This week, your classmate Tad Davis (aka Paul Davis) tells us about his post-high school life as an actor and performer in New York City. For those of you who know Tad, none of this is surprising (cool, but not surprising!), as Tad was a singer and performer throughout his school years. What may surprise you is that Tad also spent many years as an executive in the corporate world of finance and marketing. He shares his experiences with all the candor and humor you expect from Tad Davis! Please say hello to Tad, share a memory, and come see him at the reunion.
THEN:
What is your memory of arriving as a freshman at Austin High in 1979?
I was anxious about looking cool to the older kids. But I was lucky that I'd been with a lot of the same kids my age from first grade on at Dill Elementary, Brykerwoods, and O'Henry.
What activities were you involved in during your years in high school?
I was heavily into choir, drama, and debate.
What were your favorite classes and who were your favorite teachers?
I was particularly into those subjects (choir and drama) and English. I remember liking all of the teachers. Especially Ms. Couch, Mr. Preis, Mr. Dahlberg, But we were so privileged to have so many great teachers on our faculty.
Any memories that really stand out, at any point in your four years?
Besides getting into trouble (and suspended) a lot, I especially cherished the opportunity to travel and compete (and win) in statewide singing, drama, debate competitions with such a robust arts community!
Anything you would go back and do differently?
I'd be taller and thinner.
What is your most vivid memory of senior year at Austin High?
It all runs together.
What advice would you give your teenage self now?
Don't sweat it!
NOW:
Where did life take you after high school?
I went to NTSU and majored in Opera - vocal performance and Drama. I left after a couple of years of doing drugs and barely going to school to move to NYC (with $35), and I immediately started working as a singer and couch surfing for a few years. I ended up on some soap operas and tons of "off off off" Broadway theater, operas, musicals. I even started a sketch comedy group and performed a lot.
But I got tired of being poor and my first wife got sick so I ended up in the corporate world. I started first as a legal proofreader since I could work the graveyard shift and still pursue my "career" during the days and perform in the evenings. But then I was seduced by computers and early design programs, like the original versions of everything from photoshop, quark, pagemaker, premiere, after effects, etc. etc. I ended up traveling around the world with investment bankers doing road shows for IPO presentations. Then as internet banking first became a thing, I was the creative director that built PrudentialSecurities.com and created the outward face of their back end that built on technology and servers from the 60s (the same mainframes as NASA!). That took me to Nasdaq where I was the VP-Creative Director managing a huge advertising budget, TV studios, the tower in Times Square, our agencies around the world, all of the branding and messaging for the massive international brand and a $50m budget from my offices in NYC, DC, and Palo Alto.
On Sept 11, 2001 I was at our downtown office across the street from the World Trade Center when the planes hit and that was a major event in my life as well as the nation. In the weeks after, I was among the skeleton staff working in Times Square with the Governor, Mayor, Senators, SEC, etc to manage the opening of the financial markets.
When I left Nasdaq with PTSD, I started my own marketing and branding agency, "Big Fat Creative" (so named because I'd ballooned up to over 400 lbs after 9/11) and worked with dozens of small and medium companies on branding, marketing, and design. I became the co-founder of one of those companies (Dynadco) which was the first to insert video ads into online video, years before YouTube. Eventually that company went public after several mergers and acquisitions as Tremor Video.
When I retired from all that, I lost the weight and went on to start several more companies -- but my alcoholism and drug addiction became worse and worse as I replaced one crutch with others. The most recent company I started, Monetago (I named it after Juno Moneta, the Goddess of the mint and all things money and monetary) on a trip to Rome, where I was spending more time singing opera. That company was initially a global bitcoin exchange providing currency conversion among about 30 currencies in nearly 40 countries. But we transitioned into a blockchain based fraud prevention network. It's currently providing fraud prevention for thousands of major banks around the world as a partner with the Swift network, based in Singapore, Mumbai, London... and I've lost track where else! I left Monetago 5 years ago after my second rehab and have managed to remain sober ever since!
What are you doing now?
Although it's the poorest I've been since I moved to NYC in 1985, I've never been happier. Besides singing an opera nearly every month with a local community group, my "sober job" has been working as a background actor in TV and film. I've been in pretty much everything. I'm that skinny guy in the back, usually something like a lawyer, judge, detective, etc. I'm in a bunch of Law and Orders, Blacklist, Bull, Blue Bloods, Dickinson, Gossip Girl, Mrs. Maisel, Fallout, etc. etc. In the second to last episode of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," I'm the auctioneer. I just played a general on "The Blacklist." But I'm literally in almost everything that shoots in NYC. What a fun treat my life is! To maintain my health and my sobriety, I live in gratitude and walk an average of 10 miles a day and I'm usually in Central Park or one of the many parks in the NYC area or walking around the museums or galleries of this great city!
What could young people of today learn from our generation?
Absolutely nothing! Young people today are clearly much wiser than our generation and we're leaving them a terrible mess.
