Beyond Ward Circle

Q&A With Amy Holzman, Another SPA Alum Turned Entrepreneur

One of the things I have learned over the past few months is that more than a few SPA grads have turned to entrepreneurship in one form or another since graduation. While many of our classmates have had long and productive careers in government, politics, the law, and related fields, the company and organization creation bug seems to have made the rounds as well. Recently I have connected with Amy Holzman (SPA/'89) and she was nice enough to take the time to answer a few questions for me.

You went from getting a degree in political science to launching a startup travel web site.  How did that happen?

Like most political science majors, I had a strong interest in politics, government, public affairs, and certainly, the law.  And, like most poli sci majors, my intent was to pursue a law degree upon graduation from AU.  The last two jobs that I had in college were working for The Department of Interior and Citibank.  I graduated within a couple of years after the stock market crash, and as a result, many students who may have pursued MBA degrees were now applying to law schools.  Competition was fierce, and I decided to take one year off to work and save some money before going to law school.  Upon graduation, I accepted a full-time position with Citibank; my one-year off turned into five years with that company alone.  During this experience, I awoke one night with a revelation about how companies can effect increased profitability by actually walking the customer service talk – and I had a valuable process to help them do that.  It would be a few years before I cut my teeth as an entrepreneur, but in 1997, I created my first company, Service Solutions International, Ltd.

Creating a company from scratch is an incredible challenge – and amazingly fulfilling.  It provides an education that one cannot be taught, but must experience.  In 2005, after struggling to find, and safely and easily rent a vacation home on Cape Cod, I took the skills that I learned and honed through the years to launch my current venture, Keys to..., LLC, and www.keysto.com.  While emerging from Phase One, Keysto.com is a proprietary; global; online; and secure real-time reservation system for short- and long-term vacation and extended-stay property, and related services and products.  Keysto.com also interactively provides a spectrum of useful information, as well as additional valuable, tangible features and benefits to many kinds of users, including: vacation and extended-stay rental property owners and administrators (listing and leasing agents, management companies, et al); short-term and extended-stay travelers; Professional Members, such as travel, real estate, and corporate agents; and related third-party service and product vendors.  It’s been very exciting working toward bringing to reality my visions as to how to meet global needs and wants in the private vacation property market.

What lessons have you learned from entrepreneurship so far?

Being an entrepreneur is very challenging, and very rewarding.  You have to be able to weather the numerous peaks and valleys that you will encounter on the journey.  As an entrepreneur, you can engage in every aspect of the process, turning your vision into reality – and seeing your vision become reality is an incredible feeling.  Of course, as with most things, creating a company, and certainly a successful company, is a collaborative effort. It’s important to recognize that you can’t do everything, and you aren’t an expert in everything.  Recognizing that you need to enlist the skills and expertise of others, delegate responsibilities, and empower others to do their jobs well, is key.  I also believe very strongly that you must take care of your internal customers in order for them to be able to take care of your external customers.  As an entrepreneur, you set the culture for your company.

What is the most valuable thing you took away from your AU experience?

I had a wonderful experience and received a very high quality of education at American University.  It’s difficult to pinpoint only one most valuable thing that I took away from my AU experience because because I think that there were many valuable aspects.  However, if I had to choose only one, I might say that the more social education that I received as a result of the diversity of the student population and the incredible cultural offerings and opportunities both at American University and in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area tremendously influenced and impacted my life in many positive ways.  Truly, the American University community is so fortunate to have such broad-reaching global access and exposure.

What would your AU classmates be most surprised to know about you?

...probably that, while I have made my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I still miss life in Washington, D.C.!  And while I will always foster my entrepreneurial spirit, I still hope to complete my law degree and pass the bar exam someday...

Jen Consalvo on her AOL Career

Jen Consalvo has a BA and MBA from AU and now is the Director of Personalization at AOL. (Enough acronyms for you?) She was kind enough to share a few minutes of her time with me to talk about her career and reflect on her time at American (SOC/BA/'94 and Kogod/MBA/'00). She even endured some pretty hefty audio technical difficulties, for which I cannot apologize enough, though the final product is fortunately quite easy to listen to.

(Click here to listen to the 12 minute interview.)

Consalvo's current job aims to “remove some of the noise” and “bubble up what is most important for people.” This is something that the online industry as a whole is spending more time on, and it starts with concrete steps like giving users explicit choices, but she says “I think we’ll start seeing it happen on a more passive level as well.” For instance, they can customize your experience based on your online behavior rather than requiring you to dial up or down different choices.

