Marjorie Young
President and CEO
Marjorie founded Carriage Trade Public Relations® Inc., in 1995. Hers was the first PR firm in the Savannah area to embrace online PR. In 2013, the Savannah Morning News named Carriage Trade PR Small Business of the Year and in 2011, named Marjorie as Savannah’s Community Star. Marjorie also won Entrepreneur of the Year from the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce in 2006.
Marjorie is certified in crisis communications by the Public Relations Society of America. She is the past chair of SCORE, Small Business Chamber and the Small Business Council, and is a graduate of Leadership Southeast Georgia and Leadership Savannah. Current and past boards include SCORE, Rotary, Buy Local, Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Savannah, Hospice Savannah, University of Georgia Small Business Development Center Advisory Boards, Dawn’s Daughter Leadership Academy.
As author of the REPUTATION MATRIX, Marjorie holds frequent PR bootcamps and monthly online coaching webinars that empower business owners and nonprofit organizations to take control of their PR, brand, and message. Marjorie is the founder and the host of OPEN FOR BUSINESS, a show that airs on SGTV. She also founded COMMUNITY HEADLINES™, the local newswire service to the media.
She graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism and a minor in fine arts. Her daughter, Dr. Carol Young, graduated from Georgia Tech with a Ph.D. in Robotics/Artificial Intelligence Engineering in 2019.
Visibility Team Members
CARMEL HEARN
Savannah native Carmel (Garvin) Hearn has been a writer and video producer for more than 30 years and has been a member of Carriage Trade PR's Visibility Team since 2014. Her passion is in radio and television with experience creating content for live national broadcasts, syndicated television, local news, corporate videos and educational programming. Starting out as a part-time TV production crew member while earning a degree in English, Carmel’s career path led her to become a news and weather anchor at WSAV TV in Savannah, then to serve as the City of Savannah’s original cable access coordinator, where she developed and managed the local government access channel. After relocating to Atlanta in 1998, Carmel wrote for the Emmy-nominated Jim Fowler’s Life in the Wild television series and then served as the lead video producer for an Atlanta-based marketing agency, where she also managed national accounts. Today, she produces live content for America’s most trusted TV news network and develops marketing, communications and publicity materials for hometown-to-national clients. In her leisure time, she enjoys writing and participating in theatrical productions. Most of all, she enjoys surf, sand, fishing and having fun with family and friends on the Georgia coast.
BETTY DARBY
Betty is a UGA-trained journalist whose career has pinged back and forth among newspapers, magazines, and marketing. She logged a total of 12 years with daily newspapers, three in Rome and nine in Savannah, working predominantly hard news beats. She also served as managing editor of a business weekly, handled specialty publications for a daily newspaper, and worked as a copyeditor and proofreader for Savannah magazine – work she now continues as a freelancer.
In marketing, she worked for the Savannah public schools for six years, including involvement in the pre-ESPLOST passage of the first successful bond referendum in Chatham County since desegregation. Betty also has worked for two hospitals for a total of eight years, producing magazines and other print materials, assisting with media relations, and planning events and campaigns. Additionally, she has maintained a successful freelance career, sometimes in addition to regular employment and sometimes on a full-time basis. She co-authored the first seven editions of Globe-Pequot’s book “Insider’s Guide to Savannah and Hilton Head Island.” Along with editing and proofreading for clients such as Savannah Morning News’s Beacon, a quarterly magazine, she copyedits individuals’ manuscripts. Her writing appears regularly in Georgia Trend magazine.