Confessions of an Executive Producer

we are stimulus

Holiday Guest Blogger #6 - Matt Fretz, the NY operation at Epoch Films, is my last guest blogger. Tomorrow it's back to writing for myself. A lot to discuss in 2010. Excited to get started. In the meantime read Matt's post. He has the unique distinction of being the first Epocher to actually volunteer his services. Thanks, Matt. 

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When asked to describe what we do by those not in the industry, I often say manufacturing.  I realize it’s not a popular description from within, however, it’s the fastest way to convey the image of our impact.  Our functions of talent development and storytelling mean very little to nothing for those outside of our bubble.  However, when you explain we hire a lot of people and spend a lot of money to build our product, people get it. 

 

Unfortunately, a quick review of most states’ film incentives reveals how painfully few recognize our value as an industry.  We have a perception problem in most state houses.

 

New York doesn’t happen to be one of those states.  Over the last couple of years, I’ve authored around a million in successful tax credits for Epoch, the bulk being in commercial credits.  The state provides the credit, and as reported for our 2008 credit, we hired over 1,500 people and injected millions into the economy in one year alone. 

 

We are economic stimulus, even in a down year.

 

To facilitate changing our station in the tax code, we need to help legislators and taxpayers see the value in what we do.  There are a number of ways to do this, but the sheer visibility of our productions can serve as our greatest asset.

 

I volunteer as a manager at the Waterfront Film Festival every year.  It’s held in West Michigan, which is not suffering as much as Detroit, but had unemployment in the mid-teens when I was there last June.  Knowing a large part of our fundraising is from the local community, and that it had taken a hit, many of us realized we needed to demonstrate the ROI of the donations from our donors that went beyond the films, seminars, and occasional celebrity sightings. 

 

Most of us from out of state made a decision to eat out; with our lanyards showing at every meal (benefit of being a manager is the lanyard).  I have eaten at many of those restaurants for years, but always without the credentials showing.  However, we felt it important to let people know we were there.  Many of our volunteers did the same thing, leaving their name tags on when running around town.  By the end of the weekend, one restaurant owner asked me (half joking) if we could do another festival the next weekend.  People also seemed to have had their spirits lifted.

 

Use your creativity to figure out ways of setting us apart, especially if lanyards are not a palpable way to raise your profile.  Find ways to distinguish a PA buying coffee from a regular office assistant (pay with gold dollars maybe). Or make sure the local restaurants know who you are with, by making reservations in the company’s name even if none are needed.  Maybe hand out tee shirts.  The goal is to remind people we’re very much a part of the economic landscape wherever we roam.

 

It’s easy for a legislator to dismiss comments from an AICP lobbyist.  However, if their voting constituents have our back, we become harder to ignore.  Maybe they’ll even see us for the valuable story manufacturing industry we are.

 

Matthew Fretz has been with Epoch for six years, having also interned for us in 1997. He currently serves as our Manager of Operations. His previous experience as a successful grant writer made him a natural fit to tackle tax credits for us. Matt is also author of Blog the Fifth, releases his own music, writes, golfs, and is an avid fan of documentaries.

our real currency

Holiday Guest Blogger #4

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I had a great business topic lined up for Jerry, but then I drank too many pumpkin lattes and found myself disinterested in talking shop. Let's face it: this week we're all clearing things off our desk, going to the company lunch/dinner/party, popping straggling holiday cards in the mail, either giving out or receiving (recession-reduced) holiday bonuses and grappling with getting our Quickbooks balanced for 2009. Not to mention fending off near-hourly calls from extended family that threaten to impede all of the above. Normally something of a bah-humbug type, this holiday season I find myself in a buoyant mood, despite the inevitable setbacks of doing business in a recession.

This year my 8-year-old son played Mel Fezziwig in three performances of Orson Beene's Christmas Carol, through Venice's Pacific Resident Theater. In the musical, Dicken's Scrooge is literally haunted by the specter of things that have happened and may happen due to his relentless pursuit of wealth. He's a spiritual pauper whose bank accounts runneth over but whose personal pot is filled with gruel. After revisiting those choices, he begs for -- and is granted -- a second chance at life. Overjoyed to change the course of his actions, Scrooge starts living in way that prioritizes humanity, and a little boy's life is saved. 

