Our Story

Pamela Thompson Smith
Founder/CEO of Smith Ink, LLC

Hey, there!

I’m Pamela Thompson Smith – “Pam” to most – the founder/CEO of Smith Ink, LLC.

Based in Atlanta, I write, edit and design publications and web content for academia, authors, corporations, nonprofits, pro sports teams, small businesses … just about anyone who wants a well-crafted message. I also have created “Journey,” encouragement greeting cards for women with breast cancer.

Blessed to have writing as my passion and profession, I worked nearly 25 years in communications.

But like lightning, a major turning point rattled my life.

I found myself lying on my doctor’s examining table in 2000, awaiting a biopsy to determine whether I had breast cancer. I promised God if the news was unfavorable, I would quit my job and do what I really wanted. His response? Why wait for the news to be bad to live the life I want you to live. So, with a negative biopsy and an idea to develop breast cancer greeting cards, I faithfully created Smith Ink in 2001.

Working in corporate America and the nonprofit realm helped prepare me for entrepreneurship. My experience includes being publications manager at The Carter Center in Atlanta, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn Carter. My responsibilities included overseeing a comprehensive plan of writing, editing, designing and coordinating more than 50 internal and external publications about the center’s peace and health programs.

I also was a vice president in Communication Services at Bank of America in Atlanta. My work as managing editor included coordinating many of the company’s employee publications, writing speeches for bank executives and collaborating with photographers, artists and printing vendors nationwide for various projects.

Years earlier, I was a technical writer for nearly a decade, producing computer “how-to” manuals, and a production manager in radio, writing commercials, promotions and trade magazine articles.

National print media have profiled Smith Ink in Essence magazine, Essence Books, Southern Living magazine, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Working Mother magazine. We also have been featured on WPZE-FM in Atlanta, WPZS-FM in Charlotte, NC, NBC’s WXIA-TV in Atlanta and the nationally syndicated “Today’s Black Woman Radio Show.”

A Tar Heel, born and bred, I am a graduate of the School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My husband Michael and I have two children, who are “grown and gone,” pursuing their own callings.