I first encountered Sherman when I was a junior at Emerson College in Boston. I enrolled in his course entitled, Political Analysis, in the spring of 1981. The course was not only interesting and engaging but taught me a lot about critical thinking--something that was in short supply during the rest of my academic career.
Wanting to continue working with Sherman, he agreed to serve as my faculty advisor for my senior thesis during the fall semester of my senior year at Emerson in 1981. The topic of my thesis was the sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia. Working one-on-one with Sherman was extremely rewarding and stretched my thinking into areas of foreign policy that I had never considered.
During my final semester at Emerson in the spring of 1982, I was part of the team, led by Sherman, that organized a symposium on the Freedom of Information Act. The symposium attracted an impressive array of figures from Washington and across the country including: The former Director of the CIA, William Colby, the radical lawyer William Kunstler; Mort Halperin of the National Security Council, the author of a book on the Rosenberg’s, novelist Robert Coover; the Official Historian of the US Department of State, William Slany; and the Director of the Ralph Nader Freedom of Information Clearinghouse, Katherine Myer. Working on the symposium was a rewarding and amazing experience that I will never forget.
While at Emerson I worked on three college newspapers. I was co-founder of, The Independent, which was totally run on advertising revenue. In my senior year, I was Managing Editor of the official school newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon, which won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
I graduated with a degree in Mass Communication in the spring of 1982 from Emerson, valedictorian of my class, summa cum laude, Gold Key Honor Society.
Wanting to pursue a career in publishing, my first stop was as an editor at the trade publisher Lebhar-Friedman in New York. After two years, I was put in charge of the biweekly editorial production of the trade publication, National Home Center News. My interest in publishing went beyond editorial to the business side, and I left this position in the fall of 1988 to pursue an MBA at The University of Michigan. I completed my MBA in the spring of 1990.
After a short stint in financial services, I was hired as a Senior International Marketing Manager at The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones. I was in a small group that supported international advertising sales globally. After a year, I was promoted to Director of International Marketing focusing on providing creative solutions for the sales staff to sell the Dow Jones suite of products as well as primary and secondary research to support ad sales that grew from $30 million to $130 million over a period of approximately 5 years. I also took on an operational role in 1996 managing the $10 million operating budget of the group and working with offices around the world on their technology needs as well as logistical support.
In 1999 I was asked to work on a corporate project at Dow Jones to examine the computing environment within Dow Jones, with a specific focus on how to improve employees’ work experience. The outcome of this project was a new portal which included a heavy emphasis on company and competitive news as well as applications for expense filing and human resource transactions.
After my time on this project, I was hired as Director of Marketing for Dow Jones Newswires, the news service that is used across financial enterprises from traders to financial advisors. This market was in a state of change, and, in addition to supporting $250 million in sales through collateral, advertising and sponsorships, I developed a robust primary and secondary research program where we were able to identify key changes in the market where Dow Jones might have an advantage. We worked extensively with John Bowen and Russ Prince of CEG, two pioneers in high-net-worth investor research, to understand various business models used by financial advisors and what drove client loyalty. This led to the launch of Dow Jones Wealth Manager, an application designed to help financial advisors develop deeper relationships with their clients.
In 2006 I was asked to join a corporate strategy group within Dow Jones. The group I ran was responsible for market research, market sizing and competitive research across the Enterprise Media Group within Dow Jones.
In 2008, I found it necessary to re-invent my career with the collapse of the publishing industry due, in part, to the recession. Given the research and product development, focused on financial advisors, I was engaged in at Dow Jones Newswires, I was hired by Merrill Lynch as part of their Wealth Management Communications Department as a Senior Vice President. I wrote various types of communications and produced presentations for the Head of Wealth Management and Chief Operating Officer, among others. I also produced internal video presentations aimed at the Merrill financial advisors. I was assigned to be the communications lead on many large, regulatory projects. Most notably, I was on the team that rolled out the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule. This was a regulatory initiative that sought to provide better advice to retirement investors with smaller balances.
Due to my work at Merrill, I was recruited by Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) as a Director to run their Advisor Communications Department, within the U.S., in 2016. I had a staff of five that coordinated communications from all departments in the firm to the U.S.-based financial advisors at UBS. This position also had a significant regulatory communications function.
Around 2018, my wife and I started to re-evaluate our careers and our work/life balance. After serious consideration, we both decided to retire in 2019 to pursue our passions of cross-country skiing, fly fishing and bicycling. We sold our house in Chatham, New Jersey and relocated to Bozeman, Montana, where we live today. When not enjoying the great outdoors, which are abundant around Bozeman, I can be found playing classical guitar, tying flies for fly fishing, writing articles about fly fishing and cooking. I am happy to have reconnected with Sherman after all these years and be part of the Convisero.