So what does this have to do with production, advertising, the AICP, the recession -- any of ProducerPosts’ normal topics of conversation? It’s a good time to remember that we are all in a business in which people and their talents, plus ideas, are our real currency. Many of us were initially attracted to the field because it is lucrative in addition to being creative,  but if money were our sole interest, we'd all have gone straight to Wall Street. Now that advertising budgets are threatened, it's time to return to what we loved about production in the first place: the collaboration, the craftsmanship, the chance to create – and share --  something exceptional. The satisfaction we’ve all felt, when sitting with family or friends who “get” one of our spots on TV.

 A Hollywood fixture who got his start in the 1950s, Orson Beene often guested on The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.) A resident of the Venice, CA canals neighborhood, the 81-year-old actor currently holds a recurring role on Desperate Housewives, while juggling numerous stage performances. Last Friday, Desperate Housewives producers called Orson to come in for a taping. He refused, because of his Christmas Carol commitment (a production for which he not only unpaid, but which gobbles up a quantity of his own money every year.)

The packed-to-the-walls crowd in attendance on Friday night delivered Orson’s real payoff: much loud and raucous laughter, plus rapt appreciation for the gifted actor’s turn as Ebenezer -- Dicken’s renowned miserly bastard whose frozen heart is thawed.  The simple joy of entertaining an audience or perhaps making a lasting impression on someone -- that is Orson’s payoff, and ours. At any budget…

Virginia Scripps is the founder & President of Press Kitchen PR, www.presskitchen.com, where she represents production companies and others in entertainment. A former copywriter, she has a masters in film from Columbia University. She is also a mom, an author, a skier and a Mad Men-aholic. She also the first repeat guest blogger in Producer Posts history.

digital or film, a cinematographers perspective - holiday blogger #3

Holiday Guest Blogger # 3

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How kind of Jerry to allow me to contribute to his blog. I only hope I am half the writer and communicator that Jerry is. As a Cinematographer my strength is with a camera in my hand, not a pen. Here goes:

My name is Ed Gutentag and as I was saying I am a Cinematographer. When I asked Jerry what I could write about he said, “The world is your oyster”. I am going to stick to my world and expound on Film Capture vs. Digital Capture.

I love film and digital will never look the same as film, but...what I tell producers, directors, agency, etc is that today in 2009/2010 there are so many amazing choices of cameras that you can actually pick the wrong camera if you’re not up on the latest technology. Today's Cinematographers have so many more choices of cameras and also post solutions at their fingertips (did I just say post and cinematographers in the same sentence?) What I tell people is the following:

Film is great, but digital is at the point (especially for TV commercials) that when viewed on a TV set (and yes more TV’s are HD) I defy any Cinematographer to tell me if it was shot on film or digital. (By the way, I participated in test which was screened at Panavision in Woodland Hills, Ca to try to guess which footage was shot on film and which footage was shot on the Panavision Genesis camera and I was right 50% of the time, and I also worked on the shoot with Alan Daviau.)

The other thing to keep in mind is what us your project? A perfect example of picking the correct camera is Danny Boyles “28 Days Later”; the entire movie except for one scene at the end was shot on a Canon XL-1S with Canon EC and EJ prime lenses and an Optex Adapter on DV Cam tape.

The choice of camera is an important one. It's like choosing the correct brush or paint; is it water base, acrylic, or oil? At the “end of the day” or maybe I should change the expression here and say at the “beginning of the day” your choice of camera, film or digital is a creative choice but also an economical choice, and on top of it all, no matter what camera you choose, you have to let go of the technology and help the director, agency, producer to tell their story, on time and on or below budget.

Ed Gutentag started shooting Regular 8 mm ( predates Super 8 mm) film with his dads camera at the age of 7. He worked his way up to Cinematographer from photography by sweeping floors for an advertising photographer in NYC. He transitioned to motion picture and started back in the dark room loading film. He has worked with and learned from some of the most talented filmmakers in the world. The list includes Steven Speilberg,James Cameron,Robert Zemeckis,Norman Jewison, Michael Mann, Barry Levinson and Steven Soderbergh.

He currently shoots features, commercials, documentaries and the occasional large scale stunt on an action film.

http://edgutentag.com/reelpg.html

http://digitalcinemafordummies.blogspot.com/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0349177/

look at my testicles - holiday guest blogger #2

Holiday Guest Blogger # 2

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If you think it’s easy to tack a Spanish-language version of a spot onto one you’re already shooting in English, you may want to keep an eye on your nuts.  

