By Seth Daniel
Last Thursday, the Castle Group in the Navy Yard celebrated 20 years as a business, a woman-owned business at that, and to celebrate the achievement, Mayor Martin Walsh proclaimed it ‘Castle Group Day’ in Boston.
“That means they can do whatever they want until midnight, which gives them a little bit of time,” said Mayor Walsh with a laugh at about 6 p.m. on Thursday.
The Castle Group is a public relations firm that is owned by Wendy Spivak and Sandy Lish, and they have occupied their luxurious office on Third Street in the Navy Yard for the past nine years.
“This company has done some remarkable and special things for the City and I thank you,” said the mayor. “They have excellent clients. We’ve landed some great new companies in Boston, and we’re excited to have those new companies. But we also acknowledge the companies that have been around for awhile. In hard times, it’s the companies that have been around for 20 years that we fall back on.”
Mayor Walsh and Castle Group owners also used the star-studded anniversary party to draw attention to efforts by the City to promote women-owned businesses. Certainly, there are still challenges for women starting their businesses, but Walsh said with trailblazers like Spivak and Lish, a lot has been learned.
“There are a lot more women-owned businesses than there were just 25 years ago,” he said. “Still we have to acknowledge women face a lot of obstacles even today. That’s why we started the Office of Women’s Advancement. There’s a whole different toolbox we can use. This program addresses the disparity women have in pay compared to men. We hope to work with 85,000 women over five years through seminars. We find women often won’t advocate for more money. We’re helping them do that.”
The Castle Group leverages its Boston connections and global reach to create communications strategies that deliver business results, with an emphasis on PR, events management, crisis communications and digital media. With a client roster that includes Fortune 500, high-growth start-ups, privately held, higher education and healthcare clients, Castle is supremely skilled at navigating complex organizations and surfacing unique ways to powerfully deliver clients’ messages. A certified women-owned business, the firm is a member of the Public Relations Global Network, 50 exclusively selected affiliates representing the world’s major media markets. The Castle Group also was recently named number four on the 2016 Boston Business Journal Best Places to Work list in the 20-49 employees category.