Stephen Hawley Martin is a former principal of The Martin Agency in charge of client campaign planning and strategy development. Over the years the firm has created well-known campaigns for such clients as GEICO [Gecko], Virginia Tourism ["Virginia is for Lovers"], Mercedes Benz, UPS, and Colonial Williamsburg, among many others. He went on to become President & CEO of a spinoff of The Martin Agency called Hawley Martin Partners that grew rapidly and was acquired after only three years by a New York Stock Exchange company, The Interpublic Group. During that time, and since then as well, he wrote books and now has dozens in print. Quite a number have been bestsellers in their categories and half a dozen have won national awards.Today, he is an independent consultant to business leaders, a prolific ghostwriter, and an independent book editor and publisher. He is also the author of more than three dozen books under his own name, including six business titles and five novels. Listed in Who's Who in America, he is the only three-time winner of the Writer's Digest Book Award, having won twice for fiction and once for nonfiction. He has also won First Prize for Visionary Fiction from Independent Publisher magazine, First Prize for Nonfiction from USA Book News, and two awards from Readers' Choice Book Reviews, a Bronze Medal for Visionary Fiction and a Five Star Winner Award for a romantic suspense novel. 

Having already had several books published, the first book that Stephen ghostwrote was in 1999 for an advertising client. Called Lean Transformation, it explained how to transition a manufacturing facility to the Toyota Production System known as Lean Production. It was an integral part of a marketing and publicity campaign and helped get the word out concerning what the author, the company’s new CEO, was doing to turn the business around that he’d just taken over. Lean Transformation was translated into German, Italian, Chinese, and Korean, became an international bestseller, and set the standard for manufacturing for the twenty-first century. It is still in print and continues to be required reading for Lean Certification by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME).

Stephen enjoys solving problems, developing strategies that work, and creating effective communications with an emphasis today on books that help their authors and the authors’ businesses prosper.