Dowling and Steever Reach 20 Years!

Congratulations for 20 years of excellence to Paulsen’s vice president, creative services, Mike Dowling, and to Paulsen’s vice president, digital services, Sara Steever. It’s a milestone not heard of very often in the agency world, and this year we are honored to celebrate this occasion twice!

Mike Dowling joined Paulsen in 1991 from a prominent printing company located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He had an amazing combination of talents including art direction, design, illustration and print production. Computers were just beginning to revolutionize the graphic arts industry. Mike says he had no choice but to learn as much as he could—as fast as he could—about the new design software programs that were taking over the business.

And learn he did, becoming one of the very best art directors/graphic designers in the Midwest today. Mike’s logo designs, photo direction, ad layouts and illustrations have given our clients an important competitive edge with advertising materials that stand out from the crowd. Many of the advertising awards for creative excellence won by Paulsen Marketing on behalf of our clients are attributed to Mike’s remarkable talent and ability.

Mike is a husband, father of three successful sons and recently a grandfather! He also has a competitive side including holding the state bench-press weightlifting record in South Dakota for his age group. Not bad, Grandpa Mike!

Sara Steever joined the agency on June 1, 1991, after working as an art director with another agency in Sioux Falls. She was raised on a family farm in South Dakota and earned her fine arts degree from the University of South Dakota.

It was in early 1995 when the Internet was all the buzz in the advertising world that Sara stepped forward and offered to learn everything she could about it. She believed the future belonged to agencies that embraced the World Wide Web and all it had to offer.

For the past 15 years Sara has been relentless in her pursuit to make Paulsen Marketing a leading agency in the digital world. She reads everything she can get her hands on, attends seminars and webinars, and absorbs anything new in the digital space. She’s served as speaker for several NAMA chapter meetings, addressing digital and social media topics. And she has authored several articles for Agri Marketing magazine relating to online topics.

She proactively asks, “Where’s the digital component?” for every client campaign or new business presentation here at Paulsen Marketing. And more recently, she’s played a key role in researching, writing and distributing several of our agency’s recent thought papers that have had a tremendous response from the agri-marketing community.

Our thanks go out to both Mike and Sara for 20 years of excellence, and for caring so much about this agency, our employees, our clients and the work we produce.