Lois Paul & Partners prides itself on having some of the most talented and best-trained communications professionals in the business. Our team has substantial knowledge of every high-tech sector and a broad range of segments in the life sciences market. They understand the critical issues, market dynamics, and emerging trends as well as the reporters, influencers and "gurus" who shape the direction of these industries.
LP&P’s senior executives are more than just agency professionals; they’re proven communications experts with unique expertise and diverse backgrounds to leverage for clients. Everyone on our senior management team has 15 or more years of communications experience and has been with the agency for 10 years or more leading LP&P teams and working with clients. The value of their strategic counsel, creative ideas and marketing insight is what makes LP&P stand out from other agencies and helps secure market-leading positions for clients.
Lois Paul
Founder and President
Lois Paul co-founded Lois Paul & Partners in 1986, with the aim of building an agency that did high-tech public relations a different way. Coming from the computer trade press, she wanted LP&P to be a strategic, informed resource for the media, analysts and clients -- and a positive, people-oriented place to work.
As the leader of Lois Paul & Partners, Lois oversees all areas within the company including corporate focus and direction, client services, business development and day-to-day operations. She also frequently provides public relations counsel and media training to client CEOs and senior executives.
Prior to founding LP&P, Lois was executive editor/features and a founding member of PC Week (now eWeek). During her tenure, she was responsible for more than 50 percent of the newspaper’s editorial content and specialized in reporting on the computer software industry. Prior to the launch of PC Week, Lois was senior editor/software at Computerworld, the leading computer weekly publication at the time.
Lois received her bachelor of arts summa cum laude in journalism from Temple University and M.S. in computer information systems from Bentley College. She received the 1998 Distinguished School of Communications and Theater Alumnus/a Award from Temple University. Lois is on the planning committee of the Women’s Leadership Institute sponsored by Bentley College. She also serves on the advisory board of the high-profile industry conferences DEMO and DEMOmobile, which introduce new products and services that shape the technology industry.
Bill McLaughlin
Executive Vice President
Bill McLaughlin has more than 25 years of strategic technology, marketing and communications experience. Since joining the agency in 1990, he has been instrumental in building LP&P into the 80+ person organization it is today, with a reputation built on delivering outstanding results for clients.
As executive vice president, Bill is responsible for overseeing client service strategies, company operations, business development and technology exploitation. He has served as a vital resource for companies such as Lotus Development Corp., Intel, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Compuware Corporation, Open Market, Unica Corporation, Manhattan Associates and Kronos. Bill has developed award-winning communications programs for companies across a myriad of markets and technologies, including the Internet/Web, e-business, collaboration, networking, wireless, telecommunications and business applications. Bill has been published in CMO Magazine, O’Dwyers PR Report and Mass High Tech Magazine and has been a featured speaker at several conferences including the Public Relations Society of America’s International Conference, The Marketing Round Table and Mass Networks Communications Council.
Prior to joining LP&P, Mr. McLaughlin held senior marketing and marketing communications positions at technology companies including Cullinet Software, McCormack & Dodge/Dun & Bradstreet Software, and Raytheon Corporation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and communications at Boston College and has completed post-graduate work in information systems management at Northeastern University
Rick McLaughlin
Senior Vice President
Rick McLaughlin has been with Lois Paul & Partners since 1992 and has over 20 years of public relations and advertising experience. As a senior vice president, Rick is responsible for overseeing all facets of public relations including: providing counsel to senior executives regarding positioning of corporate-wide strategies, designing and implementing PR programs, and ensuring consistency and quality of an integrated communications program.
Since joining Lois Paul and Partners, Rick has developed public relations positioning and strategy for numerous leading technology providers in various technologies including in business intelligence , e-commerce, messaging and collaboration , financial and planning applications, document management, knowledge management, e-Learning, application development, Java, UNIX, productivity applications, storage, security, testing tools, embedded technologies and hosted applications. Additionally, he has spearheaded efforts in business partner and vertical industry programs targeted towards banking, insurance, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, academic, CRM, SCM and government. His clients have included Cognos, Lotus Development Corp., Adaytum, Applied Language Technologies, Centra, Compuware, IMLogic, Interwise, Marcam Corporation, NetGuard, Powersoft Corporation, PTC-Education, StorageTek and SQA. Rick’s work has been recognized by the Publicity Club of New England with Bell Ringer Awards for Best Product/Service Launch and National Print Feature Placement.
