Instructors

Janice Rovito Messinger
Janice Messinger spent the last 30 years working at a billion dollar national retail corporation. Starting as a sales associate, Janice held increasingly broader and more strategic positions. In her final corporate role, she led the organization’s first Merchandise Information Office (MIO). In this position, Janice continued her presence on the Executive Committee, chaired committees that conceived, developed and executed enhancements to the merchandising systems, and delivered needed tools for the competitive retail markets.

Janice’s accomplishments reflect her fundamental commitment to the creative process and innovative solutions, all for the sake of achieving higher revenues, better alignment with strategic goals, and organizing teams to accomplish higher performance.

After several semesters as an Adjunct Instructor, Janice joined FIT as full-time faculty in February, 2008 and quickly put her substantial corporate experience to the test, leading Team Development Workshops. This course teaches how members of a team can recognize the assets of each member and use these strengths to create better, more innovative solutions.

She graduated from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Patti Pao
Patti, CEO of Pao Principle in New York City, is a "drop-in" turnaround executive, and a graduate of the Harvard Business School, with over 20 years of experience in the luxury goods, beauty, and retail industries. She specializes in helping companies solve "burning platform" issues by quickly identifying the issues, creating and implementing an action plan, and staying on only as long as it takes to put the business back on track or position it for the next level of growth. Importantly, her contributions continue to generate value long after she is gone.

At David's Bridal, she and the team identified two major initiatives representing $130 million in incremental revenue. Bob Huth, President and CEO of David's Bridal, credits her ability to create and put in place the fundamentals for growth and to foster a team-based working environment as instrumental to reversing a serious sales decline and bringing the organization back on track to achieve its aggressive sales plan.

Co-Founder and CEO, Peter Thomas Roth of Peter Thomas Roth Labs, LLC gives her high marks for successfully reversing their sales decline after just one month, and creating and implementing an action plan that enable the company to double their sales and profits within 18 months.

Patti's expertise at quickly driving double-digit growth spans a wide industry range including consumer packaged goods (Clorox, POM Wonderful), luxury goods (Natori), beauty (Avon, Guerlain, Elizabeth Arden, Peter Thomas Roth Labs LLC, Garden Botanika, Purlisse, Amenity), retail (Ann Taylor, David's Bridal, After Hours, Priscilla of Boston, Waterworks), Spas/Salons (Renee Rouleau, Elizabeth Renee), technology (Epson) and non-profit (The Fresh Air Fund).

Christine Pomeranz
Professor Christine Pomeranz was an international banker for twenty years, most recently with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ("ANZ") as Senior Vice President and Regional Head of Structured Trade Services-Americas, arranging financing solutions for multinational companies, commodity traders, financial institutions, and large corporations in North and Latin America. Prior to joining ANZ, Christine was a relationship manager at The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in New York, providing trade finance services to middle market customers primarily in the apparel and fashion industry. She started her career at Citibank in the Philippines and New York as account manager in the International Financial Institutions Division. Professor Pomeranz has taught at New York University and World Trade Institute of Pace University. As the faculty coordinator of the ITM Advisory Board, she organizes guest lecture series, field trips, career development programs, and fund raising activities to enhance the students' professional development. She earned her Master of Business Administration degree with majors in Finance and International Business from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University in 1998. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree major in Business Administration with honors at Assumption College in Manila, Philippines in 1980.

Alan G. Robinson
Dr. Alan G. Robinson is a leading authority on managing creativity and ideas. An award-winning author and educator, he is a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has worked with hundreds of organizations around the world in the field of corporate innovation, including the Federal Reserve Bank, Lucent Technologies, Interbrew, Wyeth, Forest Labs, Volkswagen, UBS, Northrop Grumman, Allianz, Bose, the Washington Post and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

His book Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happen (co-authored with Sam Stern) has been translated into thirteen languages, and was a finalist in the Financial Times/Booz Allen Hamilton Global Best Business Book Award.

His latest book, Ideas Are Free, co-authored with Dean Schroeder and included in your packet today, was published in 2004. Based on their research and consulting in more than 300 organizations in 17 countries, the book describes how the best companies go about getting large numbers of ideas from their employees, and the competitive advantages they gain from this. The book was named Reader's Choice by Fast Company magazine in June 2004, deemed one of the 30 best business books of 2004 by Soundview Executive Books, and was also featured on ABC World News, CNN Headline News and NPR.

