I met Todd in 1984 at Phase One in Sunbury, PA and he quickly became my mentor, along with some other great people there. I was new to the area and his friendship was very important to me at that time.
Todd always stood out from the crowd. He had ambition, a drive to achieve high quality messaging for our clients, as well as pushing to grow the company and our reach as a company.
He often pushed the people he worked with to do better and he was often correct in his assessment of our work. Without him, our work would have been less.
Todd brought out some friendly competition in people around him, often wagering on the smallest things. But a single dollar won on one of these wagers was held over you for the rest of your life and this brought him happiness.
He did not sweat the small stuff but took the big stuff very seriously. He was passionate about what he believed in and balanced emotional and rational reactions to things.
Todd was really good at selling his ideas, selling our work to clients and selling me on the idea that my work was not good enough when he pushed me to do better. He was very good at working with people at their level.
He had no patience for slackers, incompetents or people who just did not care. He was always out to do his best and every year, he moved his own bar higher and worked hard to reach that new level.
He took a lot of people higher with him, including me. I worked with Todd for 4 years and credit him with part of what put me on the path that lead me to success in life.
Todd appreciated good things and good people. He and I worked at Phase One for Larry Underkoffler, who brought a lot of great talent together in one place and in 10 years turned a prepress shop into one of the true creative agencies in central Pennsylvania. Todd was a critical part of the formation and early success of this company that has now turned out a whole list of successful agencies and design shops.