About Larry
A true icon, Mexican hall-of-fame golfer Lorena Ochoa was generous enough to allow Larry and his class of public relations students do some PR for her foundation. The story was featured in the New York Times and other New York area media.
Larry, on the right, with newly minted Tony winner, Kelli O'Hara, and audio engineer, Angelo Panetta. Weiner has won three audio awards and three other nominations for his work that can be heard on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio.
CAREER BORN IN THE FILM BUSINESS
Public relations pro, award winning advertising copywriter, award winning audio dramatist, screenwriter, educator, humorist, corporate communicator...all these descriptions apply to Larry Weiner, who began his career after college as a story developer for Westfall Productions. In his nearly four year stint with Westfall, Larry worked on story development teams that created "Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas (a Muppet movie)," "The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (starring Ingrid Bergman)," a trio of animated features for NBC, and a CBS movie-of-the-week, "The Last Giraffe."
TRANSITIONING INTO ADVERTISING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS WORK
After Westfall closed down its operations in the early 1980s, Weiner moved into the worlds of advertising and public relations. His first public relations client was United Cerebral Palsy of New Jersey. Larry wrote and produced two video segments for the organization's national telethon. One featured then governor, Thomas Kean, and the other was headlined by the next governor, James Florio. He won a number of New Jersey Advertising Awards and was cited for creativity by the Radio Advertising Bureau. On the public relations side, Larry was the leading public relations counsel on the National Concrete Masonry Association's effort to make concrete interlocking pavingstones a popular paving system. Mission accomplished. Today, pavers are everywhere, and people are stepping all over them.
BEGINNING HIS OWN COMMUNICATION FIRM
In 1990, Larry left the employee world and opened his own company with the rather unique name "Weiner Communications." Over the next 20 plus years, Weiner produced public relations and other corporate communication products for such corporate giants as: McGraw-Hill Federal Credit Union, Pepsi Cola, Allied Signal Corporation, Parke-Davis, Hoffmann-LaRoche, Schering-Plough, Sony, Sharp, BMW North America, and many others. He's also passionate about his work for entrepreneurs, and he cites The Childfinder as one of his big success stories, taking a product parents could use to find children who have disappeared from their side, Weiner placed the product on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CBS Morning Show, and hundreds of newspapers around the country.
ANOTHER TRANSITION -- THIS TIME TO EDUCATION
Larry began to work as an adjunct at William Paterson University in the late 1980s, teaching Successful Business Communication courses. He moved to Montclair State in 2003, and he's still there. You can review his body of work at MSU here.
