Planting Seeds Of Service
PPAI honors the servant leadership of Mark Gilman, CAS, with its H. Ted Olson Humanitarian Award
By Jen Alexander
PPAI’s 2016 recipient of the H. Ted Olson Humanitarian Award is proud to have called just one town his home for nearly all his life. But before Mark Gilman, CAS, became a permanent resident of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, life was a bit nomadic.
“My family came to this area in 1945 at the end of World War II; I was in the eighth grade. Before then, I hadn’t gone to the same school for more than a couple years.” Once his family planted their post-war roots in the Shawnee Mission community, Gilman was comfortably at home.
In 1962, after two years in the Army and graduate school in California, plus a brief stint teaching at San Francisco State College, Gilman returned to Kansas with his wife and high school sweetheart, Nancy, to work at her father’s company, Gill Studios. “Specialty advertising at the time was in a period of robust growth,” he says.
And Gill Studios grew along with it; from Gilman’s earliest days working alongside Forest Gill and an administrative assistant, to the company’s present numbers of nearly 350 employees and 250,000 square feet of operational space. “All that time, I’ve been mainly involved in sales and marketing. I’m nearly 83 and I’m still allowed to come in, and I try not to cause too much trouble. I see myself as representing the shareholders—Nancy, her brothers Bruce and Don, and their kids. The company has been good to me.”
And Gilman, in a lifelong show of gratitude to the community that he joined so many years ago, has passed along that goodness to others. “In the early 1960s, the interstate highways were built to bring people into cities, but they also made it easy for people to leave and come out to the suburbs. Shawnee Mission was the closest Kansas suburb to Kansas City,” Gilman says. Situated in Johnson County, Kansas, Shawnee Mission experienced boom times in the late 1950s and 1960s. With the rush of growth came a rush of community challenges. Simply put, essential community institutions like hospitals, libraries, and schools were lacking. So Gilman got involved.
Gilman’s brother-in-law, Bruce, practiced medicine at what was then known as Shawnee Mission Hospital. In 1966 the hospital held a capital campaign, for which Gilman volunteered. “It’s hard to grow (as a community) when you don’t have good health care,” he says. His volunteer role morphed into a place on the new hospital’s foundation, where Gilman is the last original member from the early campaign days.
Gilman and the other hospital supporters also aided child-care visionary Lee Ann Britain in her mission to assist children with disabilities and their families by providing her space in the new hospital for what is now the Lee Ann Britain Infant Development Center. “Her goal was to prepare these children to go to school. This was what galvanized our foundation.”
The hospital has since become “a force of life in the county,” says Gilman. “It’s one of the largest and most successful in the greater Kansas City area.”
Gilman has also spent many years fueling his passion for arts and the theater by supporting local organizations and his high school’s performing arts department, and by serving in leadership and support positions for area arts groups such as the Missouri Repertory Theater, The Barn Players, the Quality Hill Playhouse and the Carlsen Center at Johnson County Community College.
“For many years I have had my company print and donate posters to the Theatre Department of Shawnee Mission North High School. The artwork for the posters is supplied by the students or their teachers,” says Gilman. “The students have saved at least one copy of almost every poster we have made, and the posters have been stuck on the walls of one of the classrooms of the school. The SM North Theatre Department has won many awards and accolades over the years for the terrific work the students and faculty turn out.”
Gilman’s humanitarian work extends as far into the promotional products industry as it does his hometown. He has served as a PPAI board member and board chair, and supported the Promotional Products Education Foundation. “I worked with Wayne Greenberg when he led PPEF to get the Vincent J. Arena Scholarship started,” says Gilman. “It’s important to me because Vince Arena was a friend. He was very influential in my career within PPAI, and I was able to honor his memory by naming the scholarship for him. It may not have been the first such scholarship, but it did encourage other donors to follow suit.”
Gilman sees his own penchant for helping others reflected by the industry and its members. “I think our industry is tuned into the idea of encouraging charitable activity in the community,” he says. “I’ve always been impressed with the sense of sharing in the industry. And many products and services are actually intended to help market charitable causes.”
While he hesitates to allow others to recognize his own charitable actions, Gilman cites the humanitarian award’s namesake as his reason for accepting the honor. “The reason I said yes was because of Ted Olson. I knew Ted—back in the day when we needed to hire a new [Association] president, it came down to Ted and one other candidate.
“That candidate was polished and articulate, and he had gone out of his way to learn about the industry,” Gilman says. “Ted didn’t profess to know as much, and hadn’t had quite the same experience, but there was a genuine sense about him—of basic honesty and quiet determination. I always thought of Ted as being the consummate servant-leader. He was selected to lead, but he chose to serve.”
Gilman adds, “I don’t know whether I deserve to be called a humanitarian; I’ve witnessed so many people in all aspects of society quietly helping their communities. I don’t know if it’s an American characteristic, or if it’s a unique quality, but if anybody is motivated in the least to serve, it doesn’t take a lot of money—it does take a little time, but everything counts and every little bit helps.”
The Awards Presentation
PPAI will honor all the award winners at the Chairman’s Leadership Dinner during The PPAI Expo. Purchase tickets when you register for the Expo at www.ppai.org/expo.
Monday, January 11
6:30 – 9:30 pm
Mandalay Bay Convention Center Ballroom – Level 2
Las Vegas, Nevada
Advance tickets: $125 members/$175 nonmembers
On-site tickets: $150 members/$200 nonmembers
