Lisa LaBelle

My story begins sometime around my 1st Grade year at Amy M.'s house. The song on the radio was AC/DC's "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)". The station was WRIF. I clearly remember looking at her lips singing the song word for word. I went home and the radio became my new best friend. I listened. And listened. And listened some more.

Fast-forward (no pun) to 6th Grade and I was calling up WHYT 96.3 "Hot Hits" about 10 times a day begging for a job answering the request lines. At night I was tuned into The Electrifying Mojo "Landing the Mother Ship" on JLB. Fast-forward again and I found myself at MSU where I walked intostudent radio and I knew I was home.

Promotions with Virgin Records, Programming at Q106 in Lansing, On-Air anMD at IMPACT Radio, editing in the audio lab while paying my way through school working at Landshark as a waitress (I probably over-served you at some point).

All that radio experience got me a gig in National Sales working for McGavren Guild Radio (a division of Interep Radio) I worked as an assistaI learned more from Andy in 13 weeks than I did in 4 years at college. From there, Jim Watts hired me as an AE in the fall of 1994 for D&R Radio (another division of Interep). I knew, once again, I was home.

I started getting restless after a few years and wanted to excel further into management – Jim (my boss) wasn't going anywhere and it just so Fox2 TV had an opening. Although I learned a lot, I missed radio.

McGavren Guild Radio called and said they were looking for a manager so I went back to Interep to manage the Detroit office. I was back there for about 4 years and then mergers started happening. It was time to say good-bye to Interep.

I started in local radio in 2004 with WJLB-FM. I loved how I could control my destiny and loved seeing results for new clients.

A few minor personal complications came into my life a few years later and I had an opportunity to work from home as a contractor for a year selling AOL and Yahoo! Radio. This was very new to people as I was virtually starting from scratch again to explain the concept of listeners using radio the same way but are just listening from a different box (a computer – as if I needed to spell it out). I was very excited to sell this new opportunity but AE's and Planners at agencies just weren't grasping it, yet. "Where do the budgets come from," they'd ask? "Radio or online?" It was a mystery nobody was ready to solve a