Dow Jones Alumnus: School Staffing
Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the March 13, 2002
edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Dow Jones Alumna: Digital Branding
Veronica “Niki” Fielding aims to take a
company’s
carefully devised branding campaign and, equally carefully, translate
it to a digital environment. She was chief marketing officer and
president
of Princeton Partner’s interactive division and has launched her own
new firm and web page, www.DigitalBrandExpressions.com (609-275-0935).
“People seeing a TV spot or reading an ad for your brand shouldn’t
be jolted when they get to your site — they should move easily
from one environment to the next, with your messages building on each
other to drive your customers to action,” says Fielding. She left
a corporate job at one of Princeton’s largest ad agencies to pursue
this idea. “At Princeton Partners my responsibilities were very
broad, but I saw an opportunity to focus my energies on interactive
marketing area with my own firm,” she says.
Fielding has always liked the entrepreneurial environment. The
daughter
of a serial entrepreneur, she has two school-aged children. She grew
up in Toms River and went to Rider University, Class of 1981, and
worked at several entrepreneurial companies — Pegasus
International,
Blessing White, Dana Communications — before moving to Dow Jones,
where she ran the division that produced marketing materials to
acquire
customers for the interactive division. Later she had bottom line
responsibility for the Private Investor Product group.
In 1995 she and Mark Feffer left Dow Jones to start United Multimedia,
an interactive publishing company that turned into an interactive
ad agency. But Feffer wanted to concentrate on content, so he started
Tramp Steamer Media LLC, now a five-person company. Then Fielding
sold the interactive ad agency to Princeton Partners, and she worked
there for four years as president of interactive division and chief
marketing officer.
With these companies Fielding’s clients include Prudential, Merrill
Lynch, Educational Testing Service, Westminster Choir College, and
InsureHiTech. For Prudential, she did a computer-based learning
program,
and for the state of New Jersey, she devised a web-based learning
tool on preventing and surviving workplace violence.
In her first month with this business she has signed four clients,
for whom she is doing E-marketing programs. Princeton Internet Group
designed and programmed her website, Zoe Graphics designed her
corporate
identity, and her attorney is Robert Frawley. She plans to hire three
full-time employees by June and is looking for office space.
A job for Digital Brand Expressions might involve re-engineering and
promoting an existing website so it is found more easily by search
engines and directories — or acting as a watchdog to find and
report trademark infringements by other websites.
Here are her tips for aligning a brand experience across
all media:
Get the entire team on the same page. There should beno confusion about your brand and what it means to your customers.You can’t create a consistent brand experience for the outside worldif the brand’s strongest proponents — your own sales, marketing,accounting, customer service, and IT people — aren’t clear aboutwhat the brand is and is not.Talk with your current customers. This is the way to findout what they think of your brand. Get a sense of how they view itcompared to the other options they have for purchasing yourproducts/services.Improve what can be improved, accept what you cannot change, and finda path for differentiating your brand on what results from thisprocess.Study the competition. Please, don’t say you don’t haveany. If you’ve got a business worth being in, your customers alwayshave other choices, even if those choices aren’t “direct”competitors to your brand. Learn from what your competitors are doingright with their customer service, with their website, with theirsales presentations — – and integrate their best practices intoyour own business so you become the best choice for your most valuedcustomers.Stay 100 percent focused. When the homework is done andit’s time to redesign your digital environments — website,presentations,customer support systems — focus on your brand and the consistentexperience you need it to create for your customers. Then maketechnologywork for, not against, the optimal customer experience.Hire experts and outsource. It isn’t your business’ corecompetency, don’t do it. Consider outsourcing data storage, searchengine optimization, and Web/E-mail hosting. These are areas thatrequire special and ongoing investments in time, people, equipment,and/or money. Companies that specialize in these services provideexpertise and resources that most companies can not afford to acquireand maintain on their own.Along with starting her own firm, Fielding has made anotherbig change. She shed her childhood nickname (all her colleagues atDow Jones know her as Ronnie). “When I turned 40,” she says,”I decided to change it to Niki, a name I liked.”