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My life has been an amazing journey filled with unique experiences and extraordinary people. I graduated from New York City Community College as a trained legal secretary. Perry Mason was my hero and I decided that I would become Della Street.
I never found Perry and wound up working as a secretary on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for eight years. I became assistant to the producer, office manager and back-up production assistant. When the show moved west, I wasn’t ready to leave to New York so I took a job with the Jack Paar Show when he tried to make a comeback. I spent over three years working with Alan King at his production company, King-Hitzig.
Five years later, I gave up my wonderful rent-controlled Tudor City apartment and moved to LA to return to the Tonight Show. After two years, I moved over to the network side of television as NBC-TV’s Director of Creative Services where I supervised numerous public relations campaigns for network programming. During that time I received my BA degree from Antioch College.
Next came several years as Executive in Charge of Talent & Casting for LA’s public television station, KCET-TV. I eventually launched my career in agency public relations and in 1987, I opened Barbara Meltzer & Associates Public Relations and Marketing. My clients have been diverse, but I specialize in all kinds of nonprofit organizations and love to do book publicity. I also work with individuals who are interested in promoting a service or a product.
In 2007, I was appointed by LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky as a Commissioner on the LA County Commission on Aging. Our mission is to advise the supervisors about issues and problems involving the aging population and make recommendations for change. This constantly evolving work has given me the chance to speak about aging and related caregiving issues on national and local television programs such as NBC Nightly News and Today in LA and in articles written for several local newspapers and magazines.
It has become my passion and I have created a new division in my agency that focuses on products, services, outreach and education about and targeting baby boomers and beyond.
I’m now gearing up for my “Third Chapter.”
