2024 Hall of Fame Inductee Judith Maloy Is a 'Champion for Change'

Judith Maloy

In the span of one year, Judith Maloy had two “babies.” The year was 2003 and in June, Maloy started Polaris Direct in Hooksett, New Hampshire, with her husband and business partner, Joe. In July, she found out she was pregnant with their third child.

“You can’t plan for everything and sometimes you just have to roll with it,” she says. “As a woman, you have to think about those things.”

The company is in its 21st year and Maloy, who serves as CEO of the certified WBENC Women’s Business Enterprise and Women-Owned Small Business, says she never would have believed she would get to run her own business.

“I never would have thought I would become the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company,” she admits. “But it certainly is a good feeling of accomplishment.”

Now, Judith Maloy is a 2024 inductee into the Printing Impressions Printing Industry Hall of Fame based on an impressive career that began in 1984. That year she was fresh out of college, living in New York City, and using her mass communications degree working for a list brokerage and management company.

“I kind of fell into the world of direct marketing. … My lead into printing was via direct mail marketing,” she explains. “My focus has always been on print production for mail.”

The North Star for Marketers

Maloy used her experience in marketing to create what she describes as a “better letter shop” for high-volume direct marketing customers. At first, the company invested only in laser, bindery, and lettershop equipment, deciding to outsource offset forms printing. She realized the possibilities of inkjet variable data printing (VDP) and the ability to create personalized communications that used data-driven solutions to drive marketing ROI. That’s when Polaris invested in inkjet VDP technology. For Maloy, it became a “full circle” moment because she began her career on the data side of things and was finally bringing her company to the point where it could offer all those services in-house.

“We like to say at Polaris that ‘We took the handcuffs off of marketers,’” she says. “With inkjet VDP technology, we’re able to create one-to-one, personalized print communications at speed and scale.”

This mission to be a “guiding light” for direct marketers is so ingrained in the company, it even inspired its name. Maloy explains that not only do she and her husband enjoy sailing, but the North Star, or Polaris, is a stationary and reliable point in the night sky. So, just as sailors have used Polaris as a navigational tool for centuries, marketers can look to Polaris Direct as a navigational solution for their direct marketing challenges.

More than 20 years ago, Judith and Joe Maloy founded Polaris Direct. Here, they sit in the company’s facility.

That drive to optimize direct mail for the customer is something that has been acknowledged by others in the printing industry, including Marco Boer, vice president of IT Strategies and conference chair of the annual Inkjet Summit.

“Judy has added a great amount of value to Polaris Direct and the direct mail industry by optimizing their clients’ messaging content and leveraging multi-channel strategies to help direct marketers achieve the best return-on-investment possible,” he says. “Her husband and business partner, Joe Maloy, is the printer — the one with ink in his veins who makes the output volumes possible — but Judy is the one who makes the data and content shine for their customers.”

‘Champion of Change’

Although the company places a focus on being a navigational force for marketers and direct mail optimization, it has also developed a culture of innovation, something Maloy points out has been the case since “the very beginning.” Although Polaris is a high-volume direct marketing print and lettershop company that works with enterprise corporations on large-volume, highly personalized campaigns, it has maintained its entrepreneurial spirit and culture.

A culture of innovation has permeated through every fiber of Polaris Direct’s existence, with Maloy at the helm. In fact, the company was not only recognized by Printing Impressions as an Innovative Company of the Year in 2021, it was presented with the 2024 Leadership Summit Innovator of the Year award in February.

However, according to Maloy, being innovative isn’t necessarily what people think it is.

“People think innovation means you’re creating a rocket ship,” she says. “Instead, innovation is adjusting to make something better. … Start with small, innovative changes.”

This drive toward incremental improvements led Maloy to implement something called “Vivid Vision” in 2020. It was a three-year strategy inspired by Cameron Herold’s book “Vivid Vision: A Remarkable Tool for Aligning Your Business Around a Shared Vision of the Future.”

The plan set “big, hairy, audacious goals,” which were centered around scaling Polaris Direct’s business. Maloy explains that this plan relied on the company’s bench of general managers to collaborate and implement the goals.

