green Pickle is a PR company based in Portland, Oregon. Welch’s company provides services such as branding and marketing to food-related brands, which helps grow their presence and influence within the public eye. Before launching her company, Welch previously worked in the food sector of PR for over 10 years. Once she finished her degree, she originally wanted to become a journalist, but her admiration for PR and media skewed her in a different direction. With talent, a bit of luck and keeping her fingers crossed, Welch landed a position as a PR assistant at the world-renowned cable channel, Food Network.
“I loved media and went to New York University for my undergrad and got my communications degree there. Originally, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. However, my student loans prevented that from happening,” Welch said.
“When I landed at the Food Network on a wing and a prayer, it felt like I just won the graduate lottery.” – Carrie Welch
Trekking up the ladder, Welch established groundbreaking shows such as “Iron Chef” and “30-minute meals”, and media counseled several celebrities including Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri. Being promoted to vice president of PR at the age of 29, Welch had a thirst for knowledge and took it upon herself to learn everything she could about the industry.
“I didn’t leave a stone unturned there. I read all the mail that came in, I read all the magazines that we were subscribed to. I took it upon myself to take on new projects and organize things, prove myself in ways that are great when you’re young,” Welch explained.
(Emily Baumann/The VanCougar)
After co-starting a charitable program called Good Food Garden, which partnered with Food Network to establish teaching gardens in underserved communities, ratings began to decrease, and the project was defunded. However, soon after, Welch left on a high note and moved across the country with her wife and two children. She then set out to discover the ‘promised land of Portland’ with her passionate dreams to gain experience in the food industry, and one day, to open her own restaurant.
“I [was serving] a private dining room at the restaurant [Wildwood] that I worked at in Portland. I wasn’t a good server. I had tables fall over during service with full glassware, plates, silverware just on the ground. I had never failed at anything before. I had never had something go that wrong. I was showing up to work every day hating it and saying, ‘this isn’t for me,’” Welch stated. “I wanted to learn from the inside out and make sure that I was on the right path. Very quickly, I realized I was not.”
After quitting her job as a server, Welch pivoted back to her original roots, offering to do PR for Wildwood. Creating a limited liability company that worked with the restaurant, Welch chose the title “Little Green Pickle” as a joke, but the name stuck and the floodgates for founding her own PR business opened.
Welch continued to run Little Green Pickle for several years, but once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., she encountered a paradigm shift. Traveling back in time, she read through her old journal entries that date back to 2005, and in those moments, Welch truly discovered the career path she wanted to pursue next: teaching at WSU Vancouver.
“I went back through all my journals when the pandemic hit, and I decided to read through what young Carrie had to say to me. It turns out she wanted to be a college professor. They were journals from 2005, 2007, 2012. I hadn’t seen that. That was a real dream that I really wanted to do,” Welch said. “It took the pandemic to really slow my life down and stop running at 100 miles an hour to see that there was something else for me, and it was teaching.”
Now, bringing her expertise and personal experiences to the classroom, Welch hopes to teach students the foundations, models and theories of PR. When asked what advice she would give to VanCougs wanting to try something new, Welch says to aim high and keep your options open.
“We hold ourselves back by thinking that we can’t afford to be [in the profession we want to be in]. … Granted, there’s a whole lot of privilege that comes with this kind of talk. But if you have the means to do it, you should do it, and try,” Welch stated. “I got lucky and landed [at Food Network] right out of school, but who knows where you’ll get lucky and land if you open up your possibilities. The possibilities are kind of infinite. If you narrow down to one thing right away, you’re pigeonholing yourself.”
As Welch flourishes in her new career, teaching her first class on campus, she aspires to become an asset to students and graduates as they pave their own paths in the world of communication.
Emily is a senior studying integrated strategic communication at WSU Vancouver.