— Barbara FoxTop Of PageDow Jones Alumnus: School StaffingCris Maloney’s long-term goal is to recruit people intothe education field who will be happy there. These future teachersmight be undergraduates looking for a first job — or victims ofa corporate downsizing. Maloney has had his own taste of corporatedownsizing, and his wife, Barbara, is a teacher at Princeton DaySchool,so he can approach the recruitment problem from both sides.Maloney was at Dow Jones for the launch of its interactive businessand was in charge of web development when Peterson’s had a brand-newwebsite. “When I left, it was 50 percent of the revenue atPeterson’s,”he says. Now he is launching the second version of a website entitledwww.SchoolStaff.com, which offers a way to post educational jobs andsearch for them.An education major at Westchester University, Class of 79, Maloneytaught in Virginia Beach and worked on a master’s degree at Templebefore starting to take computer jobs. He did sales and support workfor InfoTron, a maker of data switches, where he was in charge ofthe PC environment. In the early 1990s he worked for Dow Jones onits first web initiative.In 1995 he moved to Peterson’s to be in charge of www.petersons.comHe describes it as “a fledgling website without income that becamea multi-million revenue generator.” He was in charge of its firstthree big releases and says there have been two new versions since.When Peterson’s was sold to the Thompson, the new CEO, MichaelBrannick,made Maloney senior vice president of marketing. But Brannick leftin March of 2001 and Maloney’s position was eliminated in July 2001.Maloney also does presentations at job fairs about how to look fora job on the Web, sells real estate for Princeton Real Estate Company,and has another company, Princeton Rentals, which is a conduit forhome rentals in Princeton. It also sells moving boxes. He and hiswife have four school-age children, the youngest adopted from China.Maloney’s website, now ready to launch its second recruiting season,is an online job board used by job seekers and education employers.It lets job seekers search free, and eventually it hopes to offersome career counseling for those who are thinking of entering theeducation field.Though most schools aren’t set up to recruit on the web, Maloney’sfee ($295 per year to advertise all openings all year) is peanutscompared to the usual forms of advertising. “School districtsare spending teacher salaries every Sunday in newspapers that arerecycled by Monday,” says Maloney, quoting the one-time job adin the New York Times that costs $5,000.But school districts are not early users of web technology. “Lastyear, what we provided was every bell and whistle that a good jobsitewould provide, and what we found was that the school systems havea long tradition of getting all their information on one piece ofpaper,” says Maloney. “Also we gave them the opportunity tosell the position with color photographs and write a really greatindepth description of the job. But the schools didn’t use it.”In response, he has streamlined both the posting and responseprocedures.When they register, clients now simply describe their school andexplainhow they want people to apply. Then they point and click on thepositionsthey want to advertise. When they receive applicants’ names andaddresses,they send out applications by snail mail.Maloney’s marketing plan includes posters on college bulletin boards.Last year he had 300 districts participating, but he doesn’t reallyknow if anyone ever got a job because the site does not require jobseekers to register.Maloney also has links on his site so that potential educators cando a self survey provided by Obik, David Collins’ company on Route27 in Kingston. “We are hoping to expand this to high school andcollege students before they have made a career choice,” saysMaloney. “Our basic mission to get people who would be happy ineducation to select education as a career.”SchoolStaff.com, 2 Navesink Drive, Pennington08534.Cris Maloney. 609-730-1095. Home page: www.schoolstaff.comTop Of PageLaw MovesFrances M. Merritt, Attorney, 10 Gordon Avenue,First Floor, Lawrenceville 08648. 609-895-1717; fax, 609-895-1727.Moving back into solo practice, Frances Merritt,formerlywith Stark & Stark, has opened a law office at 10 Gordon Avenue inLawrenceville. Before joining Stark & Stark, in 1999, she maintaineda law office in Kingston.Merritt practices family law, specializing in both litigation andmediation. Her new office is in a space that formerly was a home.She says the informal atmosphere is important in putting clients atease during what is often a difficult time in their lives. “It’scomfortable, quiet, and private,” she says. In place of thesometimes-sterileatmosphere of a big law firm, there is soft music, and there arehome-liketouches.Merritt says she enjoyed her time at Stark & Stark, and learned agreat deal, but she is drawn to private practice not only becauseshe can create the atmosphere she wants, but also because it allowsher to “put her signature” on her business. In a big firm”there is guidance on fees and types of cases,” she says.Whereas, in a solo practice she is free to accept the cases she wantsand to set her own fees. “I like the whole gamut,” she says,”from