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2008-2009 Chapter Awards

New Member of the Year
Member of the Year
Board Member of the Year
Proud Award Winner
Previous Proud Award Winners
 

 

New Member of the Year
Bruce Ulrich, President, Productive Displays

  • Joined BMA November 2008
  • Quickly offered to volunteer and after learning he had experience with intern/scholarship programs, was scooped up by the Biz Bash committee to help determine philanthropic direction
  • All the while he acquired a new company, Productive Displays, and took a leadership role as President
  • Past positions include: Vice President, Marketing at Sears Holding Corp, Senior Vice President at Citigroup, Vice President, Mortgage & Home Equity Lending Products at Creditland, Group Vice President, Home Equity at Wells Fargo Bank
     

Member of the Year
Laurie Pasler, Producer/Director/Owner, BluFish Productions

  • Joined BMA March 2005
  • Has been the familiar face at the luncheons this season and last season
  • Always offering and willing to lend a hand to our Executive Director
  • Joined the BMA Biz Bash committee 2 years ago-helped with media last year and was Team Leader for the Program Ads this year
  • She is a 2008 Gold Tower Award winner and positioned to win again this year
  • Outside BMA, her experience includes Digital Media Strategist at Jack Morton Worldwide Producer/On-Air Personality at WQAM-AM and Music Director at Manhattan Club
  • She describes herself as a Hybrid, right/left brain problem solver on creative and strategic levels 
     

Board Member of the Year
Tom Insprucker, WW Director of Web programs

  • Joined BMA March 2007 and was quickly recruited to the Board in July 2007
  • Previous MarketingMasters Luncheon Speaker, November 2007
  • During that speech, he stated that he has been in marketing his entire working career and stated, “marketing for me is my passion; this is what I live for, when I wake in the morning, I want to be a marketing person, when I go to sleep at night, I want to be a marketing person, when I die I want to be a marketing person, I want the best headstone in the best cemetery…I’m just a marketing geek…I love marketing, I love it!”  Marketing’s job is to separate opportunity from distraction.  I love this….There is not a company I have worked for that does not suffer from shiny object disease!”
  • His work on the board continues to be admired by other board members. He didn’t hesitate to take on the role of Web Site Chair in his second year on the board and continues this effort today (yes, web changes to come)
  • His career in marketing has spanned 30 years. He’s on his 19th job at his 8th company and has been at Square D/Schneider Electric for 23 years. At Schneider Electric, he began as a service technician and technical trainer and worked my way up to Vice-President of Marketing and now the Worldwide Director of Web programs
     

Proud Award Recipient
Gary Slack, Chairman and Chief Experience Officer of Slack Barshinger

Presented by the 2008 Proud Award winner: Gordon Hochhalter, Managing Partner, Creativitystrategyconnectivity at Mobium – Gordon’s speech below:

"As marketers some of what we do is fleeting. (That very successful direct campaign will probably be forgotten in five years.) But if we are fortunate, some of what we do is lasting. It changes things. It makes a difference for a company or organization and for its people. These are the things that last.

The Proud Award is the most prestigious honor granted by the Chicago BMA. It is meant to recognize exceptional and continual contributions of time and expertise to the work of the Association over a period of several years. In other words, it honors those who have made a lasting difference.

In 1989 when our honoree joined BMA, the Chicago Chapter had about 125 members and a typical meeting had 30 to 40 people in attendance. Today, chiefly because of this person’s exceptional efforts, we have more than 450 members and an average of 250 people each month at meetings like this one.

For a lot of us who serve in volunteer organizations like BMA, we do what we can and we do the best we can.  But for this man Chicago BMA has been his crusade. He does whatever he can. He has changed things. In good times and hard times he has tirelessly put in 100s of hours of his personal time, his strategic vision, his talent and the resources of his company to make BMA Chicago better. And he has done it with extreme enthusiasm for connecting people with ideas. As a result, he has raised the quality of our Chapter luncheon presentations, our membership and the organization as a whole.

He has been a passionate advocate for BMA wherever he goes and to whomever will listen. Even when it means taking some flack. Always with dignity and conviction, he embodies the principle of  “pay it forward.”

After graduating from Dartmouth College with a degree in economics, he started his career in 1976 as a newspaper reporter. Proving once again that all great human beings begin life as writers. The next year he started an 11-year career at OmniCom with Doremus & Company and Porter Novelli.

In 1988, he founded his own highly recognized and very successful agency. He’s consistently on BtoB Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in b-to-b marketing. He has served on the board of BMA Chicago continually since 2001 and as chapter president in 2001-02, 2002-03 and again in 2008-09.

Some things we do last. For the lasting difference he has made, I am truly honored to introduce the Chairman and Chief Experience Officer of Slack Barshinger, this year’s recipient of the Chicago Chapter’s Proud Award, Gary Slack."
 

Previous Proud Award Recipients

2009 - Gary Slack, CBC
2008 - Gordon Hochhalter
2007 - William Creighton, CBC
2006 - Larry Zar
2005 - Robert Goranson, CBC
2004 - Ken Crowhurst
2003 - William Pohlman, CBC
2002 - Stanton J. Bond, CBC
2001 - Nancy Creighton
2000 - Paul Lesher, CBC
1999 - Gan Avery, CBC
1998 - Sari Lipschultz
1997 - Frank W. Callahan
1996 - Lorrie Grime, CBC
1995 - Robert W. Moore, CBC
1994 - Robert E. Campbell, CBC
1993 - Richard C. Christian
1992 - William J. Fick, CBC
1991 - Charles A. Goding, CBC
1990 - Tak Matsui
1989 - Daniel B. Kennedy, CBC
1988 - Rick Kean, CBC
1987 - Alan I. Hurd, CBC
1986 - Arthur F. Ceckowski, CBC