Consalvo notes that privacy “has to be a concern,” but she doesn’t see it as an obstacle. She emphasizes transparency and conveying value to the user. “Just make it completely obvious,” she advises. If users don’t see the relevance then they won’t think it is worth it.

During her 12 years at AOL, Consalvo has experienced a lot of changes and saw AOL grow from a smaller company where she would sometimes bump into Steve Case at lunch. As it became part of the Time Warner empire, she has gotten to experience a lot of new things, including now making more regular trips to Silicon Valley to work with startups.

In the beginning, the focus was on chat and Consalvo worked on community aspects of the site. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of different positions, including focusing on digital imaging, search, AOL.com, RSS, and more.

Along the way, she managed to earn her MBA from American while still working at AOL. “I felt like I needed more of a background in business,” she told me. AOL had a program to pay for secondary education, and she took advantage of it. It meant a lot of work, many nights and weekends, and a few extra years to get the MBA, but she feels it was worth it. She felt like she could unify her MBA work at AU with her day job at AOL, and it added value to her experience.

The relationships she developed at AU played an important role in her development, she says, noting that she has “so many friends from different countries.” She has traveled extensively based on these friendships, attending weddings and other events. She also credits the “broad liberal arts” exposure that she got at AU for learning about things like anthropology which “would never have been on my radar” yet it ended up being her minor.

One last summer class on multimedia where she had to build interactive projects sold her on the Internet (“I was obsessed,” she confesses). She ended up interviewing with a company in Georgetown that focused on the interactive media space (ironically hired by someone with an AU connection himself). After her time there, she moved to AOL which she has called home ever since.

(Click here to listen to the 12 minute interview.)

Photo by jough

Michael Kempner Talks About Building a Top 10 PR Agency

Originally scheduled to graduate with the Class of 1980, Michael Kempner took a year off to work for the Carter re-election campaign and ended up in the Class of 1981 with a BS in Political Science. He went on to serve as a Legislative Director on Capitol Hill for 8 years. Next, his career path took a twist as he moved to the private sector to work for a candy company for two years focusing on marketing and lobbying. Today, he is the founder and CEO of MWW Group.

(Listen to the 12 minute interview here.)

Using the lessons he learned at the candy company, Kempner intended to "just support [himself] enough" until he got another job. At the outset, he had no idea that his foray into consulting would transform into building one of the ten largest public relations agencies in the world. "I never imagined in those days the firm growing to this size," he told me.

As he built up the infrastructure, hiring employees and putting processes into place, he started to see the promise. After about five years, he realized it could be a really big agency and changed the goals appropriately.

Based in East Rutherford, NJ, MWW Group has offices around the country and the world. Kempner now has about 300 employees, a far cry from the solo consulting days when he first started. MWW offers a full range of services, including corporate reputation management, consumer marketing, lobbying, and a variety of other services.

In addition, MWW Group is recognized as a leader in the social media space, having launched a number of innovative campaigns. "We have one of the leading digital media practices in the country," Kempner proudly explains. "The business in many ways has never been more interesting because of the rapidly changing way in which we communicate." He described the pace of change as "breathless" and talked about how it makes it exciting, but also challenging to keep up with.

"With the decline of broadcast television, with the decline of thirty second advertising," Kempner sees the ascension of public relations. "It has changed how we operate and how function dramatically," he says.

Reflecting on his earlier years, he says that "what college gives you, in my mind, is a foundation for learning," but you must stay curious.  He stressed the importance of "lifetime learners" when it comes to having successful careers.

He says he hires a lot of AU students and says whatever the University is doing these days it is working because "they are my best employees." He talked about AU's real campus being all of Washington, DC and stressed the opportunities that AU provides in terms of non-classroom learning provide students with a real edge.

(Listen to the 12 minute interview here.)

Carey Earle: Farming for Ideas and AU's Future

Carey Earle (SOC/'88) is the Chief Idea Farmer and owner of Green Apple Marketing based in Vermont. She's also an active graduate who has served as the President of American University Alumni Board. Carey was kind enough to take a few minutes to share with me a bit of her career story and reflect on her association with AU.

(Click here to isten to the entire 15 minute interview.)