modest incomes to relatively substantial.”Merritt grew up in Princeton. Her father, John Mack, is now deceased.He was an engineer at RCA Labs. Her mother, Gloria Mack, has beena librarian at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill for more than25 years.Merritt earned a bachelor’s in psychology from Rutgers in 1972. Whileraising her three children, she earned a master’s in voice performancefrom the Westminster Choir College. She taught at Westminster forthree years before earning a J.D. from Rutgers in 1986.Music remains her avocation. Working seven days a week at establishingher new practice, Merritt says she is nevertheless under pressurefrom friends and family to make good on her vow to hold an art songrecital. She explains that art songs are poetry set to music. Arecitalis “a collection of vignettes, usually in multiple languages,by different composers.” The one-hour performance, she says, ismore draining than a full day of physical labor. “It requirescoordination, an understanding of poetry and music, and the physicalact of singing. You have to put the poetry in your soul and interpretit to make a connection with the audience.”The connection with her life as a lawyer is that both disciplinesrely heavily on communication and persuasion.For the first part of her career in matrimonial law, Merritt actedsolely as a litigator. Then, in 1995, she began to train in mediation,earning a certificate from Rutgers Newark, and then spending a yearin an intensive mediation and dispute resolution program at WoodburyCollege in Vermont.She says she handled all of the matrimonial mediation cases at Stark& Stark, and expects mediation will account for some 20 percent ofher work at her new practice. At her first meeting with clients, sheexplains all the options. “Some people have never heard ofmediation,”she says, “and some are not inclined toward it.” She hopesthe balance will tip, and more of her clients will choose mediation,which, she says, teaches communication and negotiation skills thatcome in handy after the divorce, particularly where there are childreninvolved.Uffelman Rodgers Kleinle & Mets, 24-A JeffersonPlaza, Princeton 08540. James Mets, partner. 732-355-9800; fax,732-355-9022.James Mets has opened a satellite of Morristown-based law firmUffelman,Rodgers, Kleinle, and Mets at Jefferson Plaza. A partner in the firmsince late August, Mets is a resident of Monmouth Junction. He choseto work from a Kingston office to cut his commute and to be near anumber of his clients.Mets, a graduate of Montclair (Class of 1987) and of Rutgers LawSchool,specializes in labor law, and in the representation of police andfire unions. Among his clients are the Plainsboro, Jamesburg, NorthBrunswick, and Englishtown Police Benevolent Associations (PBAs).Uffleman, Rodgers is a four attorney firm with a staff of eight. Metswill practice full time from the Jefferson Plaza office.Philip J. Albert PC, 840 Bear Tavern Road, Suite307, West Trenton 08628. 609-882-6010; fax, 609-882-8040.Philip Levy has left the firm of Albert & Levy. The law firm is nowknown by the name of Philip J. Albert PC., and it has moved fromParkwayAvenue in Ewing to Bear Tavern Road. Levy has a corporate job withCongoleum. Albert does tax law, estate planning, and labor law.Irene M. Amarel Esquire, 4444 Route 27, Kingston08528. 609-921-0268; fax, 609-921-0586. Www.UdecideDivorce.comIrene Amarel, a divorce mediator, moved her practice from TamarackCircle to 4444 Route 27 in Kingston on March 1. Amarel practicedmatrimoniallaw for 25 years before disbanding her firm — Ulrichson, Amareland Eory — two years ago to concentrate on mediation rather thanlitigation.A 1975 graduate of Rutgers Law School, Amarel received a bachelor’sdegree in English and education from Douglass College in 1956 andtaught for a number of years before attending law school.Amarel says matrimonial litigation is draining for all involved,includingattorneys. “Divorce is a tough arena,” she says. “Clientsare very hostile, very emotionally charged.” It is also an areaof practice that demands long hours. In concentrating on mediation,she is leaving behind 60-hour weeks and clients who “wantattorneysto be there for them, yet complain bitterly about the bills.”A resident of Princeton, Amarel finds area residents “receptiveto mediation and becoming more so.”Gianni Donati Attorney at Law, 175 Bertrand Drive,Princeton 08540. Gianni Donati. 609-921-3993; fax, 609-921-2629.Gianni Donati moved his office from 230 Nassau Street to his home.A graduate of Amherst, Class of 1974, he went to law school at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. He focuses on commercial litigation andcollection of unpaid accounts.Top Of PageName ChangesThe Gale Company, 4390 Route 1, Princeton 08540.Greg Lezynski, vice president and leasing agent. 609-452-0771; fax,609-452-0330. Home page: www.thegalecompany.comThe Gale Company, 2 Village Boulevard, PrincetonForrestal Village, Princeton 08540. David B. Kuna, senior propertymanager. 