You Gotta Have Martz: Local CEO Gives Her All to the Community

By Kevin Downey

Carrie Martz is always looking out for someone else, whether it’s her two grown children, employees at the company she founded 30 years ago, or the many charitable organizations to which she has dedicated her time and energy for many years.

Generosity like Martz’s has been more challenging than ever during the past few years, as the grim economy has made it nearly impossible for many small companies to keep their doors open. Martz, CEO and founder of marketing firm the Martz Agency in north Scottsdale, has kept her company open amidst extraordinarily challenging conditions. She simply has too many people counting on her to let her company falter. And that is Martz’s style: achieving goals that seem out of reach.

In 1980, when she was only 24 years old and had graduated from ASU, Martz started her own company. She didn’t exactly know how to do that, although she’d grown up watching her father run a food distribution company in Nebraska.

“I wish I could say starting a business was a calculated move, but it wasn’t,” Martz says. “I was working in the sales promotion business. I generated so much business for [my boss] that he couldn’t keep up. He told me, ‘I think you’d make your own best boss.’ And I said, ‘How do I do that?’”

She headed to downtown Phoenix the next morning to register her business, but not without trepidation.

“Fear drives me,” she says. “It has my whole life. But I don’t let fear paralyze me. I use it.”

She also made a major sacrifice to start her company.

“My biggest financial investment to start the company was buying business cards and letterhead,” she says. “I had a black Mustang and sold it so I could buy the business cards.”

Martz hit the ground running. She brought with her a few clients from her former employer and lured in a few more. Her company handled marketing for companies around the Valley. Shortly after launching her agency, she landed her first big piece of new business: one of the area’s first semiconductor companies.

“It was a very large account, so I just studied up and figured out how to do what they wanted me to do,” Martz says. “And I started hiring people.”

Martz maintains that the key to her company’s success is paying attention to the needs of others. It’s an approach to business she has maintained all these years. And it’s a style that she uses in helping charitable organizations. Over the years, Martz has been involved with several charities, including some that she founded. One of them bears the quirky name of the Women Who Don’t Play Golf Organization (WWDPGO). This group has raised more than $100,000 for female-focused charities. Home of Miracles has raised some $8 million for local children’s hospitals. Martz also sits on the board of Citizenship Counts and sat on the board of the Phoenix Suns Charities for fourteen years. She’s now overseeing the Suns gala in March.

Martz’s credits her grandmother with sparking her interest in charitable action.

“My grandmother was always volunteering her time for charities,” says Martz. “She had very little, but what she had, she gave. I also love the creativity that nonprofit opportunities bring. It’s a release for me.”

“Giving back to our community gives more back to those who give than to those who receive,” says Martz.