“We aligned the general managers with tasks and implemented reverse engineering, creating tasks that rolled up to these big, hairy, audacious goals,” she explains. “We asked each one of them to be accountable for what they were going to do for the growth strategy.”

By empowering her employees with the three-year Vivid Vision plan, Polaris Direct was able to grow sales and expand its customer base substantially, even amidst a global pandemic.

Joe Maloy, company president and COO, calls Judith’s leadership style and choice to implement the Vivid Vision plan as “intentional,” something that sets her apart.

“I think that’s probably the one thing that sets her apart,” he says. “She’s looking at how to move the ball down the field in a very intentional and deliberate way. … The best example was Vivid Vision in 2020, where we set out on a three-year plan and then followed through. We went through the steps to make sure that it was successful and started a new plan last fall. [It was all] very deliberate and very intentional.”

John Strand, the director of operations at Polaris Direct, also describes Maloy’s leadership style as being intentional, noting that she is someone who truly embraces change and technology, always looking for a better way to do things. “She’s always two steps ahead,” he says. In particular, Strand points to the implementation of the Vivid Vision plan to grow the business, which he describes as not only effective and successful, but collaborative and inclusive.

“The way she rolled it out company-wide was very inclusive and collaborative,” he recalls. “It made everyone feel they were a part of it, and there were no bad ideas. She encouraged us all to come up with goals … nothing was off the table.”

Strand describes the experience as one that has helped drive a culture of excellence at Polaris Direct, pushing individuals to be the best versions of themselves professionally. A company where ideas are nurtured.

“Including everyone made individuals feel like they’re valued and could contribute to the overall success of the company,” he says.

Her leadership and innovative spirit are part of the reason why Strand describes her as a “champion of change.”

“She’s left her mark as a leader and as a woman,” he says.

Being what Strand describes as a “champion of change” is the reason Maloy has embraced “disruption.”

“I really try to look out on the horizon for new advancements within the print and direct marketing world,” she explains, “to add them to our capabilities so we can give our clients a more targeted approach.”
Maloy’s willingness to embrace change and explore new pathways is a sentiment echoed by some of her peers in the industry, including Geoffrey Eisenberg, president and COO of Tidewater Direct, based in Centreville, Maryland.

“I’ve known Judith for 15 years, and I see her as a visionary in the industry that has uniquely driven value for her clients, her company, and her suppliers,” he says. “Judith is a true professional. She carries herself as such and has been innovative in direct mail print. We have collaborated on many projects together, and I find that she always has a confident sense of direction and resolve when tackling any challenge.”

‘Full Circle’ Moments Abound

Just as Maloy describes Polaris Direct’s evolution into the data side of things as being a full circle moment, she notes that some of the biggest challenges in her career have been full circle as well.

One of the biggest obstacles, she says, is not that Polaris Direct is a woman-owned business — something that has opened the company up to working with more diverse suppliers — it was initially getting the funding for a startup company.

“That was difficult, more challenging than we thought it would be, but eventually we found the right banking partner,” she recalls. “In fact, that partner who helped us get started is one of our biggest clients today. … It’s those full circle moments that you stop and reflect on.”

Another full circle moment? The fact that her father worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 39 years. Although Maloy didn’t initially intend to enter the direct mail space, it seems mail was always a North Star in her family.

After more than 20 years leading Polaris Direct, it’s the milestones that make Maloy most proud. Making it to five years was a major accomplishment, something she and her company relished in at the time.

“And now we’ve made it to 20 years,” she says. “That’s incredible. I’m most proud of those anniversary milestones because they make me stop and reflect.”

Looking to the Future

When Maloy isn’t working toward reaching the next milestone or looking for the next innovative solution to drive the business forward, she enjoys vacationing with her family — especially to Nantucket, Massachusetts — and gardening, a passion she now shares with her team at Polaris Direct. The company has implemented a “community garden” that helps to raise funds to buy items for the local food pantry.

And while Maloy has decades of experience in the industry under her belt, she’s not going anywhere any time soon. “I’m using my wisdom and experience to help guide our growth path, and it’s still fun,” she concludes. “When it comes to where my job isn’t fun anymore, or I can’t keep up the pace, then I’ll just bow out gracefully.”