Management Team

Mr. Rosen is a highly experienced mergers and acquisitions professional with a particularly strong background in handling transactions in the publishing, information and training fields. He carefully guides clients through the intricate process of successfully selling and buying businesses and product lines. Mr. Rosen is highly regarded for his professionalism and thoroughness and brings a seasoned and thorough approach to work for clients to insure they achieve their goals in a timely manner that exceeds their expectations.

Mr. Rosen's experience includes over 20 years of experience in publishing and information businesses and more than 15 years of experience in handling mergers and acquisitions.

Before founding Whitestone in 1994, Mr. Rosen served as director of acquisitions for a total of eight years at McGraw-Hill (1986-1990) and Simon & Schuster (1990-1994), two of the most prominent companies in the publishing and information fields.

Mr. Fitzelle is a mergers and acquisitions professional specializing in the media business. He is experienced in B-to-B, professional, educational, and consumer markets. His background includes eight years as a partner at AdMedia Partners, Inc., an investment bank serving the publishing industry and 13 years of executive experience at The McGraw-Hill Companies, where he was in charge of M&A activities for the magazine and book companies. He also served for ten years as the U.S. representative of Severn House Books, a London based mid-list fiction publisher.

He has served many private and family-owned publishing businesses, consulting with them on how to maintain family ownership and representing them when the decision has been made to sell. At AdMedia he closed numerous transactions including the sales of Geyer McAllister to Reed Business Media, Harris Infosource to Dunn & Bradstreet, and The Electric Show and Electric Show West to Primedia.

During his tenure in McGraw-Hill's Professional Publishing Group, he was responsible for negotiating and closing a series of acquisitions and divestitures critical to transforming an underperforming business into a high performance organization. The group's performance improved from sales of $200 million with ROS of 4% to sales of $320 million with ROS of 10% five years later. He was also responsible for negotiating the agreements that created McGraw-Hill Cheneliere, the first instance in which McGraw-Hill licensed its brand name to another publisher.

In addition to his M&A and consulting work, he is often retained as an expert witness in litigation and to provide valuations of companies. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and has an MBA degree from Columbia University.

Ms. Isserman has 15 years of experience in providing research and investment banking services for media, education, information service and technology companies. Her career on Wall Street encompassed both buy-side and sell-side equity research, first at Gabelli & Company and later at PaineWebber and CIBC Oppenheimer. At Whitestone Communications, Ms. Isserman concentrates on M&A and financial analysis for publishing and training enterprises. She holds an M.B.A. from New York University's Stern School of Business.

Glenn Shapiro has been in the training industry since 1983, when he joined American Management Association (AMA) to head up their marketing efforts, bringing with him seven years of direct marketing, including pioneering electronic interactive services at American Express At AMA, Glenn was responsible for marketing over 3200 seminars per year, as well as memberships and publications. A member of the Office of the President senior management team, Glenn helped set the direction for the successful decade AMA enjoyed in the 1980's.

In 1988, Glenn joined Simon & Schuster's Professional Information Group, where he developed and marketed professional training in the form of newsletters, annual update services and videos to corporations and government. He headed up an 85 member sales force calling on training professionals and built a telemarketing sales organization exceeding 100 team members. Glenn studied several acquisition opportunities and completed his first purchase transaction at Simon & Schuster in 1990.

Glenn went to Dun & Bradstreet's Market Data Retrieval in 1993, where he headed their marketing, helping marketers effectively reach the right targets within schools and colleges. He also developed School Construction Alert, providing selective school related construction leads by project type and phase. In 1996, Glenn was recruited to be the CEO of a turnaround situation for a troubled training (live events) company. He succeeded in turning around Executive Enterprise Institute (EEI), which he later bought in 1999 and sold in 2006. At EEI, Glenn downsized the company, refinanced and launched new compliance based programs with a great emphasis on accounting, tax and banking programs, offering continuing education credits for accountants and lawyers.