After spending a year as a crisis counselor, Carey found that field wasn't for her, so she turned to marketing in New York City. The journalism courses she took at AU inspired her interest and taught her that "you could make money at writing" without having to be a famous novelist. She started out in advertising and developed a reputation as "the girl from Vermont," so she has carried that theme forward as her personal branding, naming her companies and even her current job title with a rural theme.

Carey got her first job in advertising through a referral from an AU professor. She had the opportunity to explore different marketing opportunities, but ultimately was bitten by the "entrepreneurial bug." The field is "dominated by women," she says, but women rarely rise to the top of the major agencies. She thought to herself that she could "do this on [her] own." At the same time, she was working with big names in the technology field, she made the leap to an Internet startup at the height of the Internet boom in 1996-1997.

Pulling these themes together, she became an independent internet marketing consultant for a couple of years, and ultimately started an agency with a partner called Harvest Communications. It was a boutique firm focused on financial services, providing advice to companies like American Express and Wachovia.

Today, Carey is back on her own and based in Vermont, though she travels frequently to her old stomping grounds in New York, as well as other venues around the country. She says her network is "still largely based" in New York, so like a good farmer, she tends to her crop. "For the first time in my life, I feel like I have the best of both worlds," she told me.

Her time heading up the AU Alumni Board can be traced back to when she first moved to New York and she was introduced to the head of the New York alumni chapter at the time. The two of them really clicked and "he treated me like I was his little sister," introducing Carey to a lot of people and getting her involved in the chapter activities.

Carey's tenure as Alumni Board President came at a turbulent time, coinciding with the challenging resignation of the former University president. She personally responded to thousands of emails and phone calls from fellow alumni. "They wanted to be heard," and she made sure that's exactly what she did. "I returned every message that she received," she told me. She also noted that President Neil Kerwin, then the interim head of the University, tried to make himself similarly accessible to the AU community.

Today, she couldn't be happier that Kerwin has assumed leadership of the University. The fact that he himself is an alum "meant a lot to me." "We are poised for even greater things ... it's a moment of pride for the entire AU community," she concluded.

(Click here to isten to the entire 15 minute interview.)

The Story of Windy Zou Kohl

Today I came across an article published in November by Maddux Business Report that profiled Windy Zou Kohl, a 1993 recipient of a graduate degree in international communications from American University. It is a fascinating look at someone who watched the events in Tiananmen Square and decided to head to the U.S. for a graduate education. She wound up with a scholarship to AU, where she also changed her first name to Windy since Xiaojie, her given name, proved too hard for professors to pronounce. Today, she works for GTE and is married to a hedge fund manager ("My husband is as American as you can get,” she told the author). Certainly a long way from her original goal of becoming a Chinese diplomat. This link takes you to what appears to be an abbreviated version of her story, but it's worth taking a few minutes to read.

Tim Ryan Named CEO of Securities Industry Association

Tim Ryan, a graduate of AU's Washington College of Law, was recently named CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association based in New York. He has been with JP Morgan since 1993, most recently as Vice Chairman of Investment Banking for Financial Institutions and Governments and a member of the Investment Banking Coverage Management Committee. Prior to joining the private sector, Ryan spent more than a decade split between government service and at a private law firm, including stints at the Department of Labor, Resolution Trust Corporation, and Office of Thrift Supervision. When he wasn't in public service, he was a partner at Washington, DC's Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay.

Ruben Keoseyan Named Publisher of Chicago's Leading Spanish-Language Weekly

Perhaps it was the Master's degree he picked up at AU, but whatever the case, Ruben Keoseyan will take the helm as publisher of La Raza newspaper in Chicago. Previous experience includes serving for five years as Managing Editor of La Opinion, a Los Angeles daily newspaper. He also has spent time in television, working for ABC and NBC affiliates in California. "It is an honor and a privilege to take the helm of this great newspaper," said Keoseyan. "I look forward to contributing in the continued success of La Raza in its efforts to serve the Spanish-speaking community of the greater Chicago area. We have a group of extremely talented employees, and along with them I expect to solidify our position as a must-read for Latinos.”

Lynn De Lacy Named Psychiatric Nurse of the Year

Dr. Lynn De Lacy received a nursing degree from American University back in 1981 (yes, more recent graduates may not know that the school used to have a nursing program, since discontinued). Recently, she was honored as the 2007 Psychiatric Nurse of the Year by the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. De Lacy went on to earn a Master's and a PhD following her days at AU and today is the Director of the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute.

