Background
Ethnicity:
DNA suggests average of 44% from Scotland/Ireland/Wales; 21% Scandinavian (Sweden, Norway, Denmark); and 21% German/French
Ky Mason was born in 1956 in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States.
Paternal American ancestors migrated from England and Scotland, and were among the first leaders of the New World, residing in Virginia, followed by North Carolina, to Louisiana. Maternal American ancestors came from Germany, Wales, and Ireland, settling in the Ohio Valley and south to Tennessee and Alabama.
Career
A passionate animal advocate, Ky has been in the advertising and publishing business since 1980. Having got her start with her father's illustrious agency in Shreveport, LA, she went on to work for a few local agencies to Shreveport and New Orleans, was a crime reporter for The Shreveport Times, before joining J. Walter Thompson, USA as Account Representative on the U.S. Marine Corps account, serving the 8th Marine Corps District for 13 states, from New Orleans to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Santa Fe, New Mexico and everywhere in between.
From 1982-1985 she served as Director of Marketing and Public Relations for St. Vincent's Infant and Maternity Home, a program of Associated Catholic Charities, and the second oldest orphanage in the country with a history brimming through the fascinating eras, and the founding itself, having been constructed by Union soldiers stationed during the War next door to the nuns overflowing with children and young mothers from the yellow fever and cholera epidemics that ravaged the city in the 1700s and into the 1800s.
From 1985-1987, she served as Senior Writer for Mayor Sidney Barthelemy of New Orleans, also serving the Office of Public Information, and on the Film Commission.
In 1987, Mason became the first Director of United Services for AIDS Foundation, a consortium of 26 agencies serving the devastating needs of those befallen with HIV and AIDS. She continued to serve and volunteer, as well, also taking part in numerous public protests resulting in the passage of equal opportunity and employment laws across the city. She also co-authored the two first national grants to bring financial aid to the medical crisis and its victims —one from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for $6 million, and a second from the U.S. Health Resources Services Department's Bureau of Maternal and Child Health for $13 million.
In 1992, she founded MASON Communications, serving New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a full-service agency.
The year 2000, saw her return to her hometown, continuing to serve clients, making a segue into editing and publishing, while founding a fine antique, art, and architectural shop in Shreveport.
Mason continues to provided her agency services to advertising clients and authors, while avidly engaging in the struggle to establish humane animal welfare services and achieve the enactment of pertinent laws to prevent animal abuse and neglect, while volunteering to transport and arrange transport for animals to and from area shelters so they might find foster care, loving and adoptive homes, and havens for life-long rescue in other parts of the country where established laws leave them with few animals to adopt.