Glenn has produced over 7,000 events in his career. A graduate of New York University, Glenn earned three degrees in a compressed six years (JD, MBA and BA) while working for American Express for two years prior to graduating. Glenn has taught direct marketing for the New School and Parsons School of Design, and has served as a Pro Bono attorney for Westchester Putnum Legal Services, where he earned the New York State Bar Association's President's Pro Bono Service Attorney Award in 2004. He also served as a very active Board of Education Member for his home town in Connecticut for seven years, where he helped to develop a new consortium between two neighbor towns to share the costs of a high school addition (first of its kind in his home state.)

Mr. Serwatka has extensive experience in the management and acquisition of publishing and information businesses. At the McGraw-Hill Companies, he served in a variety of executive management positions including: Executive Vice President, Member of the Executive Committee, Chief Financial Officer, President of McGraw-Hill Information Services Company where directly managed over 60 publishing and information businesses producing $1.5 billion in revenue, Chairman of the Macmillan-McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company, the nation's largest elementary-high school publisher and he was a member of the Nikkei-McGraw-Hill board of directors where he negotiated the sale of McGraw-Hill's 49% interest in the joint venture, resulting in the largest deal to date in the company's then 100-year history.

Prior to McGraw-Hill, Mr. Serwatka held financial and management positions at United States Gypsum Company, Westvaco Inc. and Random House. He has served as a Senior Advisor to Whitestone Communications since its formation in 1994.

Richard Casabonne has spent his entire career in education and trade publishing and is now CEO of Casabonne Associates Inc. Previously, he was Principal and Senior Consultant at MarketingWorks, a full service consulting firm, where he headed up research activities and strategic planning for many different educational publishing houses, distributors, and non-profits providing services to education.

Prior to his appointment at MarketingWorks, Casabonne was President, Educational and Training Group, LeapFrog Enterprises where his responsibilities included leveraging the highly acclaimed LeapFrog platforms into education.

Before LeapFrog, he served as Senior Vice President of Planning and Business Development for Harcourt, Inc, an educational publishing company comprised of over 20 divisions that covered a range of educational needs. While at Harcourt, he was active in acquiring the NEC Companies, which included Steck Vaughn, a leading publisher of supplementary education materials for kindergarten through adult education, where he served as President and CEO.

Earlier, Casabonne held senior management positions at Grolier, Inc., McGraw-Hill Educational Resources, Random House School Division, and consulted with myriad educational and trade publishers. He also consulted for Apple Computer's education initiatives for eight years.

He serves on numerous boards for both companies and institutions and is currently president of the Association of Educational Publishers. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University and a master of education degree in instructional technology from Boston University.

Ms. Doyle has been the editor of Whitestone's Who's Buying Whom report since 1999. Her expertise in tracking and reporting on communications industry mergers and acquisitions, with special emphasis on the Internet and business information markets has resulted in the report's success and widespread use across the industry.

Ms. Doyle is a freelance contributor to respected industry publications and the former editor of Simba Information's newsletters Electronic Information Report and Multimedia Entertainment & Technology Report. Prior to entering the field of business journalism, Jennifer served as a newspaper reporter. She holds a bachelor's degree in technical journalism from Colorado State University.

Anver S. Suleiman is considered the strategic marketing/business guru of the meetings industry (training, tradeshows, seminars and conferences) and over the past 20 years has been associated with a series of "firsts" in attendance, publications and membership marketing. These include two-step marketing via the IG (inquiry generator), indexing, geo-pricing, multi-covers, the "un-brochure", informail, co-marketing, video-versions, emergency briefings, program protection techniques, and seminar and conference marketing grids for allocating marketing dollars.

Anver also developed over 300 first time annual conferences including The First Genetic Engineering Conference, The First Pricing Conference, Inc. Magazine's Growing the Company Conference, The First Sports Psychology Conference, The First Database Marketing Conference, The First International Commodities Conference, The First Product Tampering Conference and a series of major healthcare conferences for Harvard. He has personally developed training programs for the plastics industry, metal, packaging, finance and general management.

Anver has personally led 300 plus two-day seminars, and has spoken at over 100 major events, for over 50,000 professionals from universities, associations, publishing companies, healthcare industries, tradeshow and seminar providers. He has trained more than 10,000 professionals from universities, associations, publishing companies, healthcare institutions, and tradeshow organizations at The Annual Conference on Strategic Marketing of Seminars, Conferences and Expositions; Marketing Meetings Seminars; over 50-in-house presentations, as well as the first totally interactive teleconference with National University Television Network.

