OUR TEAM:
We employ an extensive team of designers, coders, and project managers -- some local and others remote -- enabling us to create innovative work for a wide variety of clients, across a spectrum of industries.
(please scroll below for bios of our central team)
RON IDRA
Founder & Director
Ron Idra founded Promotion for Professionals in 2007 as a way of combining exciting interactive design, online and film production, as well as promotion for businesses, professional practices, and the arts.
A former intellectual property attorney and producer, Ron combines his passion for production, art, and new media with his knowledge of branding, marketing, and corporate culture. He is at home in inter-disciplinary analysis and thrives in the intersection betweeen aesthetics and technology!
Ron has designed and developed websites for small businesses, law firms, medical professionals, nonprofit organizations, as well as for actors, theater directors, and independent films. Ron was also a co-producer of several Off-Off Broadway theater productions and a major Off-Broadway show, Stone Cold Dead Serious by Pulitzer-Finalist playwright Adam Rapp (February '07). He designed theater programs and marketing materials for several theater production companies in Manhattan including Planet Connections, New York City's first eco-friendly theater festival.
As a former IP attorney, Ron was an associate at two major Manhattan law firms, and consulted at the legal departments of companies such as J.P. Morgan, MetLife, and VNU. He has advised artists, writers, and inventors on their intellectual property rights. He has also written a book on intellectual property and licensing for the layperson entitled The Complete Licensing Kit, published by Sourcebooks, Inc. in 2005, available on amazon.com and bookstores nationwide.
Ron holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law where he was an editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review. He has a B.A. in physics and philosophy from Brooklyn College, with Phi Beta Kappa honors.
VIRGINIA CHU
Business Development / Project Management
With over 10 years of experience as an interactive producer in the areas of design, marketing, and entertainment, Virginia maintains a diverse portfolio of web content work with a specialty in entertainment. Her past projects include clients 20th Century Fox, CBS Enterprises, Speedo, KingWorld, Walt Disney Company and MTV Networks. She has worked in the strategy, production and resource management for campaigns ranging from television shows, home entertainment, online video, to e-commerce and banner ads.
Active in the entertainment and new media space, she is also Creative Director of Scene PR, a dynamic network of collaborative professionals in the entertainment, media and fashion industries. She is in charge of bringing in key sponsorships/partners and is intimately involved in structuring the experiential programming for Scene PR's specialty events that bring together some of the most creative talent in New York City.
Virginia received a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Washington.
BRUCE SEGALL
Outsourced Marketing/LinkedIn
Bruce serves as an Outsourced Marketing Director for law firms and other professionals, providing additional implementation resources to select Promotion for Professionals clients. He also trains clients on Leveraging LinkedIn for New Business Development.
In addition to his role at Promotion for Professionals, Bruce has since 2010 run Marketing Sense, which provides branding, awareness-building and business development services for service firms. He specializes in companies that are at an inflection point i.e. they need outside marketing expertise in order to reach the next phase of growth. His work focuses includes a full range of marketing and business development activities: rebranding, collateral development, firm promotion opportunities, building website traffic, maintaining current web content, marketing plans for professionals and firms, lead generation, email campaigns, advertising, and LinkedIn training.
From 2004 until early 2010, Bruce led marketing and business development for Sirota Survey Intelligence, an employee survey research firm with 65 employees. He contributed significantly to new business at Sirota, which was 10-20% of revenue for three successive years. From 1991 until 2001, Bruce held positions of increasing responsibility at MasterCard International. He was responsible for the growth of the consumer product portfolio to meet the needs of affluent and emerging middle class primarily outside the U.S., with programs accounting for 25% of MasterCard transaction volume over time. He also held marketing positions at Citibank and Pitney Bowes Global Payment Solutions.
Bruce holds a BA in American Studies from Yale and an MBA in Marketing from the Stanford.
WILLIAM ONEY
Web Coder / Systems Programmer
William is an expert programmer with lightning-quick (and uncanny!) ability to sift through enormous amounts of code to arrive at a project's core issues -- or solve the most convoluted of technical coding problems!
Starting at the tender age of 10 on a TRS-80 computer running BASIC, William has over 20 years of programming under his belt and has mastered countless languages and computer systems. He started coding in PHP / MySQL during his university years, and is now experienced in javascript, PHP, .NET, Wordpress, Joomla, Flash, actionscript, and many others.
For the past five years he has run his own coding and web development business, receiving praise and feedback from countless clients, including a ranking on one site of a perfect 10 score! In addition, William worked for a large interactive marketing agency in Phoenix, Arizona in the area of web and database coding, where he mastered additional proprietary content management systems.
William is currently applying his programming acumen to developing his own proprietary system of templates to facilitate speedy and efficient coding of enterprise-wide projects.
ANDREI OLARIU
Project Manager / Coder
Andrei is an extremely talented project manager and systems coder, with a wide breadth and scope of expertise across a diversity of systems and industries.