Q&A with Chris Heuer: Social Media Expert, Entrepreneur, and Author

Chris Heuer (SPA/CLEG/'91) is a co-founder and partner with The Conversation Group, a marketing and communications agency that is redefining the way companies interact with the markets they serve.  In 2006, Chris founded Social Media Club in order to bring a level of professionalism to the emerging industry of Social Media by bringing people from different background together to share best practices, support industry standards and promote ethical behavior.  He has been an Internet entrepreneur since 1994 when he co-founded an interactive agency and local content network, with some time off from the private sector in 1999 when he served as Chief of eBusiness at the US Mint.

Chris shares his experiences in the following interview with Beyond Ward Circle.

You're extremely active in social media.  What attracted you to it?

My interest in what is now called Social Media goes back to my first interactions with the computer, a TRS-80, when I was in 7th grade. After taking some classes in programming Basic and TurboPascal, I quickly realized I was more interested in what you can do with a computer then how to make it work.

In the mid-90's I read Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold and I found my life's calling -- it also inspired me to start my first business, Virtual Community Network.  Social Media is really the natural evolution and manifestation of what Howard, and many other people, particularly those from The Well, called Social Computing. The things people promised in the early days of the dot-com era connected people beyond geographic boundaries.

What really inspires me today to help more people understand Social Media, is that it is a powerful force for transformation, empowering people to find their voice and share their stories with others. Across society, and particularly within the enterprise, people are using Social Media to connect, to communicate and to collaborate in entirely new ways, usurping the power of command and control systems to make things right and get things done.

Tell us a bit about your experience as an entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay Area and how it compares to Washington, DC.

I have been an entrepreneur in Miami Beach, Washington DC and the Bay Area over the past 14 years, also spending some time in New York's start-up scene, and nothing compares to the culture of entrepreneurship in the Bay Area.  There is such a great ecosystem here for supporting start-ups and no one has been able to re-create it anywhere.  The differences are many, but the root of it all from my perspective is a combination of four factors:

1. the tolerance for risk, the willingness to fail fast and forgive those who fail
2. the belief that anything is possible and that all problems have solutions
3. the willingness to work hard beyond a 9-5 clock
4. the water, the sun and the air -- it really is an amazing place to live

The other thing that I have noticed in talking with entrepreneurs who relocate here is that in the Bay Area, we socialize frequently with other people in the same industry.  In other areas, work associates and personal friends are usually two different groups of people, whereas out here, it is often one and the same -- or at least, we spend as much if not more time with industry friends as we do others.  This engenders more trust between people and makes business deals much easier to complete.

What's the most valuable thing you took away from your experience at AU?

In looking back now, there are a number of things that I think were very formative.  The most valuable thing by far was my friendships -- there have been some hard times which would have been even more difficult to get through were it not for my friends.  From an academic perspective, my CLEG degree has been invaluable in helping me under socio-economic impacts on market behavior and a holistic way of thinking that has helped me understand business models.  My experience working with Dr. Brenner gave me an invaluable understanding of contract law that has helped immensely in business negotiations.  As a member of Phi Sigma Kappa, I learned firsthand the value of team work, brotherhood and a never say quit attitude.

Would would surprise your AU classmates most to know about you?

That I am more then just a beer drinker... OK, my real friends knew that, but I had a lot of fun during my college years and was not striving to showcase my intellect as much as I was trying to enjoy the collegiate experience.  When I run into old classmates, I think they are most surprised to discover that I have been an entrepreneur and a geek -- that I am actually a fairly smart and creative guy with a knack for innovative problem solving.  These days, I think they would be surprised to discover that I am writing a book (The Social Media Playbook) with a great publisher that is being published by Wiley and due out this summer.

K. David Harrison Featured in Film at Sundance Festival

He's gone a long way from political science at American University.  That's perhaps the best way to characterize what has happened to K. David Harrison since his graduation, as he spent time living in Eastern Europe and developed an appreciation for languages, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Today, the 41 year old serves as an assistant professor at Swarthmore College and is an expert in linguistics. He will be featured in a film titled The Linguists at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival founded by Robert Redford.

Harrison himself speaks Russian, Polish, and three Siberian languages.  The film tracks Harrison and a colleague as they travel around the globe exploring some of the 7,000 languages still spoken by at least a few people.

Even if Harrison weren't an AU grad, this article makes for interesting reading, and I imagine the film will be no less captivating, so take a few moments to read about it.