Before joining LP&P, Rick was advertising manager for Stowe Mountain Company of Stowe, Vermont where he was responsible for developing and executing sales, hospitality and tourism marketing strategies for the year-round resort. In addition, he has held account executive positions with KK&M Advertising of Boston, Massachusetts, where he was responsible for the advertising efforts of clients specializing in consumer retail, hospitality, and broadcast media including Papa Gino's, Somerville Lumber, Eye World, Guest Quarters Suite Hotels, Franklin Sports Industries and WEEI Radio.
Before becoming an account executive at KK&M, Rick also managed the production division for the $20 million agency. Rick began his career as a production manager for William Filene's Sons, where he was responsible for the supervision of the company's print display advertising.
Rick holds a bachelor of science in business administration/marketing from the University of Vermont and has completed postgraduate work in computer information systems and systems analysis at Northeastern University.
Suzanne Moran
Senior Vice President, Client Services
Suzanne Moran has more than 20 years experience in strategic public relations and marketing communications. Suzanne works with her teams to deliver highly creative, award-winning public relations programs that deliver on-message coverage across all types of media. She counsels her clients on all aspects of communications from the creation of company, product and competitive messaging to using media and analyst relations and social media vehicles to deliver those messages. Suzanne also partners with Lois Paul to media train senior executives.
As co-lead of the agency’s semiconductor practice, Suzanne helps her clients package and communicate their highly technical stories to build market leadership. Suzanne has been one of the account leads on Freescale Semiconductor for more than four years. During this time the company became one of the market’s largest IPOs and then one of the market’s largest private equity offers. Suzanne also works with innovative start-up Discera and Advanced Metrology Systems, which she supported through a spin-out from Royal Philips Electronics.
Suzanne’s creativity positions her as the agency’s senior consultant on consumer touching technologies. The companies she has worked with include: m-Qube, DWS, SportsDirect, Backchannelmedia, Valence and Zink Imaging.
She directed programs at the agency for companies in a variety of other markets including wireless, embedded telecommunications, networking software and hardware, and enterprise software. Suzanne’s clients in these spaces included: Lotus, iConverse, Kada Systems, Avokia, and iMagicTV.
Prior to joining Lois Paul & Partners in 1995, Suzanne ran marketing communications at a subsidiary of the Eastman Kodak company. She also served as a director of marketing communications programs for Digital Products, Inc. running a multi-million dollar program that included PR, advertising, events and distribution promotions.
She holds a B.S. in Journalism from Suffolk University.
Christine Simeone
Senior Vice President
Christine Simeone joined Lois Paul & Partners (LP&P) in 1994 and brings 18 years of high-technology public relations and marketing experience to her clients. As the Telecommunications and Networking Practice leader, Christine has led corporate repositioning initiatives, business press and competitive response programs, and company and product introductions for established and emerging companies. Christine advises on packaging information to maximize its appeal to a wide range of audiences, including general business media, industry analysts, and technology trade press and influencers, including bloggers. Christine counsels on communications related to mergers and acquisitions, investor relations, and global PR program implementation, and partners with Lois Paul to media train executive spokespeople.
Further to her networking and telecommunications expertise, Christine’s has worked with numerous security companies, and offers experience in enterprise software, search and vertical markets, including manufacturing, education and healthcare.
Most recently, Christine served as the LP&P lead for the Nortel account in North America. In this role, she led teams across Nortel’s businesses and offered industry perspective and counsel to the technology PR, corporate communications, and industry analyst relations teams. Christine’s guidance helped shift the perception of Nortel from a troubled company to one on the verge of a turnaround.
Christine leads teams for clients that include Arbor Networks, Level 3, Mocana, Polycom, and Veracode, and has developed programs for companies such as PTC, Endeca, Waveset Technologies, Navisite, NetSec, Sylantro, Mazu Networks, OnFiber Communications and Shiva Corporation.
In 2004, Christine was the recipient of the John D. Graham Award for Excellence, which is awarded based on selection by her peers at LP&P and Fleishman Hillard for her personal standard of excellence.
