Marsha Petrie Sue

Marsha Petrie Sue is an American author, public speaker, and motivational coach based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her work sits at the meeting point of business communication, personal accountability, customer service, and day-to-day resilience. She is best known to readers of practical motivational writing for books that take on ordinary but difficult problems: tense workplaces, hard conversations, time pressure, teamwork, listening, and the challenge of taking charge of one’s own choices.

Before and alongside her writing and speaking, Sue held a series of business leadership roles. She served as executive vice president at Westinghouse Financial Services, director of national accounts at USWest/Qwest, and regional markets manager at GTE Directory Company. She has also been a visiting professor at Arizona State University. Those positions place her career in the world of corporate management, sales, markets, and education, and they help explain the direct, problem-solving tone suggested by many of her book titles.

Sue has written multiple books, including The Reactor Factor: How to Handle Difficult Work Situations Without Going Nuclear, Toxic People, The CEO of You, The Accountability Master, Presentation Success Secrets, and Are You Listening?. Other titles include It’s About Time!, Customer Service, Winning Together, Is Your Life Working?, Team Building the Easy Way, and Communicating with Empathy. Taken together, these books show a writer focused less on abstract theory than on behavior: how people react, speak, listen, manage time, serve customers, build teams, and accept responsibility.

Her public life has also included civic and advocacy roles. Sue serves on the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum Executive Committee and has opposed gun control. In 2022, she was appointed to the Arizona Game and Fish Commission. These roles add another dimension to her profile, showing her involvement beyond books, classrooms, and business settings, and placing her in public discussions connected to Arizona and national policy concerns.

What gives Sue’s words their appeal is their emphasis on choice in the middle of pressure. Her quote, “Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way. Stay away from what might have been, and look at what can be,” matches the practical spirit of her titles. It does not ask readers to ignore conflict or difficulty. Instead, it points them toward action, attention, and self-command, themes that run through her writing on work situations, communication, accountability, and personal change.