This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the February 5, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
When you are a marketing person, you write a lot of strategy," says Susan Gauff, former senior vice president of people and communications at Sarnoff Corporation. "But the real issue is not how good your strategy is, but how well you can execute it. Looking broadly across the business, the trials of how to execute were far more difficult than anything else. By nature, everyone has a personal agenda and the successful companies are the ones who can turn the personal agendas into a direction that meets the common good."
Gauff has founded a human capital consulting firm, Growth Solutions Group, that offers testing instruments to match candidates with job requirements.
At Sarnoff she offered executive coaching for the leaders of groups with high turnover, and the coaching worked. It was based on tests from a Danish business, Garuda Research Institute. "Eleven of 12 people so dramatically improved their performance and the retention of their people that it was just remarkable," she says.
When she left Sarnoff she took those tests herself. "They told me I am an extremely independent person and that I would probably be happier working on my own." So she licensed the testing software and, with partner Judith Meskill, opened the Growth Solutions Group.
Most of her clients hire her to help hire the right salespeople. She has a package that costs from $1,000 to $1,500, including defining the job, providing interview questions, testing the finalist candidates, interpreting results, and coaching the hirer through the decision making process.
Garuda has an online version of its test, but the complete version costs $250, but Gauff has licensed the software and can administer it less expensively. Asked how it compares to the well known salesforce testing done by Mount Lucas Road-based Caliper, Gauff says Caliper's tests are custom designed and very accurate. "Ours are less expensive and easier to interpret. We are for the medium-sized business, trying to use the least amount of consulting time possible."
The components of the Danish test are "the head, the heart, and the legs."
Gauff says her job at Sarnoff "helped me focus on how there are no bad employees, only good employees in the wrong jobs."
"I am using this time in the economy to position the company so that when things improve it will take off," says Gauff.
During all the time she worked in doctors offices, says Gretchen Godwin, she kept hearing the complaints about answering services. "I thought that an answering service run efficiently by an RN could be more effective," says Godwin. Now she has the only answering service in New Jersey run by a registered nurse.
Godwin is accustomed to training nurses and assistants how to deal with people, and she acquired some of those skills from moving often. Her father was a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and the family had 24 homes in 26 years. She was a medical assistant in the optometry practice of her husband Joseph, a Princeton alumnus, until he decided to break free of that profession and become a writer and teacher. The family moved from Colorado to New Jersey, and he taught fifth grade in Hopewell while she finished her nursing training at Regents College, a SUNY nursing school locating in Albany.
Godwin worked as clinical office manager at Princeton Eye Group, and when Wayne Grabowski, a retinal specialist, left to start his own firm, she moved with him. About the time her husband changed jobs (he is now working at Educational Testing Service), Godwin bought Corridor Medical Answering Service from Stanley Pure in 2001 and expanded it to 12 operators. Lynne Wildenboer of Red Wolf Design Group is also an investor and designed the logo and brochure for the firm.
Custom tailoring for each account means that doctors can direct calls to their voice-mail boxes. For emergencies, the caller can speak to an operator immediately, otherwise the caller can get routine information (office hours, directions) or leave a message. "It makes the doctor look professional and high tech," says Godwin.
"We can send text messages to cell phones," she says. "A doctor can create a triage system of calls or have every call answered by live operator. Some have created health tips for their voice mails." Messages from patients needing referrals can be collected and dealt with all at one time.
Says Godwin: "We don't triage phone calls but because I am here I can emphasize to the operators how important what we do is."
Aruna Mettler restores old and damaged photographs and removes watermarks, tears, and scratches. "Most photographers don't like doing this because they have to rebuild parts of the photographs," she says. "They are like heirlooms. They can be passed from generation to generation."
Mettler's life is like the photographs she works on -- retrieved from an abusive marriage, and healed. Born in New Delhi, her scientist father was from Germany and her mother from Pakistan. She earned her bachelor's degree at Miranda House, a women's college of New Delhi University, Class of 1968, and then came to the United States with her new husband from an arranged marriage. She worked to put her husband through school and then, urged by her children, left the marriage. A certified alcohol and drug counselor, she did social work and psychiatric screening with children and adults.
Seven years ago she married Robert Mettler, the historian of the township where his family has lived for two centuries, and took art courses at Raritan Valley Community College. "I love painting, graphics, and sculpture, and finally I started leaning toward digital photography. I started fixing my husband's historic photographs for fun and I liked what I saw, and the history I saw. Then I did it for my friends. I just love doing it.
