Only sixteen dancers were chosen when it was all over. This is the opening line of a recently finished short story I’ve written titled The Audition. It is about my experiences auditioning for, and working on, The Jackie Gleason Television Show in the early 1960s in New York City. How fortunate I was to have survived the ordeal of what was an arduous audition process, for my years on this now historical national television show paid for my studies at The Actor’s Studio, which was the primary reason I had come to New York.  Well…that was over 45 years ago!

Today, I am the founder and managing principal of Lee Anne Morgan & Partners, a client and agency advocacy. I founded LAM&P to provide personalized, custom services in support of marketers and agencies ‘working better together’. I continue as an important strategic alliance for the premier firm, MorganAnderson Consulting, which I co-founded 20 years ago with my then partner, Arthur Anderson. And, MorganAnderson Consulting remains an important strategic alliance for LAM&P.

As the opening paragraph discloses, I trained at the Actors Studio and was a June Taylor Dancer. But from the performing arts to advertising?  Why not? To me it was a natural transition!

My first job in advertising was at Ogilvy & Mather in media and then in account management. I had long and deep experiences with advertising agencies including executive positions at Dancer Fitzgerald (Saatchi) and Ketchum as well as management consulting. My senior executive agency experience focused on the development of the first formalized (and computerized) new business departments at agencies.

Later, my management consulting experience centered on Agency Screening, Search and Selection, the development and implementation of Client/Agency Retention Programs, and now for the agency community, advocacy and advice on their new business strategies and processes, and client retention. All of my work is grounded in my 20 years of pioneering and establishing “best practices” in marketing communications management consulting.

My professional and creative endeavors are fully integrated  today, which includes a life-long interest in performing and fine arts.  My art studio, Beginner's Mind Studio resides in Catskill, NY,  the historic home of the Hudson River School painters.  I exhibit my painting and photography. For more on my art work, please visit leeannemorgan.com.

I live and work from my home, gallery and art studio in Catskill, New York with my two dogs: Charlie, a nine-year old Shih-Tzu who is an extravaganza of black and white fur and a female Peke-a-Poo, Sydney, a seven-pound terrorist on four legs.

I love all of my work whether advocacy advisor, creating art, living ‘now’- it is what has been given to me to do and represents the “practice” of life. 

I leave you with this favorite quote:

“I believe we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated, precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shapes of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an Athlete of God — practice means to perform over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desires. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”

~Martha Graham