CORPORATE WORK EXPERIENCE

Feb. 2001 to Nov. 2010:
Director of Marketing & Business Development for a Regional CPA and Wealth Management Firm.  Case | Sabatini CPAs is a regional public accounting firm based in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. Sister-company, CSD Financial, managed $50 million in assets. Highlights:

• Built an entire marketing and business development function. Wrote and implemented the firm’s first-ever comprehensive general and industry-specific segment marketing and business development plans. Coached partners and managers on marketing, sales techniques, SWOT analyses, etc. Implemented a firmwide sales incentive and BD plan.
   
• Materially participated in $1 million in recurring new business during my first year with the firm. Leveraged proposal writing / pricing / strategy expertise to assist in landing a significantly higher percentage of work.
   
• Launched a successful Tax e-Newsletter reaching 2,500 local business leaders. Initiative started with just 200 clients as both a marketing / PR and business development tool
   
• Developed firm’s entire government practice from the ground up since 2005. Firm doubled in size since I started in 2001. When firm split into two companies in 2005, we launched a public sector service line. Began with zero government clients; now have many dozens. Firm also acquired a post-secondary school practice (at my recommendation) in 2008, adding numerous clients into this overall practice and significantly improving profitability.
   
• Leveraged our position as trusted financial advisors to launch a successful retained search company. Launched CSD Career Services in 2007 to source financial controllers and CFOs for our client base. (I served as the primary Director of CSD Career Services, receiving 20-33% of each placement fee.)
   
• Consistently produce top-quality marketing materials (brochures, ads, press releases, communications, web sites, etc.) within a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment that requires resourcefulness and the ability to translate financial and/or technical concepts into easily accessible language. Maintain information about our practices, professionals, and the marketplace for up-to-date use in our materials.
   
• Leverage combined talents in writing, design, and programming to develop innovative products and services that set our firm apart from others. For example, I conceived, designed, wrote, and coded a Form 990 analysis tool for our web site's nonprofit industry area. Similarly, I developed an online calculator to help manufacturers and high-end retailers decide whether to use LIFO.
   
• Accompany client service professionals on sales calls and bid meetings. Lead the resulting proposal process and participate in pricing strategy.
   
• Serve as the lead representative for our college recruiting program. Attend career fairs and give presentations to accounting majors about public accounting as a career.
   
• Provide marketing consulting to firm clients. Capabilities and example services listed here.
   
• Provide advanced computer consulting to clients. For example, innovated data crunching functions to help our accountants determine the percentage of school tuition that comes from Title IV funds. In other words: Out of an entire accounting firm (a place where they use Excel more than anywhere), they called me in to figure out how to implement the complex formulae required.
    
• Philosophy: A marketer needs to demonstrate measurable value and ROI in addition to producing marketing communications and collateral of unparalleled quality. In this way, marketers can become a true source of revenue to a firm instead of an overhead expense.

Apr. 1999 to Feb. 2001
Senior Manager, Marketing Communications & Internet Services for a 10,000-Member Professional Trade Association. Headquartered in downtown Pittsburgh, the Air & Waste Management Association facilitates communication among environmental engineers worldwide. Highlights:

• Promoted to the organization’s only Senior Manager after one year, including a 25% pay raise.
   
• Served as primary brand manager overseeing all communications, strategic marketing partnerships, marketing and IT personnel.
   
• Grew the web site to 150,000 page views / month through significantly expanded functionality and integration with this nonprofit’s association management software.
   
• Brought innovation to the complex marketing / advertising / PR campaign for a 4,000+ attendee conference and 50,000 sq. ft exhibition.
   
• Supervised a highly productive staff.

Feb. 1997 to Apr. 1999
Marketing Project Manager (Proposals & Business Development) for a Global Professional Services Firm. Deloitte (then known as Deloitte & Touche) is the largest of the “Big Four” professional services firms, employing 150,000 professionals worldwide. Our department supported 600 professionals in Pittsburgh alone, as well as CPAs and management consultants in several states. Highlights:

• Hired in marketing and quickly earned a unique dual role in business development.
   
• Wrote and project managed a winning $2 million public sector “Office of the Chairman” proposal (reserved for clients of national significance).
   
• Personally wrote, produced, and project managed more than 100 large-scale audit, tax, and technical consulting proposals.
   
• Profiled area executives for business development / targeting purposes.
   
