Renaissance: A person who has found success in multiple types of business ventures in widely different fields

If a more fitting description than Renaissance woman exists for the entrepreneur and community champion Sheila Ogle, we couldn’t find it. Her expertise in business, preservation and community service have left a mark on the Cary community. Although, she won’t claim to always be the expert. “My strength is visioning and seeing the big picture. I’m not a big detail person,” Ogle admits.

Great vision was certainly necessary for Ogle as she explored multiple business and community ventures: starting her advertising firm Media Research Planning and Placement Inc. 24 years ago; renovating the Guess-White-Ogle House — a Cary Historic Landmark; converting The Matthews House into a wedding venue and adding a catering company; and helping to start Integrated Clinical Trial Services. Ogle also served as one of the founders of The Cary Community Foundation and Crescent State Bank.

Ogle considers her involvement in the community as an extension of her businesses. “You don’t have to segregate your work that you’re doing in the community from your business work. It all just fits together,” she said. Ogle found that business networking and serving on nonprofit boards and community foundations helped her build relationships and gave her exposure that turned into success for MRPP. “You never know when you’re going to get a client. It could be years down the road when somebody remembers your name,” said Ogle.

Across all the industries in which she has her hand — advertising, events and catering, to name a few — Ogle learned to seek out the advice of others. “I think it really shows strength of character when you admit that you don’t know something, and you have the confidence in yourself to be able to take advice and get knowledge from somebody else,” she said.

Ogle applied this lesson at MRPP, passing along what she knows to her staff and letting them grow and flourish. “It takes all kinds of people to make a business or to make a community. And you have to have the people with vision, and you have to have the people to accomplish that vision. I found out that if you surround yourself with people that can help you accomplish that vision it makes them look good and it makes you look good.”

Ogle currently serves on the Executive Committee for the National Veterans Freedom Park, a memorial planned for Cary, and on the board for The Academy for Leadership Excellence, a ministry of the Methodist Church aimed at developing community leaders. “I’ll never retire, but there are just so many things in the community that I really enjoy doing, and I’d like to have more time to do that.”