JOHN (JACK) ST. GENIS

Building businesses is a skill and a specialty at which Jack St.Genis excels. Since 1964, he has specialized in the development, reorganization and expansion of high-technology related businesses. Each product development and introduction success further developed his expertise and led to the next.

Mr. St.Genis grew up in an automotive family. His father was an executive at General Motors and then Chrysler for forty-one years. Jack started in the automobile business doing new car "get readies" at fifteen, progressing through the service department and body shop until he was promoted to selling cars while attending the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He optimized performance in cars and raced them until he entered the service in 1961. Mr. St.Genis has numerous trophies for drag racing from the NHRA and held an SCCA license. Recently he renewed his racing skills by and completing Skip Barber's racing course at Lime Rock, Connecticut.

Previously, Mr. St.Genis served with distinction as an intelligence analyst and liaison officer in the U. S. Marine Corps and participated in the United States blockade of Cuba. At this point he started a career long relationship with DOD and the intelligence community. His final military assignment was as custodian of Lee Harvey Oswald's Service Record Book for the Warren Commission at Glenview Naval Air Station.

After his release from active duty in the Marine Corps, Mr. St.Genis spent four years, starting on the creative side of the publishing and advertising businesses, moving quickly into account management. In 1968, his rapidly developing expertise on the client contact side of the business led him to a position as Regional Account Executive at the Campbell-Ewald Company on the General Motors/Chevrolet business. Here he was responsible for administration and coordination of Chevrolet's regional and national advertising. He also coordinated market-by-market and dealer associated advertising and merchandising activities in a five-state region. And, he produced and appeared on camera as the Chevrolet spokesperson at NCAA and Green Bay Packer Television events. He was responsible for all cross promotions and events including STP and The Indianapolis 500.

In 1971, he moved up to the position of Group Account Supervisor in Detroit where he was responsible for market planning, media, creative coordination and budget for Big Car, Station Wagon, Fleet, Service, Leasing and other segments of the Chevrolet account. In close consort with John DeLorean, his client, he was involved the introduction of smaller, gas efficient automobiles. It was in this position that Mr. St.Genis' strengths in the automotive marketing field began to become evident. He headed the group that developed and implemented the "Mini-Theatre" point-of-purchase system to General Motors' field sales and dealer organization. This system was a landmark program in the development of corporate/customer communications and formed the basis for an entire industry. Subsequently, Mr. St.Genis reformulated a large portion of General Motors service training to this distributive media.

Mr. St.Genis then utilized similar technology to implement the first instructor-less training network in the automotive industry. This system has proliferated to all segments of the corporation and was adopted by all of General Motor's competitors. When General Motors introduced Diesel cars, Mr. St.Genis' group formulated and packaged all the diesel training. It has seen seven iterations of media, slides, film, videotape, videodisc, and is now on-line by satellite. He simultaneously served of several task forces to formulate the strategy for the introduction of smaller cars, leasing, and the car rental business.

In 1973, after his well-known success at General Motors, Mr. St.Genis was recruited to use his talents and his knowledge of media for Ford Motor Company by becoming Vice President and Account Supervisor at the Wilding Division of Bell & Howell in charge of the Ford account. There he was able to combine his automotive experience with his ever-increasing knowledge of multimedia and video. At Wilding, he was accountable for all print, video, film, and multimedia activities on the Ford account. He supervised all Ford internal and external communications for his client Lee Iacocca. Beyond new car introductions, he was also in charge of all instructional technology, a rapidly growing area. At this point, he first introduced simulators for robotics assembly training.

In this position, he supervised the implementation of the Ford Video Network and under his guidance, the Ford account increased in revenue by 50%. This resulted in an annual billing of eighty million dollars.

In 1975, Mr. St.Genis was sought by Maritz Inc. to be part of a vanguard that would launch that company into the Corporate Communications Systems business. Mr. St.Genis was named Vice President of Sales and Marketing with the express mission of forming and growing an entirely new division to sell and implement corporate communications and training systems and programs. He planned and developed a system of market-by-market penetration for the new division while he opened offices nationally and hired, trained, and supervised account executives. He instituted Management by Objective (MBO) and Concentric Circle Marketing (CCM) Programs. In his six-year tenure, he built the business from a quarter million dollars the first year to an annual billing of $122,000,000. His list of systems implementations includes more than eighty industry leaders like General Motors, Ford, Exxon, and STP. Charter Oil, AT&T, Mc Donald's, Mazda, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, Abbott Laboratories. A notable achievement during Mr. St.Genis' tenure of implementing training to the fast food industry, was his being the general contractor for Burger King University in Miami, Florida.