• Supervised writers, designers, and vendors.
   
• Developed a competitive intelligence program.
   
• Wrote portions of client business plans.
   
• Earned a review rating of “Exceeds Expectations.”

1993 to 1996
Production Editor for a Global Information Services and Publishing Company. Prentice Hall Law & Business was based in Washington, D.C. when I began in 1993. The publisher was part of Simon & Schuster and, in turn, part of Paramount Communications, Inc. The unit sold in 1995 to Aspen Publishers, Inc., part of the Dutch publishing company, Wolters Kluwer. Highlights:

• Planned / supervised the production of monthly business / legal journals such as The Computer Lawyer, Inside Litigation, SEC Insights, Commercial Contracts, The Investment Lawyer, ERISA Litigation Reporter, Of Counsel, the Lawyer Hiring & Training Report, and many more. Considerable editing, design, and writing work.
   
• Continued as a contractor until 2002 out of the New York City office, doing mostly layout and editorial work. However, I also wrote several feature articles for the highly prestigious law firm management newsletter, Of Counsel.

1992 to 1993
Editor for a Continuing Legal Education Provider. The Cambridge Institute was a national CLE provider based in Vienna, VA, just outside of Washington, D.C.

• Designed, produced, and edited marketing brochures for continuing legal education (CLE) seminars across the U.S.

ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE

2007 to present
Partner in a Holistic Wellness Information and Services Company. Pure Jeevan is a company launched by my wife in 2007 to serve the natural health and raw/living foods community. Together, we write articles, produce videos, and generally inspire people about raw foods, health, and nutrition. We also provide nutritional counseling, hold events and talks, and offer health-related services such as "live blood" education. To date, we have roughly 10,000 readers, with whom we are in contact regularly. For general information about the raw foods lifestyle, sign up for our mailing list and you'll receive our two free eBooks, Raw Foods 101 and Raw Food Recipes. These books explain what raw foods are and why we're sharing this information with others. Highlights include:

• The Pure Jeevan web site (featuring raw foods information)
   
• The Pure Jeevan blog (featuring raw food and health articles five days per week)
   
• The All Raw Directory (a community-run site featuring thousands of links to other raw resources)

Mid-1990s - present
Freelance / Contract-Based Writer, Editor, Publisher, Marketer, Web Designer, PR Consultant, Programmer, Project Manager.  Billings, in addition to full-time positions listed above, have averaged $10k per year, but often reach $20-30k per year. My clients have included businesses such as:

In addition, I've done quite a number of smaller, "fast and free" web sites for local schools and/or charities. For example, Serra Football and the Westmoreland CASA organization.

>> return to top >>

Selected Publications and Other Writing, Communications, and PR Qualifications:

My primary qualification for most communications and business development roles is having written more than 500 business proposals ranging in scope from mid-cap audit or tax engagements up through ERP system implementations valued at more than $4 million. While I'd like to post examples, these proposals are the intellectual property of the firms for whom they were written. (I'm able to provide samples for private review, however.) Instead, here are some published articles you may be interested in reading.

First, some journalistic pieces:

• "St. Louis Law Firm Managers Assess Regional Dynamics." Lead story in Of Counsel, February 1997. (Of Counsel is one of the more prestigious national publications on law firm management.)
   
• "The Year 2000 Glitch: A Law Firm Business Problem and a Practice Development Opportunity." Feature article in Of Counsel, April 1997.
   
• "Law Firms Stress Dialogue As Key to Success Working with Headhunters." Feature article in Of Counsel, May 1997. (One managing partner interviewed was reportedly so impressed with this piece, he carried it around and handed it out to legal recruiters.)
   
• "Local Law Firms Happy Participants in Ongoing Regional Boom." Feature article in Of Counsel, September 1997.

Some casual/conversational pieces:

• "Seek and Ye Shall Find." Feature article in EM (Environmental Manager), October 1999.
   
• "Brand New Opportunities in 2000." Feature article in EM, October 1999.
   
• "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Online Job Seekers." Featured in EM, February 2000. (Also used this article as a handout for a speech delivered to environmental engineers in Salt Lake City, June 2000)
   
• "The Chaotic H4CK3R Subculture." Featured in EM, June 2000.

Articles in Which I Am Quoted or Featured:

• "Push Client E-Newsletter Penetration," by Jeff Stimpson. Featured in Practical Accountant, August 2002.
   