I say this because the folks at Slap Chop didn’t. Spokesguy Vince took a valiant stab at speaking Spanish and selling the product at the same time.  Unfortunately, he was working off a script that didn’t take regional slang into consideration.  The literal translation of ¡Mira mi huevo!, which Vince enthusiastically intones, is “Look at my egg!”  But one country’s egg is another country’s (fairly) unmentionable.  

So basically the Spanish version of Slap Chop not only dices eggs and tuna and fruit, it mashes testicles as well. It’s not just our infomercial friends who make hash of the Spanish language, either.  A large advertiser recently ran a nationwide spot that, in English, was tasteful and sweet and funny.  The Spanish-language version kept the same set and lighting and art direction and simply swapped out all the English speakers for Spanish ones.  Except, as in the Slap Chop, nobody was paying attention to the script.  

The lead actress, a fluent Spanish speaker, later revealed how uncomfortable she was being given a script that wasn’t grammatically correct.  She pointed the error out to the director, who pointed it out to the agency and production company, but the consensus was that someone, somewhere, had translated the script and it had to be correct. So that’s the way she had to speak the lines, and that’s the way the commercial ran, in heavy rotation – a very expensive, glossy, beautiful spot with macerated dialogue that provoked giggles every time fluent Spanish speakers heard it.     

When nobody’s keeping an eye on the words, the result is that Spanish-language audiences get the short end of the advertising stick—and they know it then blog, Twitter and Facebook about it.  And poke fun at the advertisers, the actors, and the product.  There are several thousand web pages and postings about Vince’s testicle debacle that can attest to that.  

If the only person on your entire production who can point out grammatical errors in the spot is the actor, you’ve got bigger problems than just the dialogue.  There’s a reason that Hispanic ad agencies and production companies exist, and it’s because of those language and (more importantly) cultural translation issues.  

It’s not enough to just take an American General Market ad, translate it into Spanish and think it’s going to fly in the US and/or Latin America—not when there are at least a eleven different ways to translate the word “straw” in twice as many countries, and making the slightest error in translation means asking the audience to enjoy sipping your cool, refreshing new drink pouch through a whistle or a cigarette.         

So, is there a way to make sure you’re not linguistically Slap Chopping your English ad?  Yes, make sure there’s an actual Spanish-speaking writer involved in your production, one who understands the differences in a number of Latin cultures.  You can’t rely on someone who took high school Spanish, or is using an online translator, or who speaks Spanish with their grandparents but never studied or used it professionally to determine how you’ll be received in a foreign language. 

Because Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lighting and the lightning bug…Or in Slap Chop parlance, it’s the difference between your egg and you nut. 

Bernadette Rivero is the VP of Development at The Cortez Brothers, an LA-based production company that knows how to make a mean Cuban coffee. 

the power of the team - holiday guest blogger #1

Holiday Guest Blogger #1 - Carolyn Hill

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Sales.

The very word can evoke shudders from production companies to ad agencies. Well, let me just remind everyone—we sales people are just doing our jobs of being pleasantly persistent. Looking for opportunities for our companies is everyone’s job and I mean from the receptionist to the directors themselves.

Sales cannot involve egos. It can’t be about hoarding information and cutting people out of the loop. Successful companies operate with a team spirit. The fate of a company does not singularly rest in the hands of the rep. The film business is about the art of the team. We depend on each other. Look at a production with a really great crew. The same is true for sales. 

I’m a fan of meetings. I enjoy attending the Curious Pictures production meeting. I like knowing what gaming projects and television shows they are working on. It’s helpful during my day to day for the commercial sales.

No one can successfully sell anything without information. This is what makes good reps valuable resources. When I was a reporter at Shoot (under editor Mary Knox, now the EP at Curious), people would constantly say to me, “I don’t know, write something.” I would have to explain that in order to write something, I still required information. Being an independent rep mirrors my old job at SHOOT, I just don’t file a story at the end of the day. It’s still the art of gathering information. 

When I was first repping at Crossroads in the early ‘90s the internet and email was just starting out. People started to question, how the role of the rep would evolve. Today, the role of smart and knowledgeable reps is crucial. We are the gateway for work.

