Wendy has built a 20-plus year career in all areas of management consulting, marketing and public relations. She has extensive experience identifying and solving strategic business challenges for companies of all sizes, across nearly every industry, and has personally overseen the launch of hundreds of products, services and companies.
In 2001, Wendy formed Vendeloo Incorporated, a consultancy boutique offering clients management consulting, public relations and marketing counsel. As Founder and President of Vendeloo, Wendy provides clients with strategic counsel across all business functions, in addition to leading the firm's activities on both the client management and operational fronts.
Wendy concurrently serves as Co-President of MOSCOT, the New York City eyewear institution renowned worldwide for its iconic eyewear - The MOSCOT Originals, MOSCOT Spirit, MOSCOT Originals Sun, and MOSCOT Sun Collections, helping chart the Company's worldwide growth, and business and product development, in addition to overseeing marketing and public relations.
Prior to forming Vendeloo, Wendy was Founder and President of Mindstorm Communications, a highly respected public relations and marketing agency. Under her stewardship, Mindstorm grew to 65 professionals and nearly $7 million in annual revenue, representing more than 75 clients, including Sony Electronics, Screaming Media, Cablevision, Silicon Graphics and Reebok, with offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington DC.
In August 2001, Golin/Harris International, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Interpublic Group of Companies, acquired Mindstorm. Wendy served as Executive Vice President at Golin/Harris' New York office, leading the agency's consumer and technology business-to-business practices, and serving as strategic counselor to key clients before leaving the agency to form Vendeloo.
Prior to starting Mindstorm, Wendy served as Senior Vice President at TSI Communications, one of the nation's largest and most respected technology PR firms, where she led both the Sony and Business-to-Business account teams, representing close to 30% of TSI's overall revenue. During her five-year tenure at TSI, she tripled the Sony Electronics account to several million dollars per year and expanded the agency's role to support all divisions of Sony Electronics. She also formed TSI's Business-to-Business PR practice, and in less than three years, grew the practice to $2 million in revenue per year, working with nearly 40 companies in diverse areas of technology.
Prior to joining Technology Solutions, Wendy served as Marketing Communications Manager for MicroDynamics Ltd, a software development company. She created and helped implement the company's annual $2 million marketing program, planned and managed more than 50 product roll-outs, events, trade shows, and press conferences and was responsible for establishing and maintaining joint marketing programs with the company's key industry partners, Apple, Sun, Panasonic and Sony.
Wendy is also the co-founder and Executive Director of The MOSCOT Mobileyes Foundation, a charity with the mission of preserving sight and improving the lives of New York City's underserved populations by providing free, quality medical eye care and vision screening. She is responsible for the ongoing development and growth of the charity, as well as day-to-day management of all activity.
She is also a photographer (wendysimmonsphotography.com) whose photographs have been selected for numerous juried shows and competitions in the US and abroad, been featured on HGTV home renovation programs, and have been the subject of two solo shows in New York City, and she also regularly shoots for MOSCOT including its global advertising and marketing campaigns.
Wendy's diverse background also includes building and owning a bar named Belly on Manhattan's Lower East Side, teaching reading and mathematics to grade levels kindergarten through eighth (an experience she claims taught her everything she needed to know to successfully run a company), lobbying for Japanese companies on Capitol Hill, and researching and writing a Japanese language instruction book (Education Services Corporation, Washington, DC, 1992).
Wendy graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from George Washington University (with semesters spent in Spain and Japan) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science (thesis: "The Kurile Island Dispute") and a minor in Japanese. She is an avid (and intrepid) world traveler (having explored more than 65 countries and counting), and currently lives a converted schoolhouse in Brooklyn that she can't seem to stop renovating.