Angelo Matera
In my consulting engagements I help mission-based startups and innovators build audiences and grow revenue. My broad experience monetizing new ideas, media, causes and digital services gives me a deep understanding of consumer identities and cultures in American society.
I’ve spent four decades as an executive and consultant to media and technology companies, including Time Inc, Forbes, America Online and many others. As co-founder of the media agency Paradysz Matera, I advised many of the nation’s leading magazines, catalogs, nonprofits, and direct marketers. PM provided outsourced target marketing services for AOL’s groundbreaking direct response campaigns that grew members to more than 25 million.
During my career in marketing management, I’ve worked with some of the magazine industry’s most visionary editors, including Jim Michaels, longtime editor of Forbes, and Jane Amsterdam, founding editor of Manhattan Inc., who each transformed business journalism, as well as Clay Felker, founder of New York Magazine and the “New Journalism,” and T. George Harris, founding editor of American Health and Psychology Today. For years I taught a full-day seminar on consumer magazine marketing strategy at Magazine Publishers Association conferences.
My expertise ranges from start-up planning and execution, editorial and content development, omnichannel marketing and analytics, to technology integration and software development. For years I taught a full-day consumer marketing seminar at Magazine Publishers Association conferences.
In 1990, I co-founded the direct response media agency Paradysz Matera. We began working with America Online in 1993, when the online service had 250,000 members, providing outsourced direct marketing planning services, and helped AOL to grow to more than 25 million members. In 1996, Paradysz Matera was named to Inc. Magazine’s “Top 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies.”
PM helped to launch magazines and newsletters such as Fast Company, Entertainment Weekly, The Weekly Standard, Worth Magazine, Cooking Light, InStyle, Vibe Magazine, Teen People, The Gilder Technology Letter, The Mayo Clinic Women’s Health Letter, Spirituality & Health, Hippocrates Magazine, Content Magazine, and more.
Other PMC clients included: Forbes, Business Week, Smithsonian Magazine, US News & World Report, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, March of Dimes, CARE, National Audubon Society, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Ducks Unlimited, Time-Life Books, Book of the Month Club, Southern Progress Books, Ziff-Davis Publishing, The Nation, New York Review of Books, American Heritage, Sportsmen’s Guide, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Mercy Home for Boys, St. Joseph’s Indian School, Hume Publishing, Phillips Publishing Newsletters, Nightingale-Conant, and more.
I moved on from Paradysz Matera in 1998 to focus on the business, technology and marketing needs of digital startups, mission-driven publications, non-profits and faith-based organizations.
I served as marketing consultant and board member for two start-ups during the internet boom of the late 1990s: the web hosting platform Alabanza Inc, and the membership-based domain registrar Bulkregister.com, a leader in the sector. As an advisor to these VC-backed tech companies I helped them navigate the stock market collapse of 2000, and position themselves for high-value sales to NaviSite and Demand Media, respectively, in 2006.
I also served in on the Marketing Board for the Viacom-backed sweepstakes web portal Iwon.com until it’s sale to AskJeeves, which was later acquired by IAC in 2005 for $1.85 billion.
I’ve provided strategic program planning, digital development, and direct mail and email campaign management for The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Feeding Westchester, the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, The Dominican Province of St. Joseph, and the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and others.
As consultant to the founders of The American Conservative, while assessing the purchase of a local weekly publication, I recommended the publication concept and engineered the launch of business operations for the groundbreaking political magazine. The American Conservative defied the predictions of establishment critics, and has become the leading voice of responsible populism within the conservative movement.
I have provided strategic planning and digital project management to a range of other nonprofit institutions and publications, such as E – The Environmental Magazine, News China Magazine, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and the Money Masters Investment Letter.
In 2000, as consultant to Circle Media, I guided the financially turnaround of the National Catholic Register, the leading Catholic newspaper in the nation, and conceived and launched Faith & Family magazine, six-time winner of Best General Magazine award from the Catholic Press Association. When the publication was at risk of` collapse in 2011, due to the financial troubles of its sponsor, I initiated the discussions that led to its purchase by EWTN.
Since 2003, I have had extensive experience as a faith-based publisher, editor and writer.
I’ve planned and serve as editorial director for Seton Reflections, an ongoing series of essays for the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, each one relating the life and legacy of Mother Seton to a Catholic saint or liturgical holy day. I also launched and serve as Editorial Director for a spin-off series, Seton & Culture, essays profiling religious artists, writers, thinkers, activists and visionaries from the perspective of Elizabeth Seton’s spirituality.
From 2003-2008, I produced and edited the innovative online Catholic magazine GodSpy.com, whose mission was to engage secular culture. I edited an anthology of essays from GodSpy.com, published by Notre Dame’s Ave Maria Press, called Faith at the Edge, A New Generation of Catholic Writers Reflects on Life, Love, Sex and Other Mysteries.
In 2015, launched Mind & Spirit, an online publication that integrates faith and psychology.
I have written on faith, culture and public policy for the National Catholic Register, Aleteia, Crisis Magazine, Catholic Digest, Traces, and the Houston Catholic Worker.
In 2006, my three-part essay for the National Catholic Register article, “Benedict, the Peace Pope,” was a Catholic Press Association finalist for Best News Analysis. It explained the Church’s teaching on war as it applied to current conflicts in the Middle East.
In the two years prior to launching Paradysz Matera I directed consumer marketing for Time Magazine, Canada, where I increased rate base and circulation revenue for the 350,000 circulation weekly magazine. We successfully introduced sweepstakes subscription offers to the Canadian market.
In 1986, shortly after its launch, I joined the National Magazine Award-winning publication Manhattan Inc., where I grew circulation 28%. While there I worked with two visionary journalists—founding editor Jane Amsterdam, and then Clay Felker, who invented the modern city magazine when founded New York magazine. Manhattan Inc. broke new ground with business journalism that “aimed at a young, hip audience of people who see through the hypocrisies of the business world even as they want to make their way in it.”
In 1984, I became Circulation Director of the personal finance magazine Personal Investor and the leading trade magazine Registered Representative. I took over Personal Investor’s circulation management soon after its launch and stabilized subscription and newsstand sales.
In 1982 I managed subscriber retention and circulation forecasting for Forbes, arguably the top business magazine of its day, implementing PC-based reporting and analytics for the 750,000 circulation publication.
I hold a B.A. in Political Science from Columbia. My wife Anna and I live in Manhattan, and we have two sons. We’re members of Legatus, the service organization for Catholic business leaders. I serve on the board of Slant Books, and the Crossroads Cultural Center, a project of the Catholic lay movement Communion & Liberation.