Gary Esolen’s central interest is in enabling richer lives in better communities through placemaking, economic development and tourism, and the arts. He has pursued those goals through business, journalism and other writing, and community service. His core strengths, honed over four decades, are strategic thinking, writing, and persuasive speech. He is expert in tourism development and marketing; he is trained and accomplished in the most effective techniques of strategic planning, and he is a skilled communicator. Here are some of his accomplishments.
Community Building
Better Lives in Better Places
—Working with his PLACES partner Valeri LeBlanc, Esolen developed a methodology for understanding the personality or character of a place as a contextual tool for all aspects of planning, developing, improving, or promoting the place. He used that approach in his work in New Orleans and with clients in Colorado, Aruba, Lake Placid NY, Ithaca, Finger Lakes Wine Country, Arizona, Roatan, the Czech Republic, the State of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, the northern tier of Pennsylvania along Route 6, Broward County and the Pennsylvania Wilds (a new tourism region created with consulting assistance from PLACES).
—Helped produce a Governor’s Conference, Destination: Pennsylvania, themed to Transforming Communities Through Place-Based Tourism, based on the methodology and work of PLACES in Pennsylvania.
—Played a leading role in the cultural revival of New Orleans (pre-Katrina) through his newspaper, Gambit, and through work in developing and marketing tourism around the authentic culture of the place (rather than around tourism attractions).
—Developed a systematic approach to arts and cultural tourism rooted in authenticity which he has since applied with clients in Ithaca, the Finger Lakes, Pennsylvania, and Fort Lauderdale.
—Was a leading participant in a successful campaign to contain utility costs in New Orleans, which threatened to undermine the economy.
—Led a successful movement to build affordable housing and make financing available to moderate-income families in the Ithaca, New York area.
Marketing
Building Equity with Efficient Marketing
—Led the creation of the first modern tourism marketing program in New Orleans, raised the necessary funds to launch it, helped obtain significant permanent funding, and ran the program for more than its first decade. This program began with public relations and barter (in the absence of funding) and became a sustained annual program of more than six million dollars in marketing.
—Developed marketing solutions with measured outcomes, including direct-response television campaigns with the lowest cost per response in the industry nationally. Created campaigns with the highest measured efficiency in the country.
—Created an early internet marketing campaign for New Orleans including the world’s first and so far only fully computer generated simulated live internet radio station, Radio Free New Orleans, bringing the music and culture of the city to the world.
—Formed the Pennsylvania Culinary Society, an organization of chefs and innkeepers devoted to creating and promoting a distinctive regional cuisine.
—Managed quantitative and qualitative market research in New Orleans, and consulted in research programs in Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania.
Management
Transparent Fiscal Managment and Open Participation in Decisionmaking
—As CEO of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, Esolen managed budgets of five to six million dollars annually for a decade without ever going over budget, and received unqualified positive audit reports each year. The organization had open committees in which all members of the industry could participate, and open board meetings with public participation.
—Esolen consulted in the creation of collaborative public-private tourism marketing organizations in Philadelphia, Colorado, the Czech Republic, and other places. Consulted in the creation of the division of Cultural and Heritage Tourism in Pennsylvania.
—Consulted in the reorganization of the program providing state matching funds for local tourism promotion agencies in Pennsylvania, regionalizing the program to create alliances with sufficient tourism assets and resources to market effectively.
Journalism
Explanatory Journalism, Enabling Public Understanding and Participation
—Esolen founded several weekly newspapers in upstate New York. He was the founding publisher of the award-winning weekly newspaper, Gambit in New Orleans, still publishing after twenty-five years, credited with helping the City to recover its sense of place and with the renaissance of New Orleans’ cultural scene.
—Esolen covered major stories including the vulnerability of “brittle” energy production and related policies to economic disruption and possible attack, the environment value of and danger to one of the last great river-swamp wetlands in America (the Atchafalaya Basin), police corruption in New Orleans, and the drug trial of John Delorean (in regard to which Esolen was the only reporter to recognize the weakness of the government case and to predict the ultimate acquittal). Wrote for Newsweek and for the NY Times and Cox wire services as well as for his own newspaper.
—Won numerous press awards including national awards for covering major neglected stories.
Persuasive Speech and Writing
Good Communications Builds Better Places
—Esolen won awards for editorial writing in Gambit newspaper.
—As a public speaker, he advocated for causes such as economic development, containing utility costs, and other public issues.
—Esolen wrote much of the advertising and promotion copy for New Orleans tourism and for other clients.
Service Writing
Clear Writing Builds Support
—Esolen wrote legislation and implementation regulations for programs in Louisiana and in Pennsylvania.
—Esolen wrote white papers on policy in New Orleans and for clients in Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania.
—He wrote marketing plans and funding proposals for New Orleans Tourism and for clients.
Writing and Performance
Whole Brain Communication (right and left sides)
—Esolen is a published poet and a playwright. He has appeared in stage and radio performances of works by Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and others, and is currently working on live staged perfomances of great English-language poetry, and on a radio show, The Radio Poetry Theatre, in which actors perform great English-language poetry.
—Esolen has written three stage plays and is in development on a fourth.
Teaching and Academic Administration
Education Unlocks Potential in People
—As Assistant Dean in Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences, Esolen oversaw a program to allow independent, interdisciplinary majors under close faculty supervision, and managed interdisciplinary undergraduate programs including grants to faculty.
—Esolen co-taught a course in fulfillment of the Humanities Requirement with Professor Ted Morris, through the Comparative Literature Department, using the reading of science fiction as a vehicle to teach expository writing.
—Based on the methods developed in that course, Esolen and Morris taught new graduate assistants how to teach writing in preparation for their work in the Freshman Writing Program.
—Esolen taught a course in The Reading of Poetry which was an alternative gateway to the English Major for students who did not take a history of English Literature pre-requisite.