His familiarity with emerging video and computer based technologies led in 1980 to DiscoVision, an IBM-MCA joint venture, which later became Pioneer Video, Inc., where Mr. St.Genis became Vice President of Sales and Marketing. He planned and directed the worldwide marketing of optical videodisc computer assisted instruction systems. His largest sale being the twenty-eight million dollar General Motors Videodisc system, the first in the world. While building the business to sixty million dollars annually, he re-oriented and re-motivated their inherited sales staff, training the sales team to use "Single-Source" Systems selling techniques. He also excelled in administrative responsibilities, improving systems and accounts receivables. The level two and three players and operating software in use today were products developed under Mr. St.Genis' supervision.

In 1983, he was again recruited again by Bell & Howell as Vice President of the Turnkey Systems Group to manage the expansion of B & H's Interactive Communications Group. In his first year he recruited, trained and managed the direct sales staff's and two product development groups for penetration of the Fortune 1000 and the Government marketplace. Under his direction, the business rose to twenty-five million dollars in his first year. Leading edge interactive systems were implemented in government and Fortune 1000 Companies during his management.

The most notable system that was developed and implemented at this time under Mr. St.Genis' supervision was the CARDS (Computer Assisted Repair and Diagnostics System) a totally interactive multimedia system with proprietary software for on-line diagnosis and repair of mailing sorting systems for the U. S. Postal Service. A modified version was developed for Ford Motor Company. An additional augmentation to this leading edge product line was Mr. FACTS an interactive training system that utilized the proprietary authoring system PASS (Professional Authoring Software System) developed by Mr. St.Genis' programming group for Ford Motor Company.

In 1987, his wide experience in building and reorganizing businesses and developing new technology brought Mr. St.Genis to the attention of the President of NEC Technologies. This company, riding the crest of the VCR sales boom, needed a dynamic leader who would consolidate like business units and focus sales on high-level interactive systems. Mr. St.Genis, as Vice President and General Manager of the Professional Systems Division, tripled the sales to ninety-seven million dollars and widened the product reach by creating business units for the computer, cellular, paging, airline, telephony, CCTV, Broadcast and O. E. M. markets. Mr. St.Genis consolidated and was the vanguard of NEC's activities in HDTV and served as its representative to all national and international HDTV organizations. He introduced a series of products for communications systems: broadband interactive, wireless, networking and multimedia systems integration. GPS in the United States and negotiated the mapping software for mobile plotting. He served as a member of NEC's Management Committee.

Mr. St.Genis' high profile activities in the emerging high-technology media business and his previous long term relationship with MCA were the impetus for Matsushita, the parent company of Panasonic, to recruit him as General Manager of the Corporate Sales Division in 1991. In this role, he was a major participant in the due diligence of MCA during the acquisition and the integration of business units and technology transfer after the sale. Mr. St.Genis was a key member of negotiating teams that formed manufacturing, technology development, and sales joint ventures with major American and International corporations. Mr. St.Genis was a member of the F C C 1125/60 Standards Committee and spoke worldwide about Advanced Video Technologies. In this role, Mr. St.Genis was responsible for the introduction of CD-ROM, teleconferencing, large screen displays, Smart Cards, intelligent television, cellular and wide band multimedia products.

Mr. St.Genis, after remarrying in 1992, decided that it was time for him to take a more entrepreneurial role. He was recruited by LoJack, a customer, to become the company's General Manager. When he assumed the number two position in this struggling company, the stock was languishing at 6 7/8. Under Mr. St.Genis' leadership, the stock grew to an all time high of 17 5/16.

Raytheon E-Systems had purchase three companies in a competitive business to LoJack and asked Mr. St.Genis to become the Group Vice President and amalgamate the business units and explode the market penetration to $200,000,000 by 2000. Mr. St.Genis reorganized the existing business and formed a joint venture with a Korean conglomerate and a strategic alliance with an Israeli electronics cartel that doubled the bookings to $100,000 in the first ninety days. He was named to the Board of a joint venture and a satellite company in which Raytheon had a minority ownership.

His profile is that of the quintessential international marketer having introduced over 100 high technology and training products and completed more than thirty-five mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances and technology transfers. His experience in the Pacific Rim resourcing spans more than thirty years. Mr. St.Genis serves on several Boards of Directors, and is now Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Molecular Separations, Inc., a high technology company that removes tritium from nuclear wastewater.   <<