Brian Keane, a 1989 AU graduate and President of the Alumni Board, took time out of his schedule to visit with Beyond Ward Circle and discuss his career and his current involvement with the school. As President of SmartPower, he markets clean energy to consumers in practical terms. He discusses how he got involved with the organization and how they accomplish their mission.
In addition, Brian talks about his life since graduation and what the future of AU is from an alumni perspective. He will be hosting several online chats in the coming weeks to solicit ideas from fellow graduates as part of AUs strategic planning process, initiated by new President Neil Kerwin, the first head of the school to come from the ranks of its alumni.
For more information on how to participate in these online chats, please visit the AU alumni web site.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Beyond Ward Circle is a blog edited by Chip Griffin with information for and about graduates of American University in Washington, DC. The views expressed are his own and it is not affiliated with AU itself. You can read more about Beyond Ward Circle or email Chip for more information or with your ideas and suggestions.
Brian Keane, a 1989 AU graduate and President of the Alumni Board, took time out of his schedule to visit with Beyond Ward Circle and discuss his career and his current involvement with the school. As President of SmartPower, he markets clean energy to consumers in practical terms. He discusses how he got involved with the organization and how they accomplish their mission.
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.
Originally scheduled to graduate with the Class of 1980, 