April 2012
When I left Bloomberg L.P. to go back to school, I thought I was making a good move, professionally and personally. I was managing editor of two financial magazines and decided it was time for a change.
The last vestige of the Ascher family residing on the East Coast, my daughter and I sold our townhouse, packed up and moved to Claremont, California, home of the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management. And home of Barbara and Bill Ascher.
School was great. I was fortunate enough to know and learn from Drucker before he passed away in 2005. My daughter thrived in the small college town, under the care of myself and her grandparents. Auntie and Uncle a mere 45 minutes away in Los Angeles, the family support was palpable.
After earning my MBA, I wanted to work in media. Of course, 9 out of 10 people who move to Cali want to work in media. I’d interned at Dr. Phil and Roger Corman’s Concorde New Horizons, where I was associate producer on an hispanic Fast and the Furious called Asphalt Wars. It was clear that to support my daughter and live well, I was headed toward a corporate job.
I consulted for a while and then joined Capital Group/American Funds as a writer of retirement-planning communications. I had the financial background from Bloomberg, and writing comes naturally to me. But there are only about six stories in retirement planning; writing them over and over in different ways gets old. However, what I enjoyed more than the content creation was the content management. At Bloomberg, I had helped bring Adobe InCopy to the magazine department. I championed the software at Capital Group, doing away with an antiquated, inefficient process. I also used the most cutting-edge approaches to communications to help corporations, advisors and retirement plan participants understand how to prepare for the future.
When the economy tanked in 2008-9, Capital Group laid off thousands of employees, one of which was me. I can honestly say that may have been the best event in my career. I set up my own business, Artemis Editing, which brought in clients and farmed out work to a network of seasoned editors, writers, graphic designers and programmers. It was a good move, because so many firms having financial difficulties laid off communications folks. Not only did I have plenty of these people available for my network, but the companies that laid them off were in dire need of our services.
Running my own business was a great way to use the training I’d received at Drucker on a small scale. But working alone in an office isn’t much fun. So I decided to find a place to tap into my love of information management and business strategy. I landed at a small, inefficient information provider to companies in the forest products and alternative energy sectors. I developed strategy for massive expansion and ran the content and analysis team. Unfortunately, the CEO made decisions on a whim and couldn’t stick to a strategy. Strategy without execution is nothing.
The frustration dealing with the CEO was challenging. I knew in my gut what needed to be done and how to do it. Categorizing and delivering relevant information to clients is a joy. Seeing a company fail to do it is a nightmare.
I realized I needed to conduct research and become expert in the management and delivery of information to have authority in strategic development for organizations. And the more I thought about my career, the more I realized that creating the content isn’t what I like, even if I’m good at it. My passion lies in the management of the information and creating efficient access to those in need of it.
With the rapid evolution of information portals and unprecedented interconnectedness of people and what they care about, information studies is at the top of the agenda for every institution, be it business, government, education or health. What better way to help people deliver and access the information they want and need than to conduct the research, teach the next generation of information managers and consult organizations on information strategy?
In the fall when my daughter heads off to college, I will begin the PhD program in Information Studies at UCLA. It will mean significant changes in just about every aspect of my life, and I look forward to documenting the transition.
Stay tuned for more on my adventure, Life, Part II.
