The GEICO board of directors has promoted Joe Pusateri to VP of marketing.
He previously served as an assistant vice president in marketing; in that role, which he assumed last year, he oversaw analytics, direct mail, in-house creative and the advertising for the GEICO Insurance Agency (GIA), which offers homeowners, term life and other types of coverages. In addition, Pusateri headed GEICO’s retention marketing division.
Pusateri began his GEICO career in 2003 as a planning and research analyst in the controllers department. After working his way through the analyst ranks, he became a planning manager in the marketing department in 2007. He was promoted to planning and research manager a year later and to senior manager in 2010, with additional responsibilities for motorcycle, RV and boat advertising.
In 2013, Pusateri’s duties expanded to include responsibilities for military marketing and GIA programs. He was promoted to marketing director in 2014, a title he held until his election to assistant VP in 2017.
Pusateri has a bachelor’s degree in finance from Penn State.
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More