Prior to joining LP&P, Christine was marketing communications manager at Easel Corporation, an application development tools company, with responsibility for lead generation, public relations, advertising, events, and collateral. This role also encompassed a corporate rebranding and renaming effort.Christine holds a B.A. in Communications and English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has completed postgraduate work in investor relations and public relations at Simmons College, Boston.
Ted Weismann
Senior Vice President
Ted Weismann brings 15 years of public relations and marketing experience, and has been with Lois Paul & Partners since 1993. As senior vice president, Ted leads LP&P’s social media practice, counseling clients and internal teams on how to best integrate new techniques and technologies into their overall communications programs. Ted also created and manages LP&P’s own blog, Beyond the Hype, ensuring the blog is valuable and engaging for LP&P’s community of clients, prospects, media, analysts, bloggers and current and former employees. Ted also devotes significant energy to coaching and mentoring LP&P's talented PR professionals as an important underpinning not only to the agency's top-notch service, but also its exceptional employee retention.
During his time with LP&P, Ted has worked with a wide range of large and small companies in several markets, including enterprise software (integration software, application development, database, Web services, supply chain management, BPM, systems management), outsourcing (ASP's, globalization services, professional consulting, systems integrators) and wireless (wireless LAN networking, mobile application software, devices). Ted's clients have included several market leaders, such as Lotus/IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Kodak, Freescale Semiconductor, UPS, Sun Microsystems, Pegasystems and Lionbridge, as well as rapidly emerging companies such as BlueSocket, Brandimensions, Integrien and ZoomInfo.
Ted ran a complete media relations program for five years for Lotus Development Corp.’s Notes and Domino product lines, as well as leading the PR program for Lotus’ Worldwide Business Partner Program. During this time, Lotus increased its Notes software installed base from 1 million to 33 million users, and successfully repositioned Domino as the leading Web collaboration platform for e-business. Ted also currently leads LP&P’s Product Reviews Practice, and has run comprehensive reviews programs for Sun Microsystems and Lotus Development Corp., among other companies.
Ted holds a B.A. in economics from the University of New Hampshire and is a member of the Public Relations Society of America.
David Ayer
Vice President, Finance and Administration
David Ayer joined Lois Paul & Partners in 1995 and has over 12 years of hands-on finance and operations experience. As the agency's Vice President of Finance and Administration, David is the senior executive responsible for the agency's finance, human resources, IT and operations management functions ("agency services").
Under his leadership, the agency services team aligns internal operations with line management to enhance productivity and client service. David is the key contact for financial planning, legal matters and contract negotiations, real estate and operations management.
David holds a Bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's degree in Accounting Information Systems from Bentley College.
Don Jennings
Vice President, Client Services
Don Jennings joined LP&P in 1997 with a background in PR, marketing and journalism. He is a primary point of contact for his clients and is responsible for driving the strategic direction and day-to-day momentum activities of their programs. This includes announcements, product reviews, and analyst and media relations programs. Don has experience in a variety of technology markets including storage, e-business (B2B, B2C), networking, IT monitoring, VoIP, and Internet telephony.
Most recently, Don was the lead on Sun DMG's T10000 enterprise-class tape drive launch at the company's annual customer conference FORUM in November. Prior to that, he was the lead on the company's archive launch helping to create the category of intelligent archiving, leveraging synergies between the analyst and media relations teams and successfully introducing StorageTek’s IntelliStore archive product. The effort generated more than 60 interviews, 100 pieces of coverage with 42,000,000 impressions across major IT, storage and majority media publications. In September, Don was the lead on the launch of Cognos' C8 BI, in CEO Rob Ashe's words, "the most important product introduction in my 20+ year career at Cognos." The launch netted more than 60 interviews in the U.S. alone, 200 pieces of coverage with 70,000,000 impressions across major IT, business and BI publications worldwide. And, recently, spearheaded the introduction of Cognos Go Search! for Business Intelligence which netted more than 130 interviews and 200 pieces of coverage in a three week timeframe from March - April 2006 in North America.
Don’s clients have included BakBone Software, Cognos, Dell Computer Corp., Double-Take Software, Emulex, FTP Software, MCK Communications, MRO Software (formerly PSDI), NetGuard, Network Engines, OrderTrust, Pannaway Technologies, Pillar Data Systems, ProActivity, PSW Technologies, SilverBack Technologies, SkyeTek, StorageTek (then Sun Microsystems Data Management Group), Pannaway Technologies, Pillar Data Systems and ProActivity Inc.
