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In the past few years, Jennifer Cortner ’85 has overseen the evolution of EFX Media in Arlington, Va., from a video production company to a full-service marketing and media communications agency with 35 employees and $6 million in annual revenue. The company has a mix of corporate, trade association, and federal government clients, including AOL, Sallie Mae, ExxonMobil, American Red Cross, and U.S. Postal Service.
“As part of our strategic growth plan, we hired several seasoned creative and marketing executives who have been a tremendous asset to our team,” she says. “We’ve focused our business on a few key areas: internal corporate communications, issue advocacy communications, and online consumer advertising.”
The company’s strength in video and film production is working to its advantage with the explosion in popularity of online video; EFX is working with several large corporations in launching online television and video networks. It has developed an online streaming video library for AOL that features more than 2,000 broadcast news clips used on a daily basis for AOL’s public relations and internal communications.
“We’re also pitching several social issue documentaries for both broadcast and online distribution,” adds Cortner, whose husband, Bruce Scallon, who is senior vice president and creative director.
Knowing what the client wants and meeting it within budget is 90 percent of her task, she says.
“Today many people think you can do anything with the press of a button, so we have to manage expectations,” she says. “We sit in on creative sessions to mediate, seeing that the product is meeting the client’s needs and budget.”
Strong on people skills, Cortner divides the top job with chief executive officer Jim Franco, running “the front of the store” while he handles the back — such tasks as taxes, payroll, and equipment leases.
“We have figured out what our strengths are,” she says.
When it opened in 1983, EFX created animated graphics and videos used by the broadcast industry. It also served the military market, showing how President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was intended to work, and animated complex procedures for the medical world.
When Cortner joined EFX in 1987 as its first sales account executive, women were relatively rare in the field. She faced challenges from male clients who would try to trip her up with technical terms.
“But I chuckle about that now,” she says. “Many clients are women.”
Cortner’s position requires technical know-how amid constant change, which she would not have predicted to be a career requirement while majoring in international affairs and French.
“My mother always marvels at this — that her daughter is in a highly skilled technical field,” she says. “But even if I were starting over, I would do everything the same way. I love the whole liberal-arts educational experience.”
Lafayette’s international affairs program helped provide diplomatic skills vital in business.
“I exercise diplomacy every day, just not in the political area,” Cortner says. “I wouldn’t have changed my major for the world. It taught me to be a critical thinker, to write well, and gave me a global perspective – all attributes that have served me well in my career thus far.”
Last year, she received a Woman of Vision award from Women in Film and Video, honored at a gala alongside Carrie Fisher and Brooke Johnson, president of the Food Network. WIFV honors several Washington women as well as nationally recognized women in the film and television industry for their outstanding leadership in the film and television industry and in their own communities.
Cortner recently was named to the Board of Directors of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, which provides financial education and work-life training programs to lower-income, women-headed families. EFX provides pro-bono work to the foundation, as well as to Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia.
Cortner has had a strong case of wanderlust ever since she lived in Germany for three years as an Army brat and spent a semester in Paris.
“This summer, I traveled with my husband and some friends on a two-week trip to London and Prague,” she notes. “In the past couple years, we’ve had the pleasure of traveling to Italy, Spain, and Holland. I’m itching to go back to Asia, especially China and Hong Kong. I traveled there in 1984 with Lafayette’s winter break abroad program. It would be so interesting to compare China and Hong Kong today versus 20 years ago.”
Cortner says she also enjoys a great group of friends in Washington, along with skiing in New England, Colorado, and Utah. She is an avid cyclist and member of Chics in Flics, a group of women who dine out and watch films together.
Keeping her life in balance is important to Cortner as she looks ahead to EFX’s and her own next steps. She hopes eventually to work fewer hours, easing into a consulting role and grooming young staff members “to become the next us.”
“We’re at a crossroads. In a perfect world, we would like to still be involved, but turn over the day-to-day [operations] to younger people,” Cortner says. “But delegating is hard. I can’t imagine not being involved for the next 10 years.”