John F. Doherty ’88Susan Soletsky ’82Anna Cano-Morales ’91Rudy Duthil ’04Margot White ’94Class Acts Profiles
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Peter McKone ’49
Midmorning on a Wednesday in April in the final minutes of an hour-long interview, Peter McKone casually mentions that he arrived in Texas in 1949 with $25 in his pocket and a dream of working in advertising.
He ended up owning a multi-million advertising agency and seeing all 10 of his children graduate from college.
McKone had opened the discussion with the disclaimer that he didn’t think what he had to say would be of great interest. It is likely that that modesty—coupled with indefatigable persistence and an understanding of people—is what made McKone a force in advertising. McKone & Co.’s client roster included national names like Wilsonart and Aerospatiale.
Another asset: McKone’s intellectual curiosity. When a student, this ad man, who earned a B.S. in marketing from URI, also possessed a strong interest in literature: “Every semester I took a lot of literature—British literature, Shakespeare. Literature offered a vision of people and how they reacted to history.”
McKone’s many interests served him well. When working in newspaper advertising, for instance, the young advertising manager learned that if an ad appearing in the paper on Friday didn’t yield a sale by Sunday, then it wasn’t a successful ad. The key was in knowing the client, the product, and the audience.
McKone was a pro at relationship marketing decades before the term was coined. He learned early that if you put one client in an industry together in a program with other non-competitive advertisers in a similar industry, you multiply the effect. He also learned that you can’t be what you aren’t—“Chevrolet can’t advertise like Cadillac.”
McKone sold his business a decade ago. His retirement is spent flying his plane every Wednesday and keeping up with his children’s lives.
When asked what one thing he’d want people to know about him, he answered, “I did a good job. I did the best I could. And I loved every minute of it.”
—M.E. Reilly-McGreen
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John F. Doherty ’88
John Doherty likes fish. He goes diving to look at them, he sets out on his boat to catch them, and he likes to cook them to share with friends and family.
But before he fires up the grill, he turns his catch into works of art. Using an ancient Oriental technique called Gyotaku, Doherty creates colorful fish rubbings by painting the fish then pressing rice paper or lightweight fabric on top of the paint.
The rubbings started as a happy accident. He had just caught some bluefish, and as he was unloading them from his boat, he noticed the blood from one had seeped out from its gills and left a nearly perfect impression of the fish on the deck. “I thought, that’s so cool,” Doherty says. “I wonder if I could do that.”
After playing with various techniques, he did some research and learned that fish rubbings were used two thousand years ago in the Orient as a way to document fish species. Eventually the science turned to art, and today
Doherty’s method is remarkably similar to that of his ancient predecessors.
His favorite fish, he says, is striped bass. “Their scales come through the best, and their bodies tend to conform to rubbing.” Among his most memorable rubbings is a twelve-pound lobster. “It was more than three feet long,” he says. “I boiled it, rubbed it, and ate it—it tasted great.”
Doherty, who owns an independent insurance agency, lives with his wife and three children in Belmont, Mass. His family has summered on the Cape for years, though, and he has a summer home in Harwich where his studio sits on a dock, making the transition from fisherman to artist a simple step from boat to studio.
When his art is finished for the day, Doherty hoses the water-based paints off his fish and—voila!—dinner is served.
See Doherty’s work at fishayetradingcompany.com.
—Paula M. Bodah ’78
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Susan Soletsky ’82
Dr. Susan Soletsky loves her job as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Houston, Texas.
When she arrived at URI, though, she wanted to major in physical education. Her parents insisted she choose pharmacy or nursing. “I wasn’t a very good student,” she confesses. “I chose nursing because the pharmacy program was five years, and there was no way I was going to spend an extra year in school.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but the nursing curriculum would spark a sense of purpose and determination that surprised almost everyone who knew her. She began to think about med school while she was still in URI’s nursing program. “I didn’t have the maturity for it then,” she says.
After graduating, as much as she enjoyed her nursing career, she kept returning to thoughts of becoming a doctor. “I had to do more than dream about it,” she says. “When the hurdles were set up I had to decide whether I was going to jump them or not.”
She worked full time while she earned a post baccalaureate pre-med degree from Queens College in New York, then went on to Cornell Medical School, intending to go into radiology. A mandatory rotation in anesthesiology changed her mind. “I realized that a lot of the things I liked about nursing—the problem solving, the physiology, the pharmacology—were involved in anesthesiology,” she says.
Her nursing education gave her a grounding for medical school that proved invaluable. While her fellow students were grappling with the unfamiliar psycho-social aspects of medicine, she says, “I had so much more of a base, having worked with patients for several years already.”
She credits her years at URI with helping both her personal and academic growth: “It was really a time of gaining lots of confidence and academic desire.” And she still holds nurses in high esteem: “A good nurse is priceless. They can make or break a patient’s wellness at every level.”