John Simone
John C. Simone is an assistant professor in the Advertising and Marketing Communications department of FIT. He is currently on leave from the AMC department to be the associate chair of the Cosmetics & Fragrance Marketing department.

After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, John began his professional life as a merchandise representative at the Associated Merchandising Corp., a New York-based buying office for the Federated Group of department stores. He was then hired as Associate Creative Director by the Men’s Fashion Association, the public relations arm of the menswear industry.

With his experience in PR, John left MFA for the Revlon Corporation, where he began as a Public Relations Manager for Group Two, a product division within the firm and was promoted to Public Relations Director within the year. He supervised Revlon’s three product groups and also helped burnish Revlon’s corporate image at a time when it was expanding to become a more global organization.

In 1986 John began his teaching career at FIT while he was New York editor of Visual Merchandising & Store Design, the leading trade magazine in its field. Over the years, John had also done freelance writing for a number of other industry magazines in fashion, visual merchandising and retailing. He is a member of the Magazine Publisher’s Association (MPA) and ASNE, the American Society of Newspapers Editors. John earned a Master of Arts degree in Corporate Communications from Baruch College in New York City in 2000.

VISITING INSTRUCTORS

Peter Andrews - IBM
Peter Andrews is an innovation strategist who has spent a career bridging the gap between technical capabilities and the bottom line. He is the author of over 100 articles on innovation, emerging technology and leadership, and his Executive Tech Reports are featured monthly on the IBM services Web site.

Mr. Andrews consults and holds workshops both within IBM and externally. He uses a variety of techniques to probe, extend and validate the opportunities presented by new technologies. He has helped banks, insurance companies, manufacturers and retailers develop their own capabilities to take a fresh look at emerging technologies, and come to a common understanding of their value and take practical steps in using them.

He has held innovation workshops with over 100 IBM Researchers worldwide that have helped them determine the business implications of their inventions, and recognize possible sponsors and create value propositions.

He worked as an Emerging Technologies Analyst for IBM Global Services’ (IGS) IT Strategy Group. This multi-faceted role included:

• Investigating and reporting on technologies with high potential impact on business
• Initiating projects based on these technologies
• Creating and maintaining an IGS Institute course on emerging technologies

He received his MS in organic chemistry from the University of Virginia and his BA from Catholic University.

Mark Feeley - IBM
Mark Feeley brings consulting expertise to the courses he leads based on his experience with the following industries: insurance, financial services, media and entertainment, pharmaceutical, city and state government and executive education.

Mr. Feeley is responsible for EBI teams in their delivery of executive education programs and he researches best practices and techniques to ensure the successful design, development and delivery of EBI courses. That research draws upon his consulting background of providing leadership and project management advice for a range of clients.

Mr. Feeley is also responsible for facilitating key IBM annual account planning sessions while working with sales leadership teams throughout IBM.

He is a certified facilitator and administrator for the VIEW creative problem solving and SOQ organizational climate diagnostic instruments. He is also certified as an IBM Professional, Managing Consultant.

He earned degrees from the following universities:

• MS, New York University
• MBA, Pace University
• BSc, Management, Binghamton University; School of Management

Steve Roehm - IBM
Steve Roehm has spent the majority of his career leading line organizations and helping business leaders innovate, foster creativity and develop strategy -- and he brings that background and experience to the courses he teaches.

Since joining EBI in 1999, he has taught courses in innovation, creativity, strategy, scenario planning, on demand business, and the Role of the CIO, to organizations in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America. He has also been an Executive Education Program instructor at Babson College and at Notre Dame, and has facilitated numerous Harvard-IBM strategy sessions.

Mr. Roehm has worked with Fortune 500, FT 500, small and medium business enterprises, venture capitalists and their portfolio companies, and IBM Business Partners in Asia, Europe, and North America.

After joining IBM in 1973, Mr. Roehm held executive management positions in planning, information technology, logistics and finance, and senior management positions in sales and marketing. Prior to that, he served five years as an officer in the United States Navy.

He is a certified assessor and instructor in the VIEW individual, and SOQ organizational, assessment tools for creative problem solving and creativity climate in the organization. He is also certified in InsideOut Coaching.

Mr. Roehm earned his BSc in mathematics from Union College and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College.