About Me
I've been drawing since I can remember. I went to Syracuse to study advertising and then switched to illustration & design, minoring in Photography at the Newhouse School. I love to learn, mentor and pass on knowledge. I received my Master's at SVA in Illustration & Journalism while working full time at Kaplan - recently acquired by The Washington Post. I had some great business mentors that helped me explore my business and creativity side as I believed they are not mutually exclusive. I proved this by taking on the opportunity personally offered to me by Katherine Graham to build her a Kaplan Interactive Agency. Here's where my creative/business thinking came into play. After creating new brand for the newly acquired Kaplan with style manual I realized for the first time that Kaplan was synonymous with education for 50 years. So, first I started building and acquiring software that were in the real of test-prep education - like how to pay for college software, digital versions of every test-prep discipline, virtual video tour software of every college and university in the US and more. That's when the bell rang! I drew many concentric circles with Kaplan Parebt Co in the middle and saw how far I could take my Education/Edutainment ideas on this map of circles without loosing the Kaplan Brands objective...and grow the company. I was given $3M dollars and could choose 5 staff members and were relocated to the old Newsweek building to imagine and create. I continued acquiring Startups with the right idea, but they didn't know where to take it. I partnered with F500's like Simon & Schuster after asking them how many education-like books do you have gathering dust as they couldn't sell on there own - so I took over 50 books like how to write a resume, how to get into College and so much more...repackaged it and put the new Kaplan Brand on it. A 50/50 partnership - in year one sold $90M worth of books through Barnes & Noble, year 2 $185M. The parent company grossed $95M