I can’t tell you how many times a producer explores the Curious Pictures website and then gets confused about the animation and calls me.  I enjoy these calls because it’s about listening to the client’s needs and then showing them visually appropriate work. It’s the work of a visual curator. As I tell it, I make a living being right. 

A major issue with many companies is that they hire a rep –whether it’s independent or staff—and then think all of their problems are solved. Hire the rep, it’s done. But that’s just not the case (although sometimes we work our magic and walk in the door with a big job). Yes, you get plugged into our regular network, but we need attention also. A good rule of thumb is that energy out is energy back in. Put some energy into your sales force and that’s how you see results.

Also, many companies think that switching reps is the answer to their problems. Say that company does not have a strong web presence, doesn’t advertise (!) or do sponsorships at industry events. Well, the rep has no back up. It’s not always about the reel and the director’s work. It’s often about the image and reputation of the company. 

For example, Blind was founded in 1995 and had previously been considered  a very West Coast company.  Then two years ago they opened a New York office, headed by Nick Litwinko, and I came aboard about a year and a half ago. This year, the company more than doubled their billings out of my territory. I chalk this up to good team work as well as allowing the team time to succeed. You work all of your life to become an overnight success.

Everyone wants to know what the future holds and here’s what I can tell you : It’s going to be better and better. The internet will provide a need for more spots and long form advertising produced. The new speed of business can be unnerving, but ultimately, if you have the right team in place, we can all succeed.

A special thank you to Jerry for allowing me to guest blog.

Carolyn Hill has been a member of the commercial industry since 1990 when she started at SHOOT as a reporter. She worked on staff as a sales representative at Crossroads Films and OneSuch Films. Carolyn has been an independent sales rep since 1998. She holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University '03 and lives in Manhattan with her husband Wayne Bjerke and daughter Paige. 

www.carolynreps.com

'tis the season for blogging

My mantra for blogging has always been know your audience, write about things they value and give it to them often. Since I started this blog 9 months ago I have taken only two prolonged breaks. One was for a week during my summer vacation. The other was for a week during Thanksgiving break. The summer vacation I supplemented with guest bloggers. I not only kept my audience I actually enhanced it. During Thanksgiving I went dark and my audience decreased. 

Next week I'm going to Mexico with my family to celebrate my in laws 50th wedding anniversary. This will take me out of blogging action until after Christmas. I'm sure I'll write while away but I probably won't publish. I like to learn from my past mistakes so I'm putting out the call for guest bloggers over the holidays. 

The rules are simple. Topics are whatever you choose. I don't censor. I only ask there be no name calling, no critique without offering solutions and no snark. Also, keep it brief 500 to 700 words. Other than that the world is your oyster.  

In this the craziest of all years there are countless tales to tell and points of view to share. All regular commenters now is your chance to take center stage. Epoch staff here is an opportunity to disagree with me publicly without any fear of reprisal or better yet earn some real brownie points. AICP members I know your holding back based on the lack of comments on yesterdays post . And, anyone else in or outside the industry, I welcome your voice. 

So, steal a few moments from away from holiday cheer to write a post. Cleanse the frustrations of 2009 or ring in the promise of 2010. Go ahead expose yourself publicly. Don't be shy. Believe me it only hurts a little. 

 

don't hold back

GUEST BLOGGER - Virginia Scripps, President/Founder of Press Kitchen shares her insights on social media. Press Kitchen was Epoch's first PR company. They did a great job for us but we changed our approach to PR so we parted ways a couple years back. 

I'm thankful for Virginia's contribution not only because PR is the original earned media industry providing a new perspective for this blog but also to show the importance of maintaining past working relationships. You never know when you need  a guest blogger in the midst of a very hectic week. 

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Are you a brand? Should you be?

Long before blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, Digg-ing or any of the other new ‘ings’ that keep us from doing our work were invented, commercial directors were brands in and of themselves.

Producers have been the brand builders behind the scenes. These often-colorful personalities appeared at a public level only on conference panels, on the AICP board, in the occasional trade article quote or – if they had good publicists –profile story. Influential producers have long been Google-able, but the rise of blogs such as this one have cast a much wider net for their personal brands. The daily hits Jerry gets on this blog are in the hundreds. But if you look at the industry clout of the typical producerposts.com reader, Jerry’s role as a thought leader is substantial – whether he admits it or not!

