Consultant
The Pierce Memorial, a statue of three loggers next to the Bangor Public Library: not where you’d expect to find the endpoint of a civil rights demonstration. My father was one of several hundred gathered there on a winter day in 1965 to honor Reverand Reeb, a Boston minister brutally slain at the second march on Selma. He joined other speakers at this ecumenical service, his words representing Bangor’s Jewish community that day. I was only eight, but it’s not something you forget. And it fueled a lifelong passion for politics, public policy, and making a difference.
A few years later at my Bar Mitzvah, I was reminded of this call to service. But I say with some embarrassment that I was much more concerned about the quality of the reception food, the color scheme, and whether family and friends were having a good time. In a sense, this was the first event I helped organize. Although my first professional convention was still almost two decades away.
To pass the time in between, I went to law school, started a legal publishing house catering to Maine attorneys (the business which took a circuitous path and is now called Strategic HR US), spent a little time in Washington and Boston, did some traveling and listening, and once back in Maine connected to lake protection and land preservation issues in the Sebago Lake region.
Today, I happily produce conferences for the HR communities in Maine and New England (and soon beyond). I’m passionate about throwing a great event and in recent years began to see the potential for these events to evolve into experiences that impact communities. I see human resources at the vital center of businesses, non-profits, and government. HR is strongly positioned as a bridge connecting all parts of a company and when running well can make a huge difference in the strategic direction of an enterprise, the ethics and lives of the human beings who go to work every day, and their impact on adjacent communities.
In the process, I get to blend my passions for public policy and throwing a great party. I consider myself most fortunate to work with talented people, good people…people who make a difference! That includes the excellent team of creators at Strategic HR and it includes all of you human resource professionals whom we have the pleasure to serve.
