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Don’t ever spend more than five minutes in a job you don’t enjoy,” Huey P. Gray once told his little girl.

That mantra--along with her mother’s proclivity for making her ask questions of adults--have made Rannah Gray what she is today: a fearless woman, doing what she loves most.

Gray grew up in Chatawa--a town 45 miles due north of Hammond, just over the Mississippi border--in a family home that dates back to 1850.

She never played sports--she was more of an arts-and-music type. But when it came time to go to college, Gray took off for LSU with dreams of one day being a sports writer. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that her brother went there on a football scholarship.

The dream didn’t last long. Gray was quickly allured by marketing.

“I didn’t really think I was objective enough to be a reporter,” she says. “There were very few people in my class I really thought had the objectivity. I’m actually more drawn to the side that you could make your case and you could try to persuade and convince people.”

It didn’t take long for the world of Louisiana politics to captivate Gray. After finishing graduate school, one of her earliest gigs was working on Sonny Mouton’s unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1979 [Dave Treen won]. Then she worked on Jim Brown’s campaign for secretary of state.

In the 1990s, she found her way back to the sports world--as an associate athletic director at LSU, working for then-athletic director Joe Dean. She oversaw marketing, sales, radio, television, corporate partnerships, event promotions, advertising and ticket operations for the university’s 20 varsity sports. She considers Dean a pioneer in sports marketing and one of her most influential mentors.

“There’s not a lot of difference between politics and sports, and I think that’s why I’ve gone back and forth,” Gray says. “One of the things I used to say is that with LSU football, it’s like we have an election every Saturday.”

Six years ago, she decided she needed a different kind of challenge and started her own firm, Gray Marketing & Communications. Her first client: Trahan Architects. After working with Val Marmillion of Pacific Visions Communications on an arts-in-education project for the Kennedy Center and other things, the pair formed Marmillion/Gray.

Gray got involved in local politics for the first time in 2004, when she took on Kip Holden’s campaign for mayor. At the time, she had never been to or watched a city council meeting, and couldn’t even tell you who her city councilman was. She just sensed the city needed something different.

“I looked around in 2004 and I felt there was frustration in this city,” she says. “We had a lot of people that wanted a better city than what we had. I didn’t really blame anyone; it’s just where you kind of get to the point where you need a spark; you need someone that can really motivate people and excite people and make people feel good.”

She thought if Kip ran his campaign just right, he could win.

Last fall, Gray repeated her success, helping to propel Sid Gautreaux into the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office.

These days, she finds herself immersed in the local scene, persuading and convincing on such projects as the Baton Rouge loop. Dean notes that much of her handiwork has become a part of the city-parish vernacular [think “Green Light Baton Rouge” and “One Baton Rouge”]. Next on the horizon: a $1 billion bond issue.

“One of the things I feel strongest about is that you have to really believe in what it is you’re marketing, promoting, publicizing or advertising,” Gray says. “For me, at least, I have to believe it’s true; I really have to believe it’s a good thing. That’s where it all starts.”