Pam Athan's path into print started with an elective class in high school and a teacher who ran an actual print business out of his classroom. She was making business cards and memo pads at 16, learning to strip negatives and register plates, and spending every free period she had in that shop. From there came Farmingdale College, then RIT for a bachelor's in printing management and sciences, and a career that took her through labels, gravure, flexo, QC, press approvals in New Jersey and Baltimore, cosmetics boxes on Long Island, and eventually to North Carolina.

Today, Pam is the account executive for print and marketing at Universal Printing — a 40-year-old family-owned shop in Durham that does everything from brochures to clinical trial kitting to custom e-commerce storefronts for universities and hospitals. What keeps her going after all these years? The fact that no two days are the same. She talks about the real meaning of showing up for clients, how knowing print production makes her a better salesperson, why she wishes she'd found her confidence sooner, and what she tells the younger women she's mentoring now. Good conversation. Lots of ink.

1:00 — Welcome and Introduction
1:45 — What Universal Printing Does (and Yes, That Includes Clinical Trials)
4:15 — How Pam's Print Career Started at Age 16
6:30 — The Teacher Who Changed Everything: Mr. Piven
8:00 — Early Career: Labels, Gravure, and Running QC in New Jersey
9:45 — RIT, the Flexo Lab, and Falling in Love with Pre-Press
16:00 — What Keeps Her Energized After Decades in Print
18:30 — Selling Digital vs. Offset and Why Knowing Both Matters
22:30 — The Case for Print in a World Drowning in Digital Noise
26:30 — Mentorship, Paying It Forward, and Teaching Clients the Craft
32:00 — Advice to Her Younger Self: Be Bold, Take the Wheel