Margot Bach is one of five people chosen to receive a 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award from Sacramento State.
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Margot Bach ’72 (English) is at a loss to explain why she’s being honored by Sacramento State with a 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award. It hardly compares, though, to how lost she felt when she arrived at the University as a freshman in 1968.
Bach ’72 (English) was so overwhelmed that she dropped out, an almost predictable outcome given how foreign the college experience was to her.
“My mother’s parents didn’t believe college was for women,” said Bach, who was the first of her siblings to attend college. “When I talked college to my parents, there wasn’t a lot of information out there. I didn’t get much from high school. … I didn’t even know how to choose classes. I knew what I wanted to do, but getting from that point to graduation, it was a mystery.”
A stint at community college helped her unravel that mystery, and she re-enrolled at Sac State. There she found her way, leading to success that has left a lasting footprint on the Sacramento region and beyond.
Hornet family connections smoothed her way from the start of her professional journey. A contact and fellow Sac State alumnus got her foot in the door with Lockheed Martin Corp. as a technical writer. The company proved a great fit for a kid who grew up in an Air Force family. Bach quickly moved up the ranks. She was chosen from among more than 250 candidates to become editor of the company’s worldwide publication. In that role, she created an award-winning newsletter that several times has been read into the Congressional Record.
In fact, a former Hornet preceded her as editor. “We opened the door for each other,” Bach said. “It was nice to have that Hornet family all those miles away and years away from Sac State.”
She eventually was promoted to manager of corporate communications/internal and employee communications, creating two more award-winning programs and becoming anchor of the company’s in-house television network.
She has worked closely with everyone from prisoners and wardens as ombudsman for several state prisons, to IMAX founders Grahame and Phyllis Ferguson, to Govs. Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Treasurer John Chiang, contributing her formidable speechwriting skills to all.
Along the way, Bach has maintained a genuine passion for Sac state, a place that she said “gave me hope.” She served as co-chair of the recent Alumni Center Campaign and has been president of the Alumni Association Board of Directors. She is a Lifetime Alumni Association Member and received the President’s Medal for Distinguished Service in 2015. She also served on the Green & Gold Gala Event Committee, Sac State Magazine Advisory Council, the University Foundation Board, and the Community Council.
“I go to meetings and I hear (that Sac State is) just a commuter campus,” she said. “We are so much more than that.”
Among numerous honors, Bach received the President’s Medal for Distinguished Service in 2015; is the recipient of the California Department of Corrections Distinguished Service Medal in 2004; 2007 California Public Information Office of the Year; Junior League Sustainer of the Year in 2013-14; and Los Niños Service League Woman of the Year in 2015. – Ahmed V. Ortiz