With a career that spans more than 40 years, Pat McGrew has become a trusted consultant to the print and communications industries. Starting in the print industry at the age of 13, Pat’s career has taken her from the shop floor to senior roles at global firms like Kodak and HP. Passionate about workflow optimization and digital print technologies, she now helps clients navigate the evolving landscape of the print industry with strategic insights and practical solutions. As Managing Director of McGrewGroup, Pat McGrew offers her extensive expertise in guiding companies across the print, marketing, and technology sectors toward greater efficiency and innovation.
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Chris Santomassimo: I am really excited today to host Pat McGrew on the podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Pat!
Well, just so everyone knows—I mean anybody in print and packaging knows Pat, for sure—-but just to make it official: Pat is the president of the McGrew Group and she’s also the managing director of Girls Who Print. And I think the the main focus of our chat today is going to be about training and workforce. So let’s take it away.
Pat McGrew: So McGrew group is a product of COVID. Remember COVID?
Chris Santomassimo: [laughs] It’s in my rearview mirror, Pat. I don’t even like to talk about it anymore.
Pat McGrew: So McGrew Group as an entity has existed for 20 years but it was always sort of a side thing and I just did private projects for people when they needed them. Then COVID hit and I found myself no longer employed.
So I hung my shingle out and started to look for a the niche that I could can hang on—and what most people know me for is sharing and educating and providing resources. So I started doing a lot of content creation and strategy reviews and product triage for people who knew me, which kind of turned into all the print and software vendors I know.
A few months later into that adventure, one of the people who worked with me at the other company was also no longer employed due to COVID, and so we teamed up. Together we started looking at what the big gaps were in the print industry. We decided to do a bunch of bite-sized podcasts on industry education to help people who didn’t know the difference between inkjet and toner, but they just got their first job in print and now, all of a sudden they’re expected to be experts, right? This eventually became the Print University, which we licensed in 2021.
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