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Past Honorees
Marlowe Teig
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Past Honorees
Marlowe Teig
Managing Director
Berkery, Noyes & Co.
2001
Marlowe Teig is more than a financial advisor: With experience
as an educational publisher, he concentrates on advising publishing
companies of all sizes toward successful ventures. A 30-year veteran
of the industry, he's been called "one of the best publishers
ever in the business," and is known for his "keen intellect"
and "tremendous sense of the market."
Growing up on a farm in Fargo, Minn., Marlowe wore the usual agrarian
attire, including cowboy boots. (Later, when his career led him
to California, he readopted the unconventional footgear he's known
for today.) His parents didn't have the money to send him to college,
but still expected him and his six younger siblings to find their
way to higher education. Marlowe, who had taken every science and
math course his small high school offered, received a full-tuition
scholarship to the University of Michigan. There he began studying
engineering, but switched majors and earned his bachelor's degree
in English literature.
After graduating, Marlowe went to work as an "assistant production-editorial
trainee" at Prentice-Hall, and through a series of promotions,
ended up as an editor in the company's college division. In the
early 1960s, he joined Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and spent 16 years
in various senior management positions, including vice president.
There, as elsewhere, he showed homegrown concern for other people,
and always tried to help, or act as a mentor, wherever he could.
He joined Houghton Mifflin in 1980 as director of the school division,
and was named executive vice president in 1986. Marlowe understood
how to relate to authors, former CEO Hal Miller recalls. Those in
the editorial department often remarked on the good relationship
Marlowe built with them every day. One of his associates at HM was
Peter Sayeski, who is now president of SRA/McGraw-Hill. Pete remembers
pushing his ideas forcefully, but Marlowe wrote him a note that
spoke of waves hitting a rock on the shore. The note said that eventually,
the "waves" would wear him (the rock) down: an example
of the nice ways Marlowe would come up with to help an associate
who needed guidance.
Marlowe always has been demanding when it comes to producing a
superior product, Pete notes. He had the courage to go against an
"entrenched editorial department" when advancing marketing
ideas for one Houghton Mifflin spelling program. The end result?
When the department followed Marlowe's advice, Pete says, the product's
market share increased by 65 percent.
In 1985, Marilyn Schutz (now of Marketing Projects Inc.) consulted
Marlowe when seeking Houghton Mifflin's sponsorship for a special
issue of Instructor magazine. It was the first time in education
that any magazine had an entire issue sponsored by one company,
and Marlowe had the vision to understand the power that relationships
between businesses and schools could have. He also took the time
to sit down with her and talk about the magazine's direction.
Between 1987 and 1988, Marlowe was vice president of educational
publishing at Macmillan until he went out on his own to advise people
who were working on deals to buy publishing companies. As he became
more intrigued by the process of mergers and acquisitions, his list
of clients began to grow. So in 1990, it was a logical extension
of Marlowe's career path to join investment-banking firm
Berkery, Noyes &
Co. in New York City. He helped expand services to the educational
and professional publishing community; within his first year, his
efforts led to a sale. As managing director, he's responsible for
originating, completing and managing sales, divestitures, and mergers
and acquisitions, both in educational and professional publishing,
and in the learning-technology sector.
Marlowe says being in educational publishing for 28 years gave
him the opportunity to work on producing curriculum materials that
teachers used to reach millions of children. That was rewarding,
he says, but in the last 11 years, he's reaped different kinds of
rewards: He's helped smaller companies to realize millions in cash,
and he's helped numerous educational publishing companies to grow
at a faster rate through consolidations.
Marlowe has been involved with the successful completion of more
than 40 transactions at Berkery, Noyes & Co., including Houghton
Mifflin Co.'s acquisition of Sunburst Communications and Pearson
Education's investment in Boxer Learning.
On the volunteer side, Marlowe has served as chairman of the executive
committee of the school division of the Association of American
Publishers and as a member of its Freedom to Read committee. He's
a past trustee and corporator of the Dana Hall School in Wellesley,
Mass.
He lives with his wife, musician and vocal coach Carole Lynne.
They have two grown children, both college graduates to whom Marlowe
has passed his high standards - of individual achievement, and of
helping others.
Ceremony Highlights
The trio of Leanna Landmann of TIME for Kids, Linda
Meeks of Meeks Heit, and Joe Berkery, president
of Berkery, Noyes & Co., got together for a touching and humorous
presentation on Marlowe Teig, Berkery Noyes &
Co. managing director. After several mentions of Teig's cowboy boots
and Meeks' infamous "10 Reasons to Hire Marlowe," Berkery
presented the Hall of Fame honors to Teig.
Teig thanked his family, all the people in educational publishing
who once were teachers, and all the mentors who helped him along
the way, taught him, and allowed him to do his job.
"Teaching underlies so much of your enterprise," Teig
said to the audience. "Teachers are the ultimate optimists
? they believe in the perfectibility of humans." Finally, he
cited "my boss Joe: he taught me you can achieve whatever you
can visualize. I accept this honor in the name all my great teachers
who taught me so much."
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