! ! O ! O ! O G ! O G ! ! GO
Alumna’s business brings education, fun to NOTO
by Alyssa Storm
Angie Grau, a Washburn University alumna, has continued to be just as successful and hardworking as she was in her collegiate career. Grau was a double major throughout college, majoring in mass media and business with an emphasis in marketing. She graduated in December of 2009, but she decided that she wasn’t done learning yet. “I've always been somebody who likes to stay busy and likes to be overly involved,” said Grau. She went on to get her MBA from Washburn in 2012. Grau met her husband while she was in the graduate program. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Grau was looking for a job at an advertising company, Jones Huyett Partners, JHP, where she got hired as an administrative assistant. She worked her way up to a media coordinator and fulfilled her dream of working at an advertising agency.
After she got pregnant with her first child, Charlotte, she knew she wanted a job that would help her spend as much time with her family as possible. After spending a year at Civic Plus in Manhattan, where she worked as a campaign coordinator and a marketing communications specialist, Grau realized she didn’t enjoy the commute. She got a job at Advisors Excel, where she worked for six years in the Creative Department as one of the account managers. While working at Advisors Excel, Grau and a coworker, Sara Batman, would always talk about how cool it would be to have a children’s bookstore because at the time they both had kids around the same age. “For years I would talk to her saying ‘wouldn't it be cool, wouldn't it be cool.’ And she would just ask me like, ‘why don't you just do it,’” said Grau. As time passed, she thought to herself “why
couldn’t I?” While she was on maternity leave with her last of three kids, she knew she wanted to focus on one thing and accomplish it; and that was Paper June. “I was so incredibly proud of her for taking the big jump to become a small business owner,”
photo by Alyssa Storm (right) Book lovers of all ages might enjoy a stroll through Paper June, located at 907 N. Kansas Ave., but this bookstore is geared toward younger children.
photo by Alyssa Storm
Alumna Angie (Marquart) Grau, 2009, stands at the register of her bookstore, which is called Paper June, which opened for business in June of 2019.