• "Boards-by-Design Match: Jim Dee and The Horticultural Society of Western Pennsylvania." Featured article on Duquesne University’s Nonprofit Leadership Institute web site, 2006.
   
• "Great Scott: Jim Dee's Passionate Mission to Preserve the Works of Scott Joplin, One of the Greatest Black Composers in American History," by Jonathan Wander. Featured in Pittsburgh Magazine, February 2007. (Note: PDF file is 11Mb!)

Health Journalism Beginning in 2009:

• In February 2009, I began posting interviews as a Citizen Journalist for NaturalNews.com, a health care reporting site that gets 3 million visits/month. The archive for these pieces and many others can be found here. The initial article was an interview with Myra Goodman, co-founder of Earthbound Farm, the nation's largest producer of organic produce.

Blog Writings:

• For hundreds of additional pieces, ranging from spirituality to philosophical musings to low-brow humor pieces, see my blog, Boldly Serving Up Wheat Grass (formerly known as "Blowing Shit Up with Gas"). I used to write under the pen name Patrick Hillman, but now use my own name there.

Other Creative Writing:

• Published poetry back in college in some decent journals (Poet Magazine, Potato Eyes, Endless Mountains Review, and a few others); also self-published a chapbook entitled The Geometric Lover.
   
• The following books (written, designed, produced, and published by yours truly under the pseudonym Patrick Hillman) are available on Lulu.com in hard copy.

	Tales of the Midwest is a memoir chronicling only the strangest stories from my formative years -- mischief and guns, roaches and demons, backwoods hicks and religious fanaticism. The book covers numerous forms of "giving the finger," people who lose their minds over condiments, various brushes with the law, and bowling alley fights. The writing celebrates pyromania, an 8th grade "Abe Lincoln look-alike" science teacher, a man who collects school buses, my insane uncle who nearly killed a man, and at least one story involving dynamite. And other stuff.
	The Pirates of Pamlico Sound:  A woman finds her personal life and love life mysteriously interconnected with pirate and colonial items (and people) in this supernatural tale that alternates between modern times and the past. (Not an arrrg!-type pirate story.) Rated "mature," but only for suggestiveness / sensuality (i.e., adult themes, not explicitness).
	Wood's Confection, a Screenplay:  In this *screenplay*, a retired marketing executive's latest entrepreneurial pursuit -- developing a candy bar in the shape of Jesus -- dovetails with an adventure involving his younger cousin's circle of criminal friends. The recipe for this tightly woven tale includes elements of dark comedy, mystery, and a dash of philosophy.  Rated R, as there's something in here to offend almost anyone (including myself).

>> return to top >>

Selected Web Development and
Technical Marketing / Communications Experience

• I've been involved in electronic publishing, development, and communications in either a full-time or part-time capacity since the mid 1990s. On the development side, this has involved writing copy, designing web pages, and coding work. (I generally use various artistic programs and WYSIWYG HTML editors for the initial design and then hand-code my own modifications.) Most recently, I've been using the Microsoft Expression Web development environment and studying CSS. I plan to learn ASP.NET in the future.
   
• 2010 / 2011:  Currently redesigning the web sites for Pure Jeevan.com, the Pure Jeevan blog, the All Raw Directory, and a new photo web site. All will be CSS, with many technical and aesthetic enhancements (e.g., Lavalamp menus, etc.). To be launched mid-April 2011. 
   
• 2009:  Designed a site for the Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania as well as a site for a Latin American business consulting firm. Launched a personal video blog site documenting my commitment to doing 100 pushups/day, 5 days/week.
   
• 2008:  Designed an enormous web site and digital archive for composer, writer, and visual artist David Thomas Roberts.
   
• 2008:  Designed and coded a full social networking web site using ASP, MySQL, and VBscript. Unlike many of my previous sites, this one was built using a CSS platform.

• 2008: Designed and coded a complete social networking web site using static HTML, ASP, MySQL, and VBscript. Site featured numerous database integrations (users, logins for protected content, forums, ecommerce, and more). Successfully integrated Paypal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) for realtime ecommerce processing.
   
• I've probably coded roughly 30 other web sites and/or utilities in the past, many with database integrations, ecommerce capabilities, forums, user interactivity, web-based applications, online storefronts, and other features.
   
