Mark Modzelewski and Jacqueline Corbelli.
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Jacqueline Corbelli of Westport has shown businesses how to snap a straight line and get things done right.
She is now rescripting TV advertising with the Herculean goal of making it enjoyable.
In her spare time ”“ she has three girls ”“ she helps children reach across the ocean to Africa while she herself reaches across expectations of personal fulfillment as a silver screen producer.
Corbelli grew up in western New York in Batavia.
“I was born into a very traditional Italian family,” said Corbelli.
Corbelli said that her childhood was very normal.
After graduating from Batavia High School, Corbelli went to college at SUNY Albany.
“I went to college to study political science and economics,” said Corbelli. “I graduated from there in ”™86 and went on to do a joint degree in business and international relations at Columbia University in Manhattan.”
While at Columbia, Corbelli would meet her husband, Mark Modzelewski.
She graduated in 1988.
“The idea was to figure out how I could indulge the various interests and desires that I had,” said Corbelli. “First things first though, I put myself through college and had a tremendous amount of debt as a result to address. I took the practical step of getting myself a job so that I could service that debt.”
In 1988 Corbelli began a career in banking with Schroder Bank in New York City.
“I was a management trainee and it just so happened that I started my career in a time not dissimilar to the time we”™re in now,” said Corbelli. “It really did shape the opportunities that I had and the experiences that I took on, and helps explain some of the things I”™ve done throughout my career.”
Corbelli spent time in a sector at Schroder called special loans, dealing with troubled debt and deals that had gone bad.
“I loved it,” said Corbelli. “They were all busted up leveraged buyout deals, junk bond deals, Latin American debt deals and savings and loan deals. It was a very rich array of problems to be solved.”
Because of Schroder Bank”™s small size Corbelli was afforded the opportunity to be very hands on with these problems.
“Within the first few months I was thinking, ”˜Holy cow, people actually make money this way?”™” said Corbelli. “There were so many imbedded inefficiencies and so much more complexity than in my mind seems to ever be necessary.”
Corbelli said it was eye-opening and frustrating to see the way many businesses really run.
“I had a significant amount of responsibility and authority for someone my age,” said Corbelli. “What it did was it awakened in me a sort of recognition that I had some desire and interest in problem solving and I probably had some talent there that needed to be honed as well.”
After a brief stint in the lending side of banking, Corbelli met Paul Allen, a former Greenwich resident who started Aston and Associates of Stamford in 1992.
Allen at the time was just opening Aston as a firm and taking his talent on its own. Corbelli was the first person he hired.
“He hired me as an associate,” said Corbelli.
She would become the president of the company and stay at Aston for 12 years.
“What he offered me was the opportunity to join him in building this firm that worked with CEOs and chairmen of large financial institutions to remake the business models inside their companies to drive their strategic goals more effectively. That was just sort of music.”
According to Corbelli, Aston helped her to realize that there is a way to distill complex issues in order to address individual parts and make broad-based changes.
“I said, my God, that could be applied to so many things,” said Corbelli.
In 2003, Corbelli applied her talents to the media and advertising industry helping to start Brightline iTV Marketing Specialists; she is now chairman and CEO.
“We”™re there to transform television advertising, to make it a pleasurable experience for the consumer,” said Corbelli.
Corbelli has since applied her perspective and technique to poverty with the help of the organization Millennium Promise.
“I wanted to be very inductive and very driven in finding areas I could make a difference with the type of thinking and skill set I had developed and one of the areas was poverty,” said Corbelli. “What I saw in Millennium Promise was the brilliance of Dr. Jeffery Sachs.”
In collaboration with Sachs, Corbelli has since brought the Millennium Promise into area schools starting with her three girls”™ Whitby School in Greenwich with the School 2 School program. Whitby was the first school in the United States to participate in the class activity that links U.S. and African schools.
“We raise children to think of people in poverty-stricken countries as us and them,” said Corbelli. “The idea is to draw out the similarities and have them experience common things about growing up and being a kid together.”
Corbelli, who sits on the board of the Atlantic Theatre in Manhattan for seven years, has also applied her talents to film. Corbelli in 2007 took part in her first independent movie producing project, with the help of David Mamet and William H. Macy.
Corbelli”™s recent project, a movie called “The Deal,” filmed in South Africa and went to Sundance Film Festival in January of 2008.
Corbelli is also a frequent speaker and has written numerous articles on operational infrastructure and business process redesign for various periodicals.
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