Newsmakers
A Roundup of Media Mentions
An Electrifying
Tale: Maryanne Cataldo (MBA ’92)
Going Down Easy: Doug Duda (MBA
’85)
In the Running?: John Garamendi (MBA ’70)
Good for Laughs: David Moore (MBA ’80)
Hail to the Chief: Alison Sander (MBA ’86/JD ’87)
Prior to earning her MBA, Maryanne Cataldo (MBA ’92) decided to leave Washington, D.C., and her job as an economist in order to plug into a different career. She moved to Boston and joined an electrical workers union as an apprentice. “I said, ‘Now that sounds like a fulfilling way to make a living. I’ll put up lights, and at the end of every day, I’ll say “I did that” and I’ll be proud,’ ” Cataldo told the Boston Business Journal (June 13–19, 2003). Of her five years spent working union jobs by day and attending trade school at night, she explained that “it was sheer adrenaline that got me through it, because my family was absolutely mortified.”
In 1989, out of the remains of a bankrupt commercial electric company for which she worked, Cataldo started City Lights Electrical Company. The company grew modestly while she was earning her MBA; when she returned to it full-time, she built it into an operation that now boasts 135 employees and anticipated 2003 revenues of $45 million. As Boston’s Big Dig, a prime revenue source, winds down, City Lights is expanding to other parts of the country. The company has also launched a subsidiary, iSYS, that focuses on “intelligent systems” — fire alarm, security, and data lines — which is expected to grow to $10 million.
For the employees, a stock ownership plan is in the works. “I want it to be a flourishing company that I’ll feel really proud of twenty years from now,” Cataldo said.
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| Duda Photo courtesy A&E/THE WELL-SEASONED TRAVELER |
The Well-Seasoned Traveler, a food series on the A&E network, goes to the source for enlightenment: Italy for pasta, France for truffle hunting, Tokyo for sushi, Switzerland for chocolate. Doug Duda (MBA ’85), the show’s host, is the guy who keeps the ingredients simple: “We set out to do a show that would really talk about the authentic food ways, the things that were kind of in danger of being trampled and lost as we move toward larger scale food,” Duda explained to the New Orleans Times-Picayune (July 21, 2003). A July show on New Orleans cuisine, for example, took up the finer points of roux preparation and crawfish boiling.
The Well-Seasoned Traveler has been praised for what the Times-Picayune called its “patient, thoughtful, and literally tasteful tone.” Duda, the so-called Charles Kuralt of foodie television, noted that the show (Sundays at 4:30 p.m.) shuns an “overheated” approach. “It doesn’t constantly remind people what a good idea it is to be watching this television show.”
After throwing his hat briefly into the ring in California’s gubernatorial recall race, John Garamendi (MBA ’70), California’s insurance commissioner, returned to his original mission. According to the New York Times (July 5, 2003), he wants “to drive a stake into what many California businesspeople say is their biggest, single problem: the soaring cost of workers’ compensation insurance.” Democrat Garamendi has twice been elected insurance commissioner — he’s also served sixteen years in the state legislature, and in the Clinton administration as deputy secretary of the interior. Some say he will eventually run for governor again, despite two previously unsuccessful bids.
But Garamendi, a Golden State native who grew up on a ranch (and owns one today), played football at Cal, and served in the Peace Corps, says he’s focused on the here and now. “I’m in the process of building the best consumer protection agency in the country,” he said. “If I look too far in the future, I’m going to miss the opportunity to do what needs to be done today and tomorrow.”
If there are jokes to be found amid the wave of corporate scandals, they’re usually on the shareholders. But hey, did you hear the one about the overcompensated CEOs? “They found out that making too much money is not nearly as bad as pretending to make too much money.”
Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for David Moore (MBA ’80), delivering that and other one-liners, live, on stage, at trendy Manhattan comedy clubs. Moore, chairman of Sonostar Ventures, a venture capital firm, is the only person to be named an Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year finalist and Manhattan’s Top Amateur Comedian of the Year. Of the two honors, Moore said, “Honestly, I’m equally proud of each, though I would have been concerned if Ernst & Young named me Comedian of the Year.”
As USA Today (June 12, 2003) reported, Moore has enjoyed stand-up since his parents took him to see Rodney Dangerfield. He made his stage debut about four years ago and now appears once or twice a week, sometimes as a headliner. (And you might have caught him on television as well, most recently on CNBC’s Power Lunch in July.)
So does all that make him a celebrity CEO? “Being a CEO, who also goes onstage as a comic, is about being real, not about being a celebrity,” Moore observed. “Comedy is about self-deprecation, about showing vulnerability. In many ways, it is the opposite of being a celebrity CEO.”
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| Sander Photo by Glen De Rosa |
Not along ago, consultant Alison Sander (MBA ’86/JD ’87) was invited to evaluate the potential for sustainable investment opportunities in Ecuador’s rain forests, where petroleum reserves were being parceled out to international energy companies. She was stunned to find that draining every drop of oil from these ecologically sensitive areas would fuel North America’s energy needs for just two weeks. That stark fact took on a human face when Sander met Santiago, chief of the Achuar, a rain-forest tribe. “Alison, you need to go back to your local community and figure out how to make the North American lifestyle sustainable,” Santiago said. “If you don’t, we’ve seen in our dreams that our rain forests and every rain forest will disappear” (Boston Globe, July 27, 2003).
Upon her return to the Boston area, Sander organized a neighborhood group that determined that more energy-efficient transportation would have the greatest immediate impact on energy use. This possibility inspired her to launch AltWheels, a two-day alternative transportation festival that took place in July. The event, a first for New England, featured one thousand participants and some seventy energy-efficient vehicles from Toyota, Honda, Ford, GM, KeySpan, and Solectria. Speakers included Segway inventor Dean Kamen (OPM 7, 1982), state and federal officials, scientists, and entrepreneurs. “We hope to foster economically viable alternatives to fossil fueldependent transportation,” said Sander, who is already planning a bigger AltWheels event (www.altwheels.org) for the Boston area in September 2004.