"One photo had been destroyed in a flood, but I restored it and recreated it into a digital fresco painting -- applying brush strokes, filters, and other tools. To do the color balance, I match each pixel to the color in the photograph, and recreate the background."
Sherry Rubel learned at her father's knee -- she says she grew up in his New Brunswick photography studio. She also worked with her mother, Jackie Rubel, who had established a nonprofit organization, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, to promote young talent. So it seemed natural for the daughter to open a photography studio five years ago and concentrate on shooting models and actors.
Rubel's studio was at on Route 27 in Kingston, but when she lost her lease last fall, she moved to Kendall Park. Rubel does the usual family portraits and children but her real focus is on helping models break into the business. She does model testing for New York-based agencies such as Click. Would-be models from all over the country take the bus from New York to her studio.
"This kind of photography has so much freedom and creativity," says Rubel, "and I realized that there are so many people who want to get started in the business. I have people send in a cover letter and a resume with the composite card to all the modeling agencies in the tristate area. I have helped several people get connected into the business."
Her father, at age 88, is still exhibiting his photographs.
-- Barbara Fox
Last year Stephanie Clark founded a nonprofit organization, My Daughter's Keeper, to offer support and resources for mothers/caregivers and daughters, ages 10-17. She aims to help mothers and caregivers to strengthen their relationships to their daughters and help daughters identify solutions to problems.
The youngest of 13 children, Clark's father died when she was two. She went to the University of Detroit, Class of 1991, and has a certificate in nonprofit marketing and management from Fordham. In Detroit she was marketing and public relations director for the Museum of African American History, and in New Brunswick she was marketing and sales director for Crossroads Theater Company.
Her organization offers interactive workshops and dinner date packages on such topics as communications, bridging the generation gap, financial planning, influences on teen lives, and self esteem. These workshops can be sponsored by schools, churches, or businesses.
A club for girls ages 10 to 17, called the ReadwRiters Club (RWR), meets monthly at the North Brunswick Barnes and Noble. The next meeting is Saturday, February 22, at 1 p.m. when the books to be discussed will be "The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg for the younger girls, and Deborah Gregory's "The Cheetah Girls" for those ages 14 to 17. Club members write one-page essays on how the book impacted their life, and these essays will be compiled.
"My inspiration comes from my own personal angel here on earth, my 12-year-old daughter Daphne, and from my mother who raised 13 children as a single mother," says Clark. "I relocated from Detroit to New Jersey four years ago, left behind my support system, and accepted the challenge of raising my daughter alone."
"Because of my busy lifestyle," says Clark, "I'm constantly on the move. This past summer, I finally took time to slow down and realized my daughter was entering the most impressional years of her life as a preteen. I've always been there for her physically, but not always emotionally to reciprocate the love and affection she gives to me. Forming My Daughter's Keeper Inc. is my way of personally recommitting myself to provide the love and emotional support that my daughter and all daughters deserve and require."
"I always said that if my mother could raise 13, I can raise one," says Clark.
In June Elizabeth A. Duffy will succeed Michael Cary and be the first woman headmaster in the history of the nearly two-century-old Lawrenceville School. A successful fundraiser and administrator, Duffy majored in molecular biology, Class of 1988, and is executive director of the Illinois-based Ball Foundation, known for its efforts to improve schools and develop careers for students in grades K-12. Lawrenceville School has 800 senior high students from 25 countries and 38 states, and almost three quarters of them are boarders.
At Stanford Duffy earned an MBA and a master's degree in educational administration. Her jobs have included being vice president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, working for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administrator of the student volunteers council at Princeton University, and assistant master of the university' Rockefeller College. She co-authored two books. Married to a graduate of the Lawrenceville School, John Gutman, she has a two-year-old daughter and a six-month old son.
Maureen Nash has succeeded Joan Doig as vice president for human resources at Princeton University. Nash went to Cornell University and has master's degrees from Boston University and Fairleigh Dickinson. Her most recent job was as vice president for learning and development at Bristol-Myers Squibb. She has also held positions at Fidelity Investments in Boston and in Tokyo, Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto Company, and Northeastern University. Daniel Scheiner has been acting vice president since Doig retired in 2001 and will return to his job, which focuses on implementing a web-based human resources environment.