CEO
“My grandmother had come over from Russia and gotten di-
vorced and raised three children,” Holman said. “I very much feel
that she is my spirit, my living spirit. She’s gotten me through a lot
of it. She can do it. I can do it.”
Holman started working for a marketing research company, a
new field at the time. She wrote questionnaires, did phone inter-
views, recruited people for focus groups and more. Then in 1971,
she started a company at home called Merle Holman Interviewing
Service, which grew to about 180 employees.

In 1971, she also met a man named Alex Bruckner. The two
never lived together, Holman said, but they shared 30 years of good
times until he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 2001.

After running her own business for seven years, Holman de-
cided she didn’t like working from home anymore and went to
work for a company in Center City.

One day, she came in and discovered she had been laid off,
so in 1981, she began working for herself once again. She started
another company, Group Dynamics In Focus.

She faced challenges that many today wouldn’t even consid-
er. She didn’t have the credit to take out a loan from a bank,
and said the Small Business Administration (SBA) rejected her
because she was a woman. In the end, her father and Bruckner
helped her with funding.

Holman opened a focus group facility. It was groundbreaking
work. Not a lot of other people were doing focus groups, and it
was the first such facility in Bala Cynwyd, she said. Bruckner set
Holmen photos provided
Continued from Page 7
Merle Holman volunteers at the reception desk for Golden
Slipper Gems.

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