Spectrum is a mid-sized, privately-held Chemical manufacturing company that has been family-owned and operated since 1971. The founder is a Holocaust survivor and is still quite vivacious and active in company decisions at the young age of 90--a truly fascinating gentleman. The Company's focus areas are fine chemical manufacturing, laboratory supply distribution and pharmaceutical compounding ingredients. My role in Marketing is to curate digital visual assets for the Company such as videos, photos and infographics. I bring these assets to life by telling compelling stories about our products, our people and our mission to our customers!

I started this role to increase the marketability of products by educating customers about the Life Sciences portfolio with videos, photos, and other digital visual collateral. I evaluate the need and quickly develop a detailed, robust communications plan for a new product or an application. Combining my creative skill in media creation with a deep understanding of product function has allowed me to intelligently market in this industry.• From storyboard to filming to final edit, I produced over 500 videos (please see sample with links below). Postings on GE Healthcare Life Sciences YouTube channel and social media have over 20K customer views. • Avoided using external agencies for video, photo, and multimedia production saving an average of ~$150K, annually.• I increased the impact of 25 new product introductions (NPIs) with promo videos, voice of customer interviews, studio photography, and other multimedia collateral.• Assisted in planning and execution of 12 National sales meetings and 3 International customer-facing conferences. • Software skills include: Adobe Premiere | After Effects | Photoshop | Illustrator | Adobe Creative Suite | Audition | Final Cut | Apple Motion | Adaptive transcoding and compression for output | Camtasia | Microsoft Office | PowerPoint | Word | Excel | Cloud backup solutions | Digital Asset Management (DAM) system solutions• Hardware skills include: video recording | digital audio recording and engineering | DSLR | lighting (strobe and hot)

Wrote and edited technical communications supporting the Protein Separations portfolio. While in this role, I envisioned the need to shift the company towards digital visual communications so I wrote a business plan which was accepted and formed the basis for my next position at GE.• Strengthened internal sales training program by developing and maintaining 18 eLearning modules for training over 100 sales personnel annually• Revised and updated the Size Exclusion Chromatography “Principles and Methods” handbook, in use by scientists and engineers for over 40 years (please see link below)

Provided consultative pre- and post-sales support for customers performing chromatography on large molecules. Influenced purchasing decisions by sharing expertise on chromatographic lab supplies, ÄKTA instrumentation, and UNICORN software control. • Solved ~24,000 customer problems over the phone or in the field, when necessary. Identified direct leads and cross-selling opportunities to convert a pre-sales call to a sale.• Selected among my peers to deliver technical sales presentations to industrial and academic customers. Sales at these accounts grew at least 10% after each technical lecture.

Completed my doctoral work here investigating a single-stranded telomeric DNA binding protein and telomerase--one of the enzymes thought to be responsible for cancer progression and cellular "aging". Natalie Foster and Ned Heindel (both at Lehigh Univ.) were instrumental in arranging this collaboration with the Cancer Research group at Merck, West Point. Alan Oliff, Dave Heimbrook and Stan Barnett (all at Merck) agreed to take on this challenge. I got a lot out of this collaboration and will be eternally grateful to these individuals--I finished my Ph.D. and I met my wonderful wife who was working there in the same building!

Before entering my graduate program at Lehigh I sought a temporary summer job. QuickChek is a regional convenience store with a deli. The store was short-handed so without much training I was placed behind the deli counter and it was "trial by fire" from the start. My very first customer asked for liverwurst. I quickly found out that this was the worst (wurst, haha) way to start. I had practiced slicing meat with ham which was relatively "easy" to slice. Well, slicing liverwurst is a bit of an art and requires some skill because it must be sliced thicker and with more attention than other meats (who knew?!) I tried to slice it thin like ham and ended up with a pile of brown, pasty mush. I did what I thought was the right thing and what I had seen deli counter workers do as a kid...I held up the pile to the customer and shyly asked "is this alright?" The customer saw the pile in my hand and, slightly horrified, said "I can't give that to my kids!!" Needless to say, I asked a colleague for some help to finish the order. After some practice I got very good at slicing liverwurst so I was not embarrassed again. I learned many things in this short stint as a convenience store worker...the first being, if you don't know what you are doing...ask! I can't say that I miss working in a deli but I do have an appreciation for these types of roles and I never take for granted the steps it took for me to grow into the career and current role that I hold. I am grateful to QuickChek for giving me the opportunity to learn in this role and I try to shop there whenever I can!

Immersed in an industrial analytical lab for nearly 2 months performing qualitative characterization of raw pharmaceutical compounds and excipients using near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Revised standard operating procedures (SOP) for technique. Took full advantage of the "Swiss Pass" to explore Switzerland by land and waterway every weekend, too!