With a specialized background in financial/trading software, Andrei spent much of his career in Japan as Senior Analyst Developer at Goldman Sachs, focusing on business-critical trading applications for front and middle office. Currently, together with Ovidiu Codreanu (see below), Andrei leads a team of 25 developers and performs custom software development, business sytem integration, mobile application development, as well as "User Experience" web design and development.
Andrei and his team are well-versed in a wide variety of frameworks and libraries, including PHP frameworks such as Zend Framework and CodeIgniter. They have extensive experience in content-management systems such as WordPress, Drupal Joomla, MODx, Typo3, and Tuxi, as well as e-commerce systems such as osCommerce and Magento. Andrei and Ovidiu lead a team of programmers who code web applications using PHP and MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Java web apps, and a wide array of database systems.
Andrei Olariu holds a Bachelors and Masters Degree (graduated 1997) in Computer Science from a prestigious technical university in Romania.
OVIDIU CODREANU
Project Manager / Coder
Ovidiu is an experienced project manager and coder who leads a team of 25 developers, with a focus on delivering cost-effective, flexible, and reliable solutions to a wide array of software and web design challenges.
Ovidiu has the management and communication skills to lead a large team of coders, and is adept at providing up to the minute status reports and feedback throuhout the entire development process. Technically, Ovidiu programs and works with additional developers who implement social media apps for sites such as Facebook and Myspace, as well as familiar online services such as Google Maps and Google Earth. Ovidiu and his team also develop and implement cutting-edge iPhone apps which provide the client with an enhanced, wider-reaching, online presence.
Ovidiu and his team are also well-versed in on-page and off-page search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing and networking. These skills include keyword analysis and organization, HTML tag optimization, link structure implementation, competitor analyi, video submission, link-building, and RSS submission. They are especially adept at analyzing the extnsive array of available social media marketing options, strategizing on the client's best choices, and implementing everything in the most cost-effective way possible.
Ovidiu graduated in 1997 with a Master Degree in Computer Science from a prestigious technical university in Romania.
DANIEL DEE
Design
Content coming soon...
JASON GARDNER
Photography / Photoshop Post-Production
Jason Gardner tells stories using the framework of visual anthropology. Whether documenting Carnival around the world, creating images for a business marketing campaign, or photographing musicians for their promotion, he learns as much as possible about his subject, and often captures things not normally photographed. He specializes in portraits, events, commercial, and editorial work. He is producing a photography book about traditional musicians and culture in Brazil's Northeastern state of Pernambuco, for publication in late 2012.
Jason has the rare combination of an artistic vision and a marketing degree from Cornell University, bringing an entrepreneur�s enthusiasm to his photography which can help present your business story effectively while conveying your firm�s personality.
His work has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Photo District News, New York Magazine, NPR.org, Time Out New York, The Washington Post, SPIN Magazine, and selected clients include Con Edison, HBO, Ogilvy & Mather, Putumayo Records, Gourmet Magazine, Direct TV, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and UJA-Federation of NY.
PETER MASLOV
Photography / Design
Peter Maslov is a talented photographer, art director, and designer, with diverse experience in model and product photography. He has photographed subjects for print advertising, websites, as well as for web marketing campaigns.
Peter honed his photography skills during 10 plus years of running his own agency. He shot promotional and advertising campaigns for clients such as: NY Rooster, creators/designers of a unique, high-tech utility bag; Russian DVD, the equivalent of Netflix for the Russian-American community, and Unvogue, an online fashion/lifestyle publication. He has photographed a premium Karate dojo in Manhattan for their website and marketing campaign. Peter has also photographed and designed several record album covers for independent bands.
He has worked with Promotion for Professionals on several photography shoots, including a campaign for a uniquely designed, flexible reading glasses. The shoot involved a male and female model, extensive product shots, and photography in multiple locations. Peter's visual eye, layout and expert photoshop skills greatly enhanced the visual presentation of the final product.
Aside from his commercial work, Peter also does artistic shoots, including portraits. He recently finished a photoseries of ballet and modern dancers.
ALEX ODELL
Business Development / Social Media
Alex's expertise is in helping individuals and companies further their objectives through personal marketing and business development, as well as social media management. A passionate actor with an interest in connecting people, Alex is skilled at building effective relationships!
As a student at the University of Michigan, Alex founded and managed Fat City Theater, an emerging theater company, as a 501c(3) organization and served on the board of Basement Arts, a production company in the area. She worked for Skylark Productions in its founding days and co-produced on their premiere endeavor "American Entrepreneur."
For the past several years, in addition to her role at Promotion for Professionals, she has worked as a personal assistant of financial manager in Manhattan. Alex has starred in numerous theater productions in New York, as well as several independent films, and has done voice-over for Nintendo and Carolina Healthcare.
Alex recieved a B.F.A. in Theatre Performance from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