A prolific writer, Anver has more than 200 published articles in the trade and general business press, as well as contributions to manuals, books and industry handbooks. He was senior editor for LERN's "Marketing Seminars and Conferences" and articles by and about him appeared in Lifelong Learning Market Report, Executive Update, Association Management, Independent Show Management, T+D, Trade Show Week, Convene, Meeting News, etc. Anver is a frequent keynote speaker at U.S., Canadian and international industry events including: ACLEA, ASAE, GWSAE, IAEE, ISA, PCMA, CSAE, CAEM, MPI, Meeting World, SMSCE, NUCEA, ACHE, AAACE, ASEE, BIL, and others.

For the second year in a row, Anver was named to LLMR's prestigious list of the Top 20 People to Watch in Corporate Training for 2003. Anver was also selected by Meetings Magazine for the cover photo article as one of the "15 Who Have Made a Difference in the Meetings Industry", and selected by Target Magazine for their prestigious list of "Influential Direct Mail Marketers". In addition he has won awards from the American Association for Engineering Education and others for "Best Presentation of the Conference." And he's been featured in dozens of meeting, marketing, and business magazine articles.

Anver has consulted for McGraw-Hill, Arthur D. Little, Inc. Magazine, American Management Association, Harvard, Battelle Memorial Institute, Fred Pryor Seminars, National Seminars, Business-to-Business Direct Marketing, IDG, Reed, Miller-Freeman, Computer Security Institute, AMCEE, IIR, Data Tech, Control Data, National Center for Database Marketing, LERN, Weyerhaeuser, Creative Training Techniques International, Management Centre Europe, American Bar Association, NTIS, American Hospital Association, Business Week, International Communications Association, The Windows Show, Sony, The FOSE Show, Ziff, Sequent Computer, Practising Law Institute, CareerTrack, catersource, The Bob Pike Group, and dozens of universities, associations, trade show groups, healthcare organizations, computer seminar providers and private companies.

Anver specializes in strategic consulting for tradeshows (association and for-profit) and training organizations. His work has included turnarounds, preparation for sale/divestiture, and increasing profitability. He has done this for American Management Association, CareerTrack, American Society of Association Executives, Practising Law Institute, Fred Pryor Seminars, Management Centre Europe, and dozens of associations and for-profit training and tradeshow groups.

Anver has negotiated over 30 transactions for tradeshows, training organizations, publishers and information suppliers ranging from $5,000,000 to over $100,000,000. He is known for his ability to create winning transactions with smooth transitions. He has earned respect from buyers who know him for his straightforward personal style. His 30-year background as a practitioner gives him a perspective for problem-solving and seeing value that is truly unique.

Laura Cullinane heads up the LSA National Headquarters office as the Director of Research. Her responsibilities include oversight of the LSA proprietary database, circulation of the Mergers & Acquisitions Alert, upkeep of the LSA research library, and research pertaining to matching LSA clients with an appropriate buyer or seller partner. Laura is the primary contact with clients in gathering information and composition of all offering memoranda and supporting documents. She maintains the ultimate physical record of all transactions conducted by LSA.

For the past sixteen years Laura has been actively involved in managing and running conferences and seminars on a wide variety of topics including healthcare, marketing, customer service, human resources and brand identity for industries including healthcare, manufacturing, construction and general business. Her extensive knowledge of the events industry, including small and large seminars, conferences and tradeshows, gives clients an additional resource and insights that are reflected in the preparation of materials and communications with both buyers and sellers.

Prior to joining LSA, Laura was an Instructor at The University of Alabama for six years after receiving her Masters degree in Speech Communication. During her time at The University, she taught various undergraduate courses, including Interpersonal Communication, Nonverbal Communication, Argumentation and Debate, Critical Decision Making, and Public Address. Laura received her B.A. in Communication Arts and English from The University of South Alabama. Laura actively represents LSA at industry events including the American Society for Training & Development, the Software & Information Industry Association, the Specialized Information Publishers Association, the International Association of Expositions and Events, the American Consulting Legal Education Association, and others.