After Linda (Germann) Ringstrand spoke in her COMS 100 class of career plans in advertising, her professor pointed her to Campbell Hall.

Little did she realize she would leave more than she would take.

During her two years at the Star, Linda consistently exceeded quotas and earned the top sales award. It was a blueprint for the next decade, when she shattered expectations and secured new and important clients.

“It was my first real sales situation,” said Linda, who during high school and college typed ad copy at the Chicago Tribune. “We had such a good time. It was the best money you could make on campus, an awesome group of people and it was a like a real job.”

Linda also forged the bond between the Star and the Tribune, which created one of the country’s best training programs for college newspapers. She volunteered Rich Schovanec, her boss at the Trib, to address a seminar for Star advertising staff. Schovanec, a 2001 Hall of Fame inductee, has mentored Star ad reps since.

“She was a delight to work with back then, and her work ethic just got better as she became more professional,” Schovanec said. “She was good people.”

Tim O’Malley, who worked with Linda at the Star, called her “instrumental in bringing the advertising department of the Star to another level. Due in large part to Linda’s influence, the Star has consistently produced some of the best-prepared, top-performing reps in the advertising sales industry.”

Linda began at the Daily Herald shortly after graduation, selling ads in Buffalo Grove before being promoted to Schaumburg. She ranked among the top five revenue producers in the division sales staff.

As a national account executive, she nurtured a non-revenue territory into the company’s top-billing retail territory. She sold 15 new major retail accounts, and handled Sears, Montgomery Ward and Carson Pirie Scott, three of the top 10 revenue accounts.

In 1995, she moved to the Los Angeles Times, where she twice earned the No. 1 Category Winner award for the most sales calls and made new clients of Allstate and Kraft.

Linda represented Money Magazine before becoming a stay-at-home mom. She and her husband, Russ, have two boys: Jake, 3, and Steve, 2. “This is much more challenging job,” she said, “but it’s awesome.”