As owner and CEO of Arrasmith Promotions, Kim Bradley enjoys using her creativity to find the perfect item to help companies promote their business or event. “We work with a lot of local companies—small businesses and large corporations,” said Kim whose clients include Kroger, Hitachi Tool, Home Depot, and Fifth Third Bank.
Kim wears many hats as CEO of the company, and closing the deal is a big part of her job. “Sales is a challenging place to be, but I deal with people, and I enjoy that,” she said.
While she has the business acumen today to work with the top executives of large corporations, that wasn’t the case when Kim came to the $$Florence Campus in 2000 and enrolled in the administrative office specialist program to help her update her skills after being a stay at home Mom for many years.
“I needed to get familiar with computers again…before I went back into the workforce,” she explained. “With the economy the way that it’s been, I think that education is what’s going to make a difference in someone’s life. How far they want to seek that is up to them, but there are a lot of opportunities out there.”
[img]When she came to National, Kim was somewhat intimidated by getting back into the classroom and working with technology, but she found that her instructors worked patiently with her to give her all the help that she needed. “They didn’t make me feel like I was out of place. They made me feel like ‘you can do this.’ That was huge for me,” she recalled.
After graduating from National, she was hired as an administrative assistant by Wampfler USA, a company that manufactured mobile electrification systems. “The skills that I learned at National really helped me get in,” she said. “Computer skills are definitely what got me the job.”
After working at Wampfler for several years, Kim left the company to open Arrasmith Promotions. Today, as a successful business owner, she is active in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky communities, serving as an ambassador for the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, on the board of NorthKey Community Care, and on the Woman Business Enterprise certification board for the Ohio River Valley Women’s Business Council.
She recently attended the $$Florence Campus’s grand opening celebration and said she’s happy to see that her alma mater is still growing and supporting the educational needs of the community. “Having [National] located right here in the heart of Florence is great because Florence is growing,” Kim said. “You all have stayed around a long time. A lot of [colleges] have come and gone as I’ve watched over the years, but [National has] stayed here. If I can come here and say I went to school here eleven years ago, that says a lot. I think that’s very important.”
A- Kim Bradley is the owner and CEO of Arrasmith Promotions which provides promotional items to national and international companies such as Kroger, Hitatchi Tool, and Home Depot.
B-Kim Bradley (center) is shown at the $$Florence Campus Grand Opening Celebration with fellow members of the Northern Kentucky business community, Matt Guy (left) and Kathy Blake (right).
