You had a long and successful career in the transportation business, including senior roles at the MTA New York City Transit system. Give us some highlights of that experience.
The first highlight was winning acceptance! With a graduate degree in transportation from Northwestern in hand, I began work at the transit authority in 1974. College-educated analysts first began to appear there around that time, so it proved a challenge to establish my bona fides with the former bus drivers and dispatchers on the second floor of the 132nd Street depot—exhaust leaking in through every crack—where the surface transit planning department was headquartered. Plus, I didn’t look Irish. Or even Catholic.
Once settled in, I came to think it bizarre that the only indication to our customers of what transit service to expect at a city bus stop was a route number and often obsolete route diagram etched onto a tiny metal sign. So I designed an easily updatable bus stop information module, including both a map showing connections to other routes and algorithm-based arrival times—an early application of computer tech in the public-facing part of the transit system.
Guide-a-Ride would go on to become the industry standard. Its presence at least comforted transit
customers with evidence that they were standing in the right place at the right time—even if their bus never showed up! You can spot the canisters at NYC bus stops even today, where arrival times reflecting real-time vehicle location can often be found on a nearby digital display.
The other fun project came my way in the late 1990s, after I had fulfilled a childhood dream by leaving surface transit behind to help administer rapid transit. (Back in the day, I was one of those bratty kids who edged—or kneed or pushed—all other passengers away so I could stare out the front window of the subway train.)
My gig was now promoting MetroCard, the long-awaited $2 billion alternative to the subway token. To help lure passengers to the new fare medium, I designed collector versions of the card—which had the added benefit of yielding revenue when customers let them expire in a bureau drawer rather than using them for transit! I designed other MetroCard products as well, including nifty shirt-pocket cardholders for those understandably loath to open their wallets in the subway. These activities accomplished their promotional aim, winning multiple industry awards for the MTA in the process.
And with that, I called it a day and took early retirement in 2000. I was fifty.
In true Re-Imagineer spirit, you launched an entirely new career at Seeing for Ourselves, a non-profit that employs participatory photography for social change. Tell us how and why you made that big change in your life? What advice would you give to someone who wants to reinvent in this way?
After nine years with ad giant Ogilvy, I found myself at the NYC housing authority in 2010. Meanwhile, my former MTA colleague George Carrano had started up a nonprofit dedicated to participatory photography. This was Seeing for Ourselves.
Taking advantage of my administrative role in public housing, George successfully pitched agency executives on the idea of his nonprofit delivering programming in the projects. He argued that the positive imagery created by those with lived experience would counter the generation-long focus of the local media on crime and disrepair, which had discouraged government support and led conditions to worsen yet—leading to even more scathing media coverage. A vicious cycle that our practice could put to an end.
He found the perfect practitioner in Chelsea Davis, a demure young lady who had conducted a participatory photography program in the cancer ward of St. Louis Children’s Hospital. I was happy to take her on in my department and administer the effort.
The turning point came in 2014, after Chelsea had amassed a striking collection of self-captioned imagery that—with the proper promotion—we believed could change the narrative about public housing. We would do a book! Was I in?
This was different from administering a program, which I could do in my official capacity. Putting together a book of photography and text would fall on me rather than on George or Chelsea, and I would need to get it done on my own time. But in the end, the choice didn’t require much thought.
After working with George for so long at the MTA, I couldn’t say no. Besides, I was eager for a larger canvas than a transit farecard.
It never occurred to me that I was sixty-three at the time. I felt the same physically as I did at twenty one (and mostly still do at seventy-four). Meanwhile, as an older dad, my kids were only twelve and nine. Retirement from work was never in the cards. Maybe editing a book could broaden my employment horizons.
So I was in—and from that point forward, I’ve identified as an official of the nonprofit. Chelsea was in as well, and so there were three of us starting down this path to God-knows-where.
If and when opportunities like mine arise for others, my advice is to go for it! Especially when these
call on skills you’ve already been practicing in another role. I wasn’t like the chartered accountant in the Monty Python skit longing to become a lion tamer, his supposed true métier. Advocating for public housing was not that distant, after all, from promoting public transit.
3)During your tenure there, you created a book called “Project Lives” and a documentary on PBS called “In a Whole New Way” which led to a second book. Explain how that happened and what advice would you give to someone who has a similar dream of bringing their passion and mission to life in books and films?
The book that George invited me to produce succeeded in finding a publisher (powerHouse, 2015).
The volume received global acclaim, won fans including former president Jimmy Carter, and amassed awards. More to the point, this reception encouraged the city and state to resume funding of the housing projects.
And then NYC invited us to next take our practice to the probation agency, as its clients had likewise been laboring under scornful media coverage for a generation. Whoo-hoo! Participatory photography turned out to have legs.
With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in hand, we began delivering programming in 2018. Chelsea was accorded a budgeted slot at the probation department to make this happen.
By 2020, she had produced another striking collection of self-captioned imagery, one that—with the proper promotion—we believed could change the narrative about this dominant share of our criminal justice system. And so, I began putting together our second book.
Just then the pandemic struck, undoing global supply chains. Publishing ground to a halt. George and Chelsea looked at me and said, “You’re the storyteller. You’d better think of something else.”
I had never made a film before. However, video interviews of the participants existed; could these be a starting point? I began watching and rewatching Ken Burns films to see how it could be done. (I’ll admit reimagining myself walking up to the Hollywood stage to receive my Oscar, to the respectful applause of A-List producers and admiring glances of starlets the age of my granddaughter. Who doesn’t exist.)
Astonishingly, the film about New York City probation has been welcomed into over two hundred venues globally, amassing over eighty awards, and screened by PBS. Then, when the publishing industry returned to normal, the companion book was published (Prospecta Press, 2023), itself becoming an award finalist.
More to the point, this reaction encouraged the national community corrections industry to promote what had been accomplished, setting the stage for criminal justice reform.
So, again, my advice is to—well, just do it. What do you have to lose? Start with what you know, like storytelling in my case. Then see if you can expand from there.