People in the business who have much-trafficked blogs, Twitter feeds or Facebook pages have become brands. And that extends to the ad agency Twitter-ers whose feeds I follow because they made me spit soup onto my keyboard with a hideously tasteless joke or had the cojones to say something no one else dared. For instance, I started following grokstar when he pronounced, on the Boards09 Twitter feed, “advertising isn't broken, agencies are. Stop doing the same old shit in all the new places!” The more unfiltered the message, the more people will wonder what you’re going to do for an encore.

Not everyone is comfortable with the public nature of social media. Many of my clients vehemently refuse to “join the conversation” on Twitter and shy away from blogging. Some brands’ feel their cachet depends on remaining stealth. I understand, because my brand is that way. On my company blog, I post “fresh” client news, along with cool photos (currently, a pumpkin carved into an exceptional likeness of Yoda). I stopped making personal blog entries for two reasons: my company is about my clients’ visibility, not my own; and as much as I’d love to display a devil-may-care attitude, my honest insights are likely to piss off either clients or press. Blog entries that gloss over the truth are not an option. That type of whitewashing is counter to the very soul of social media.

What about you? Would a blog or feisty Twitter feed fortify your brand? Examples of the magnetism of unadorned honesty are everywhere – like Jon Favreau’s obedience to Vince Vaughn’s blunt tutelage in Swingers, or, our nation tuning in to see Obama shooting the s&*t on late night TV. If you are willing to get real, social media may help your brand inspire this kind of devotion.

Although I failed to practice what I preach and become a blogger (for my business, anyway), I’d be glad to share my uncensored opinions with you at a party some time. I trust you’ll be too tipsy to quote me…

Virginia Scripps is the founder & President of Press Kitchen PR, www.presskitchen.com, where she represents production companies and others in entertainment. A former copywriter, she has a masters in film from Columbia University. She is also a mom, an author, a skier and a Mad Men-aholic.

if you give a copywriter a cookie

GUEST BLOGGER - Marie Perry took me up on my offer to provide a platform for guest writers any time. I thank her for her contribution and giving me a much needed break right on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

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Last weekend, while complaining about the state of our business (again), I had a thought:

What if advertisers decided to help put people back to work?  It’s kind of one of those “If you give a mouse a cookie” questions, I guess.  But I mean REALLY make an effort to put people back to work and then… make it work for them.  It would looked like this:

What if advertisers decided to help put people back to work?

What if they asked their advertising agency to bring back a laid-off copywriter or agency producer to work on their new campaign? 

What if they asked the agency to bid production companies who were struggling?

What if everyone agreed to shoot in LA or NY or one of the smaller US production centers?

What if the agency asked production companies to put forward a director who hadn’t worked in the last 4 months?

What if the director gave a shot to a producer, a designer, a DP, a stylist who is having a really tough year?

What if they crewed up and gave just a few new people a job?  And hired craft service and catering companies who really needed a hand up?

What if, at the end of the production, we totaled up all the people from inception through completion who picked up a few days of much needed work and the spot ended with a card that read “78 people and 6 companies were put back to work to help make this commercial.”

What if that laid-off copywriter came up with a WAY better tag line than that because they’re the writer and I’m not?

I think people would notice.  I think consumers would notice.  I know I would.  Especially if the advertiser were one of the many companies who have received help from us, the taxpayers, the consumers.  In an ever-changing business, advertisers are desperately looking for ways to capture the public’s attention.  What if a little smart marketing could actually help put people to work?

Marie Perry is an Agent at The Skouras Agency representing top Cinematographers and Production Designers. Marie is a recovering production person. It's been 7 years since her last conference call and bid submission. She hopes to maintain her sobriety. 

guest bloggers

I wanted to thank the five writers who posted last week while I was on vacation. 

1. Bill Reilly, Owner/EP of Space Program
   
2. Charles Day, Founder/Owner of the Lookinglass Consultancy
   
3. Alex Waite, Freelance Production Supervisor
   
4. Walter Partos, Founder/Owner of Partos 
5. David Bochner, Vice President of Cornerstone of Medical Arts Center and all around great guy  

If you missed the postings, they are in my archives section under GUEST BLOGGER. It's a wide array of varied topics with unique insight. Most importantly, they aren't mine. Take a look. It's worth the read. 