• My general tech experience dates back to circa 1980/1981 with the acquisition of an Atari 400. I was 11 or 12, and began BASIC programming (many concepts of which I still use today!). I've also owned and operated an Atari 800XL, IBM machines in the late 80s, Apple machines of that period (esp, the Apple 2e, one of my favorites), a Mac Classic, and numerous Pentium machines dating from a 60Mhz machine in the early 1990s all the way up to our modern powerhouses.
   
• Other notable technical expertise: Experience with intranet systems, SharePoint intranets, HTML, ASP coding, VBscript, PHP, MySQL, integrating web sites with Access and SQL Server databases, blogs (Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, etc.), search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, mastery level ability with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Photoshop, PageMaker, video editing (Sony Vegas, Windows Movie Maker, etc.), and numerous other packages. General familiarity with many CRM systems (Act!, etc.). I also own roughly 20 domain names for personal use and/or future development as well. The best live example of my programming is probably the All Raw Directory site, linked to herein, which contains many thousands of lines of original code, covering almost every imaginable function a web site could have (ad rotators, user profiles, comment systems, large database integration, etc.).
   
• 10+ years of technical marketing / communications experience:
    
  • At Deloitte (listed above):  Wrote numerous Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation and consulting proposals for the mid-cap "Solutions" consulting group (ranging from roughly $75,000 to $4 million in scope).
     
  • At A&WMA (listed above): Wrote communications to the membership on various technical issues affecting the organization (from "using the internet" columns, some of which are included above, to consensus-building communications designed to obtain sign-off from the board and technical bodies for IT projects).
     
  • At Case | Sabatini (listed above):  Marketed the firm's technical consulting (mostly accounting package implementation, construction accounting software, and medical office management systems such as practice management software and electronic medical records systems) for four years until we sold our IT division to another company. Also manage our firm's SEO, PPC, and other online advertising initiatives.

>> return to top >>

• B.A. in English (concentration in writing) – Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA (1991).Naparsteck scholarship for writing, co-editor of the university's literary magazine. (Went on to an MFA program in writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, but dropped out in order to get a job.)
   
• Recent Courses:
   
  • Kevin Gianni Mentorship Program (an intensive 4-month internet marketing program focused on the natural health niche but broadly applicable to all business). (2009)
     
  • Leadership Academy, Duquesne University Nonprofit Leadership Institute (2006)
     
• Board of Directors: Pittsburgh Botanic Garden. (2006-2010). Served as Finance Committee chairman during the kickoff of a $30 million capital campaign and nationally important acid mine drainage reclamation project involving coal mines on public property. Wrote the organization's business plan in 2006, which has helped secure various grants. Also lead a small membership committee and participate in marketing.
   
• Professional Affiliations:  (all former, as of November 2010)
    
  • Professional Services Marketing Association
  • Society for Marketing Professional Services (an A/E/C marketing & BD organization)
  • Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania
  • Associated Builders & Contractors of Western Pennsylvania.

>> return to top >>

• Raw and living foods, natural health, general nutrition. Have written and published hundreds of thousands of words worth of health and nutrition articles on the Pure Jeevan blog, and also produced and edited many entertaining instructional videos (such as that quirky sample).
   
• Entrepreneurism.  Have served as a coach in the Pittsburgh Technology Council's annual business plan competition.
   
• Internet and technology developments.  Fan of social networking sites, blogging sites, Wikipedia, Woot, YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, etc.
   
• Music, esp. piano playing and composition. (view site with midis and sheet music). See also my family's historic sheet music collection.
   
• Fitness. Run annual 10k races, and have undertaken unusual fitness challenges, such as completing more than 36,000 pushups during a 365+ day project.
   
• eBay.  Formerly a PowerSeller, circa 2005. Trade under the names "jimdee" and  "WebAuctionStore." Proudly maintain a 100% positive feedback rating, with 650+ total transactions with feedback since 1998.
   
• Home remodeling. Completely remodeled my home (originally built in 1927), refinished the attic into a home office, converted a 4th bedroom into a library (follow link to see the custom bookcases I built), added a bathroom with custom-built fixtures, jet tub, and a sauna. (Pics of the basement carpentry work!)  Just bought my next fixer-upper in the Hawthorne district of Portland!
   
• Writing.  Have self-published a novella, a full-length screenplay, and a memoir (shown above); have three novels in development. I'm also at times an incessant blogger (for several years).

>> return to top >>