Angel Cox
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Angel Cox has lived a life filled with stories.
A Spartanburg native, Cox grew up in the area, where she owned a prominent dance studio and taught 1,000 students weekly. In 1989, one of those students booked the Broadway tour of Gypsy, and Cox joined the tour as an instructor for the summer.
When the tour moved to New York City, so did Cox.
She sold her studios and relocated to the city, where she spent over a decade working within the New York theatre community. When she first moved to New York, she taught private dance lessons for children across Broadway, including famous faces such as Lacey Chabert and Britney Spears. From there, she moved into working under Alan Wasser, a general manager for all Cameron Mackintosh shows— Broadway’s largest producer.
She worked on iconic productions such as Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, and Phantom of the Opera, then began marketing for The Broadway League (known at the time as the League of American Theatres and Producers)— the marketing arm of all Broadway.
Cox produced outdoor concerts for 50,000 people, worked behind the scenes on the Tony Awards, and did sound for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Times Square ball drop on New Year’s Eve.
However, in the years following 9/11, her father was in poor health, and Cox made a decision—it was time to come home after nearly 15 years in the city.
Unsurprisingly, though Cox was no longer in New York, she didn’t slow down. She continued working with the Broadway community from afar, flying to trade shows and working on a translation system that allowed foreign tourists to understand theatre. Then, when her father’s legal secretary of 35 years retired, Cox stepped in.
She learned how to do everything from guilty pleas to adoptions—an entirely different field than she was used to. After several years of working in law, she transitioned briefly to real estate after her father retired before moving back to the love she’d discovered in New York—marketing.
Cox took a job with the Palladium Group, a large marketing firm in Spartanburg handling both regional and national clients. It was exactly the kind of work she had been craving, allowing her to once again manage large-scale events.
However, with time, Cox discovered she wanted to use her marketing skills to share the stories of a different kind of clientele—the four-legged variety.
“My family was a huge animal family growing up,” said Cox, “so that was my life.” Her love for animals had followed her to New York, where she had even considered showing dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show— a dream that quickly dissolved when a visit to a dog breeder resulted in Cox adopting a Lhasa Apso with an underbite. The dog wasn’t eligible to compete, but Cox didn’t care. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to her, and bought her on the spot. Cox later named the dog Morgan, and shares that she was her favorite dog she’s ever owned.
For Cox, that’s saying a lot. The current CEO of the Spartanburg Humane Society, Cox personally owns seven dogs and two cats, a fact that’s no surprise to anyone who knows her heart for animals.
The Spartanburg Humane Society is an open admission facility, meaning they take all animals, without discrimination of breed or bite history. If they have space, they’ll always welcome an animal with open arms.
As a private nonprofit, the Humane Society operates almost 100% on donations. Cox shares that it takes a village to care for the over 500 animals under their roof, and that she dreams of building a new shelter—but that it will take a lot of fundraising to get there.
Cox loves using her marketing skills to raise awareness for all that Spartanburg Humane is doing. But she also loves the quieter moments of her job, like getting to see families—especially kids— fall in love with their newest family member.
“Seeing dogs that have lived on the street or had really bad times, to see them really changing and getting to go home with somebody…it’s life changing,” she shares. “And you know you’re really changing lives because it’s not just the dog, it’s the family. You know the family’s life is going to be changed, and that’s so wonderful.”