—Paula M. Bodah ’78
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Anna Cano-Morales ’91
Girl Scout meetings and dance classes typically dominate the conversation of elementary school girls. Few give thought to sobering issues, such as immigration rights.
Yet for Anna Cano-Morales, who as a first-generation Colombian-American grew up in Central Falls and Pawtucket, R.I., adult concerns defined her lifestyle in many ways.
“As a child, I advocated for my community, often using my English skills to fill out job applications for my parents’ friends and broker rental agreements between tenants and landlords. My parents taught me that my community was special, and it was our duty to help those that are in need.”
These values that Cano-Morales’ family instilled in her drove her to pursue a career in social services and philanthropy. Having majored in Human Development, Counseling and Family Studies at URI, Cano-Morales went on to earn a master’s in social work from Rhode Island College.
She worked as a social worker before joining the Rhode Island Foundation as senior community philanthropy officer. In this role, she oversees the discretionary grant program, a source of funding for numerous nonprofits dedicated to improving people’s lives through affordable housing, improved K-12 education, and other initiatives.
“Philanthropy is a magnificent tool that allows us to invest in communities and in quality-of-life issues that affect our most vulnerable populations.”
When she is not at the foundation working to help others, she spends her free time—well, helping others. Cano-Morales chairs the Central Falls School District’s board of trustees and is a member of the R.I. Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education. Through her work with both groups, she aims to “close the minority achievement gap and to create policies that help teachers and students achieve their fullest potential.”
Though many years have passed since she translated for Spanish-speaking neighbors, her belief in giving back to the community became a lifelong passion preparing her to achieve these goals and to “challenge the status quo wherever I go.”
—Maria V. Caliri ’86, M.B.A. ’92
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Rudy Duthil ’04
Three years: That’s all the time it took for Rudy Duthil to become a recognized leader in his industry.
Duthil is the West Coast manager of experiential marketing for Zoom Media and Marketing out of Los Angeles. The company installs media billboards and manages marketing campaigns in nightlife venues, health clubs, and mini-family amusement centers—“places where people are enjoying their lives,” Duthil says.
Zoom counts name brands like Ford, Continental Airlines, and T-Mobile among its clients. Duthil is currently working on a $1 million campaign for Pepsi Co., assisting its bottlers in promoting Pepsi’s Manzanita Sol brand.
Duthil’s work earned him a 2007 ADCOLOR Rising Star award honoring the achievements of young persons of diverse backgrounds working in the advertising world. Duthil was one of 15 winners selected from over 100 nominees.
The experience spurred Duthil to establish a multicultural group within his company. Its task: to assess and address the needs of multicultural ad agencies in efforts to reach the multicultural target consumer. “It is an intelligent business move,” Duthil says, “and, most importantly, something I’m truly passionate about.”
Duthil’s other passion is his work with the Los Angeles Unified School District to establish an internship program at Zoom. His first intern for this program will also be participating in a summer college program at the University of California-Northridge that is comparable to the Talent Development program at URI that started Duthil’s collegiate career.
Duthil credited the Adcolor Award he received, as well as URI’s Talent Development program, with inspiring him to help others recognize their professional goals.
“I had some great examples and role models within the TD program such as Sharon and Frank Forleo, as well as my main mentor, Domingo Morel. They have all accomplished great things with the Talent Development program. And when you have people like that setting the bar for you, you can’t help but want to succeed.”
—M.E. Reilly-McGreen
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Margot White ’94
Margot White was living every theater major’s dream in the fall of 2007, acting on Broadway in The Farnsworth Invention, a play written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin.
“It was my dream since I was five to be on Broadway,” said White, who played “about eight roles altogether.” Her first Broadway show, which closed in March, was “everything I could have hoped for and more—except a longer run.”
White acted in many URI Theatre productions as an undergraduate. After graduating, she spent a year acting in Rhode Island. In 1995, she moved to New York to study with the New York Shakespeare Festival. Soon, she was working in regional productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, and The Shape of Things.
“Now I’m more interested in sticking closer to home,” she said, noting that she and her husband, Paul Johansen, have bought a country house north of the city in addition to the apartment in Manhattan they share with their dog, Ruby.
URI professors Judith Swift, Kimber Wheelock, and Paula McGlasson all helped White assemble “a full toolbox” of acting skills. One lesson in which movement teacher Anne Scurria (of Trinity Rep) told White to “move across the floor like a river of hot fudge” in an effort to loosen up, popped into White’s head years later during a pivotal time in her career.
After a disappointing audition for playwright Horton Foote, White was walking back to her apartment when “this light bulb went off in my head.” She went back, did the audition again, and got the role. Foote later offered her the lead role in another play, The Traveling Lady. An agent saw the play and loved her performance: “That’s how I got my representation. It was a really serendipitous experience.”
You never know where a river of hot fudge will take you. It took Margot White all the way from Kingston to Broadway.
—David Gregorio ’80
