Hats off to Success

Questions, ideas, and creative solutions jettison across the computer screen of Lisa Sullivan '95 from her log cabin in Vermont to the terminals of her business partners in North Carolina. "I.M. is the best," she chuckles, referring to instant messaging, an internet technology that allows the barely thirty-something women to communicate instantaneously. "This set-up wouldn't work as well had we not worked together before," she says.

In May 2002, Sullivan and colleague, Melissa London, founded Hats Off Communications, a strategic marketing and communications consulting firm providing expertise in branding, public relations, and event production. They invited two former co-workers to join the new company.

The foursome met at Red Hat, a technology firm now based in Raleigh, N.C., that delivers the operating system software, Linux, as well as related products and services. As one of Red Hat's founding members, Sullivan was serving as vice president of marketing and communications when, in 1999, she and her trio of new partners took Red Hat public. In the next two years, the firm acquired 14 companies and mushroomed to 700 employees.

"We cut our collective marketing teeth in the highly competitive high-tech world, and we learned to gain maximum exposure at minimum costs - all at a frenetic Internet pace," their Hats Off web site proclaims. As a tribute to their former employer, the entrepreneurs decided to incorporate the word "hat" into their new company logo. "We all learned so much during the growth of Red Hat," says Sullivan, who began working for the start-up her senior year at Fairfield (clocking 40 hours per week at the then-Westport-based company). An English major with aspirations to be a journalist, she caught the business bug and stayed on after graduation.

"People were starting to use this free operating system (Linux) and finding a way to save millions through it. Some of us were the cowboys," laughs Sullivan, who calls herself high-strung. "What drew me there initially was the 'make your own rules' atmosphere. You can imagine how the culture changed with such growth."

The desire to recreate an innovative work environment, coupled with the quest for an improved quality of life (she routinely put in a 60 to 70-hour workweek) led her to resign after seven years at Red Hat.

As president now of Hats Off Communications, Sullivan is the generalist, focusing on strategy and planning. The company boasts an impressive array of clients including Alpinist magazine, Art.com, and Lulu Tech Circus, each run by an ex-Red Hatter. And Sullivan says their mode of operation is collaboration, simply "four friends putting our heads together to solve a problem."

In the midst of captaining her new venture, Sullivan plays new mom to Allyson Taylor born June 5, 2003 to her and her husband, Phil. She took off several weeks and is now juggling feedings with the work that must get done. "For my personality, it's healthy for me to have multiple things going on," she says.

Sullivan recently shared some of her good fortune with her alma mater. She and her husband made a $30,000 gift to Our Promise: The Campaign for Fairfield University, directing their gift to a Community Scholars Program that provides full-tuition scholarships to nine students from inner-city high schools. Sullivan herself attended the University on a partial financial scholarship.

"Fairfield is growing as a university by bringing in a diverse population," she says, "while maintaining its ideals, and preparing students for the workforce - like it did me." *

By Marybeth Christie Redmond
Marybeth Christie Redmond is a freelance writer from Essex, Vt.