Merry Elkins
“If it hadn’t been for my diverse career paths, I might not have circled back to where I began: Writing about individuals who inspire, who contribute and who are making a difference,” says Merry Elkins, president of Elk Road Media & Entertainment, a company that works with businesses to introduce and merchandise their services to the entertainment community. Additionally, the company is involved in developing reality projects for television.
For nearly 19 years, she served as an advertising executive at The Hollywood Reporter. Responsible for heading up television advertising on the West Coast, she oversaw domestic and international print and online ads for producers, the television networks, and independent production companies as well as conceiving custom publishing projects pertaining to the television arena.
Before her stint at The Hollywood Reporter, she ran her own boutique publicity company, and wrote entertainment, travel and lifestyle articles for a number of newspapers, entertainment trade publications and airline magazines.
Her career path lead her to appear as an on-camera reporter, dancer and actress, performing in numerous commercials, daytime dramas and primetime shows. She free-lanced for “Entertainment Tonight,” NBC’s news affiliate in San Diego, California and KTLA, Los Angeles.
As a dancer, she began her career on the Dean Martin Show, where she auditioned and won one of the 12 coveted spots to become a “Golddigger” on the first “Dean Martin Presents: The Golddiggers.” Later, “The Golddiggers” went on to perform with Bob Hope on his USO tours in Vietnam, host their own television variety series in the US and in London, and to record three record albums.
She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from USC in Los Angeles with a degree in photojournalism.
She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Hollywood Radio and Television Society. She is married and lives underneath the Hollywood sign in the Hollywood hills surrounded by a forest of California pines, palms, acacias and fig trees.