Prior to LP&P, Don worked in marketing and PR for a management consulting company developing targeted programs and coordinating executive visibility. He also worked in the communications department of National Public Radio’s Boston affiliate, WBUR and was the assistant producer for NPR’s “Car Talk.”
Don has worked with a number of clients on company repositioning and building company name recognition. In addition to developing and executing results-oriented PR programs, he maintains strong relationships with many key media influencers and editor and news-level contacts.
Carol Hanko
Vice President, Austin
As the leader of Lois Paul and Partner’s Austin office, Carol Hanko oversees client programs and new business initiatives for the office. She specializes in strategic media relations and works closely with clients to deliver results-oriented PR programs supporting clients’ business goals. Carol joined Lois Paul and Partners in 2005 and has more than 13 years of experience in technology marketing and public relations. The majority of her background lies in semiconductor, enterprise software and consumer/business PR initiatives.
Prior to joining Lois Paul and Partners, she led consumer PR efforts for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), where she managed the microprocessor company’s first lifestyle/consumer public relations campaign supporting AMD64 technology. While there, she led AMD’s first consumer press tour and worked closely with national business, trade and broadcast consumer electronics media, securing more than 100 million media impressions within the first quarter of the campaign’s implementation.
Carol spent seven years at Loomis Group, an integrated marketing agency headquartered in San Francisco. She moved to Austin in the spring of 2001 and served as director of Loomis Group’s Austin office, where she more than doubled the technology account base during the tech downturn. She provided media relations and account strategy to multiple technology accounts, including Persistence Software (acquired by Progress Software), ASML, Dow Corning Electronics, Texas.Net (acquired by Data Foundry), Praxair Electronics and the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium.
Carol worked as a staff reporter for community newspapers in both Portland, Ore. and Dallas, Texas for several years prior to her technology-oriented positions. Carol holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Arizona. She currently serves as the co-chair of the Austin Clean Energy Council, assisting the organization in capturing national recognition for Austin's clean energy and technology assets and companies.
Melissa Zipin
Vice President, Life Sciences
Melissa Zipin joined LP&P in 1998 and has more than 14 years of experience in medical device, health technology and consumer tech public relations and advertising. Melissa currently serves as the lead of the agency’s Life Sciences Practice.
Melissa has extensive experience launching medical device and health technology companies and products. She spearheaded Restore Medical’s national and regional launch of the first implantable device for treating sleep apnea, which resulted in more than 500 million impressions – with coverage in The Wall Street Journal, News Day, Reader’s Digest and Woman’s Day and on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, CNNand more than 1,200 regional broadcast outlets in all 50 states. Melissa has relationships with medical producers and editors at key media outlets including The TodayShow, Good Morning America, New York Times, CNN, NBC Nightly News, Discovery Health Channel, Reader’s Digest and Reuters Health, among others.
In addition, Melissa’s experience includes working with both private and public companies, leading programs specifically designed for patient recruitment, physician and consumer awareness, issues-driven campaigns, as well as company repositioning. Her Life Sciences clients have included: Restore Medical (medical devices for treating sleep-disordered breathing), EnteroMedics (obesity management system), MedicalCV (minimally-invasive atrial fibrillation treatment), Hurricane Voices (breast cancer foundation), Gynecare (women’s health therapies, now part of Ethicon), InControl (implantable atrial defibrillator, acquired by Guidant), Vital-Link (emergency response systems), TargetRx (pharmaceutical marketing information), Medidata (electronic clinical data management), Clinsoft (clinical data management), Galt Associates (pharmacovigilance), Xpogen (bioinformatics), and HealthGate (health content management).
Melissa received the Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America and Bell Ringer Awards from the Publicity Club of New England for her work launching the first outpatient, non-invasive alternative to hysterectomy for the treatment of menorhaggia for Gynecare, Inc., and for Restore Medical. In addition, she led programs for the repositioning, name-change and launch of Clinsoft, which positioned the company as an attractive acquisition for its nearest competitor.
Melissa holds a B.A. in Fashion Marketing from Simmons College in Boston.