609-799-7400; fax, 609-799-0245. Home page:www.thegalecompany.comFinn Wentworth has made an amicable break with the partnership Galeand Wentworth LLC, and Stan Gale has changed the name of the firm.In addition to real estate investment, the Gale Company will alsocontinue to manage commercial properties.For a north Jersey firm, this company has had a huge impact on thePrinceton real estate market. First the partners bought PrincetonForrestal Village from the bank at a fire sale price of $29 millionand sold it three years later for $46 million. Then they took overmanagement of DKM’s 3 million square-foot portfolio and turned overa $200 million profit in four years. In 1994 these real estate mogulspaid $650 million for the portfolio of a third big developer inPrinceton,Bellemead Development Company. At that time Bellemead’s 7 millionsquare feet of office space was owned by Chubb Insurance.Gale has even bigger expansion dreams. Backed by the Morgan StanleyReal Estate Funds he has decided to go national and potentiallyquadruplehis current holdings of 50 million square feet.”We look to continue our longstanding track record of providingsuperior service to our clients and tenants,” says Greg Lezynski,vice president and leasing agent.Top Of PageDownsizingMountain Lion Inc., Box 799, Pennington 08534.John J. Monteleone, president. 609-730-1665; fax, 609-730-1286.John Monteleone moved his book development firm, Mountain Lion, andhis literary agent business, the Sports Literary Agency, from ResearchPark to a home office in Pennington. His current projects includeskills books for high school athletes and the Louisville Sluggerseriesfor young people.Pequod Communications, 36 University Place,PrincetonUniversity Store, Princeton 08542. Andre Liu, owner. 609-921-7888;fax, 609-921-7293.Pequod Communications has moved its retail printing operation from6 Nassau Street to a location within the Princeton University Store,where it does printing and copying. It has a new phone and the samefax. The headquarters of the business — ironically enough, foundedby undergraduates in 1988 to protest the policies of the UniversityStore — is on Alexander Road and includes a corporate reprographicservice center, with a full range of services, including pick-up anddelivery.Center for Claims Resolution, Princeton 08540.Michael F. Rooney, COO. 609-951-6000; fax, 609-452-1533.The consortium that handled asbestos claims canceled a planed moveto Scudder Falls Court in Ewing and moved out of the Carnegie Centerto an unknown location.Vertis Direct Marketing Services, 1980 Route 1,Box 6023, North Brunswick 08902. Dave Colatriano, group president.732-297-5100; fax, 732-422-3949. Home page: www.vertisinc.comFor several years Vertis, the printing and direct marketing firmformerlyknown as Webcraft, had been operating its headquarters office awayfrom the North Brunswick plant, in plusher surroundings on LenoxDrive,Princeton Pike Corporate Center. Last fall it consolidated and movedthe office back to the plant, where there are 300 workers. It is ownedby Big Flower, a Manhattan-based conglomerate, and it has operationsin Chalfonte and Bristol, Pennsylvania.Top Of PageManagement MovesJohnson & Johnson (JNJ), 1 Johnson & Johnson Plaza,New Brunswick 08933. Ralph S. Larsen, chairman & CEO. 732-524-0400;fax, 732-214-0332. Home page: www.jnj.comWilliam C. Weldon, 53, has been named to replace Ralph S. Larsen aschairman and CEO. Under Larsen, who retires in July, sales grew from$9 billion to $33 billion in 11 years. Net earnings for 2001 were$5.7 billion, up from $4.9 billion the previous year. In the jobsof president and vice chairman, James T. Lenehan, 53, will succeedRobert N. Wilson, who will retire in April 2003.Top Of PageContracts AwardedHealthCare Institute of New Jersey, 391 GeorgeStreet, Suite 210, New Brunswick 08901. Bob Franks, president.732-227-2000;fax, 732-342-8449. Home page: www.hinj.orgIn 2001 New Jersey-based pharmaceutical companies led the nation indeveloping new drugs — 15 of the 24 new drugs approved by theU.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This announcement was madeby the 20-company organization that aims to raise the visibility ofresearch-based pharmaceutical and medical device industries in thestate.The only Princeton area-successes included in this group were Reminylfrom Janssen Pharmaceutica and Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, aderivativefrom the daffodil bulb for Alzheimer’s disease; and OrthoEvraDefinity,an ultrasound contrast agent by Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging.Washington Group International (WNG), 510 CarnegieCenter, Princeton 08540-5287. 609-720-2000; fax, 609-720-2050. Homepage: www.wgint.comThe Carnegie Center-based company has been hired by the Delaware RiverJoint Toll Bridge Commission to oversee the arrival of E-Z Pass. Thecontract is said to worth more than $1 million. The E-Z Passinstallationis part of the bridge commission’s 10 year, $526 million capital plan.Top Of PageDeathDiane Pelkus Balestri, 58, on March 6. She had beenassistantdean at Princeton University, associate director of the university’scomputing and information technology department, and most recentlyvice president for computing and information services at VassarCollege.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