This venture into loaning out my blog was inspired out of necessity. I wanted to maintain daily postings while being able to enjoy a vacation. This experiment proved to be more successful than I had hoped. There were a great number of hits and page reads. Maybe I should go away more often. 

It made me realize that the theme of my blog is point of view not a singular voice. I preach about industry unity, the need for more openness and the virtue of diverse opinions. I want to use this humble forum to further that cause. The only rules are it must be transparent, constructive, and without negativity or name calling. 

If there is anyone that wants to make a contribution, no need to wait until my winter vacation. Feel free to contact me about posting your opinion. 

It's an open invitation.  

addiction

This post has nothing to do with sequential liability, prodcos and agencies, social networking, or frankly anything creative.  It is about a subject that has affected virtually all of us in some way or another-Addiction.  I am going to focus on alcohol and drug addiction, though certainly there are many other types-to food, gambling, sex, shopping, and too many others to list.

I am a licensed social worker and interventionist practicing in New York City and currently run one of the largest, private inpatient programs in New York.  I have personally interviewed, admitted, run groups for, and counseled thousands of patients during the past 18 years.

I am asked many questions about addiction on a daily basis and will address a few of them in this post. 

Q) Why do people get addicted?  Is this really a disease?  Are there ways of predicting who will become an addict?

A) Generally people try drugs for the first time voluntarily.  Once, however, they are truly addicted, it is no longer a choice.  Prolonged use changes the brain in drastic and long lasting ways which result in uncontrollable drug craving and use, which is the essence of addiction.  I cannot tell the audience how may individuals I have worked with whose addiction started with dental surgery or back pain.  Before they know it, they cannot manage without pain medication-oxycontin, vicadin, and the like.  I will address this particular addiction in a bit.

In my own very unscientific study, the number one factor in who becomes addicted is whether or not there is a family member who has had a history of addiction.  Fully 80% or more of the thousands of patients I have treated have had a family history.  This clearly indicates that there is a biological predisposition towards addiction.  Simply put, a person with a family history who tries alcohol or drugs has a much larger chance becoming an addict than someone without a family history.  And who as a teenager doesn’t try drugs or alcohol?  

Q) Which drugs are the most addictive?

A) There is a difference between physical addiction and withdrawal vs. mental/psychological addiction.  For example, cocaine, crack and crystal meth are NOT physically addictive.  Basically, sudden stoppage in use after a period of days, weeks or even years will NOT result in physical withdrawal.  However, the psychological addiction and cravings are profound.  I have personally seen countless lives ruined over the inability to stop using these stimulants.  

For opiates there is a physical withdrawal that manifests as the worst flu-like symptoms one can imagine.  As I stated earlier, the number of people I have personally met with who started out with a prescription for pain pills that turn into an addiction is in the hundreds.

Alcohol and other benzodiazepines (xanax, valium) are a different story-they are all highly addictive, and cause physical discomfort when use is stopped.  More significantly, withdrawal can cause seizures and death if chronic use is stopped suddenly and with no medication to manage the withdrawal symptoms.  When these symptoms are managed in a treatment setting, there is little to no danger during the withdrawal.

Q) Lastly, and perhaps most controversial-why should we treat addicts?

A) Obviously, I am a strong advocate for drug treatment.  I could go on forever but won’t.  Here’s my bottom line: imagine a chronic debilitating disease for which there are documented, effective treatments.  Imagine that this disease costs society $110 billion a year.  Imagine data that shows treatment is as, if not more effective than treatments for other chronic illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and some mental disorders.  Studies from such institutions as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania have shown that comprehensive treatment can reduce use by 50-60%.  Treatment also reduces the risk of HIV infection and these interventions cost less than treating someone with AIDS.

It should be clear that society needs to rise above its moral outrage over the initial voluntary behavior of addicts and get them into treatment.  In order to significantly reduce the tremendous toll drug addiction exacts from all aspects of society, treatment availability must be a core element in our society.

David A. Bochner, LMSW

David is the Executve Vice President of Cornerstone of Medical Arts Center, the largest private provider of substance abuse services in New York. He graduated from New York University in 1990 with a Masters Degree in Social Work and has been part of the recovery community ever since. He lives in Tenafly, NJ with his wife and 3 kids.