Found it!
So the Add column view gives you access to TONS of options, and it's not terribly organized.
It turns out Company just isn't used - and the field in Contacts or Leads for Company is Company Name. In Columns, this is actually a 'User-defined' section- even though I certainly didn't add a single entry here.
So once Company Name was added as a column, it connected no problem. It's hard to imagine no one else came across this in their initial set-ups?
thanks everyone for the assistance, I've learned quite a bit since yesterday (yesterday was my first day using this software)
Jacques