Passions nurtured from childhood deliver success

GLAD TO BE HERE: Glad Works owner Gina DiSpirito, standing, with, from left: senior graphic designers Mattie Reposa and Liz Sousa and graphic designer Emily Steffen. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
GLAD TO BE HERE: Glad Works owner Gina DiSpirito, standing, with, from left: senior graphic designers Mattie Reposa and Liz Sousa and graphic designer Emily Steffen. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Gina DiSpirito was 4 years old when she fell in love with art, 19 when she fell in love with starting a business and 24 when she fell in love with her husband and business partner, Adam Harvey.
Passion is one of the things that the creative director and principal of Glad Works, a full-service advertising agency, brings to her work. Accessibility, responsiveness and trust are the other attributes she commits to when working with her clients and business teams at the agency.
As a young woman, DiSpirito, 38, said in a recent interview, she chose to spend a small inheritance from her late father on an Apple computer, instead of on a car, reasoning, correctly, that working with computers would pay more dividends, and help her afford that car later.
When DiSpirito was naming her company, her mother, Claire, suggested she take the initials of her name, Gina Lisa Angelo DiSpirito, which is how she would sign her artwork, since the letters also happened to stand for “graphic layout and design.”
By the time her mother suggested using her initials as the company name, DiSpirito had already decided to brand the company Design Point. When her mother pressed her, DiSpirito argued she didn’t want to compete with Glad plastic bags.
But the trust she had in her mother’s instinct for creative “right-brain” problem-solving convinced the young woman that adding the word “works” to indicate that the acronym worked would, in fact, work. As it turned out, the advertising firm DiSpirito started with a focus on graphic design would eventually expand to include the works: branding with print, Web development, photography technology and multimedia.
“In my family, both my mother and father were very influential because they were both business owners,” she said. “I grew up in a house that had an entrepreneurial mindset.”
Her parents worked together in the Arthur Angelo School of Cosmetology, and father, Arthur Angelo, ran hair salons in Rhode Island and Florida, catering to old Hollywood celebrity clientele that included Rita Hayworth, Jackie Gleason and Fred McMurray. Her father died when she was 19 of a heart attack, but using “Angelo” as a middle name kept him alive for her. “The family tie is very important,” she said. “Growing up in the business, you don’t realize how much you pick up and you learn. Nobody gives you a handbook. You’ve got to figure it out as you go. I find I take so much from my childhood.”
At Providence College, DiSpirito’s business sense became evident.
At 17, in 1992, she served as an intern at the college, doing graphic design for the school’s publication center. By 1995, she had formed her own company and was working at it part time, a role she maintained while working other jobs. When she was 19, she worked for Apple as a campus representative for two years, graduated, and worked as a production artist for the Providence Business News. She then moved on to Aai.FosterGrant for two years until September 1999, when she and Harvey merged their clientele and launched Glad Works as a full-time ad agency.
While characterizing her father as the businessman and her mom as the creative spirit, DiSpirito says her career history was shaped by her parents’ example of shared strength in a balanced partnership.
DiSpirito’s husband, Harvey, has analytic strengths in his role as informational technology expert in the business, while DiSpirito contributes more of the creative energy – and, like her parents, they’ve been able to strike a balance.
Meeting in March 1999, within seven months they decided to take their creative freelance work to the next level in a partnership instead of working for other people. And the way they complement one another’s skill sets is what makes them marketable.
The way DiSpirito tells it, “it was a happy accident” when, one weekend, they worked on a health services organization website together. “He had a client he was building a website for,” she said. “I was intimidated by the [website development] coding.” And he sought her advice, saying, “Hey, would you mind taking a look at this visually?”
The website indeed functioned, but lacked the user-friendly features that come with attractive design.
“I said, ‘You need so much help with that!’ ” she said, laughing.
Out of that collaboration, the partnership – and eventually, in 2008, the marriage – took shape.
“We just saw this opportunity,” she said, “where we could take both of our respective talents and marry them and have a site that worked and looked good at the same time.”
Another way the partners complement one another is where their computer expertise intersects. She’s a “Mac girl,” he was always a Windows PC guy. However, working together has helped them collaborate that way, too, and come to appreciate one another’s skills.
Between them, the couple manages 11 employees on two distinct teams.
Allowing clients to have contact with her production crews is another approach she takes in order to be more responsive and communicate clearly about what the client wants.
“I tell people [on the team], ‘Check the ego at the door,’ ” she said. “You have to be team oriented.”
Giving back with pro bono work locally and beyond is another value DiSpirito endorses.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Glad Works took some website projects for New York City’s fire department “off their hands” and helped them produce them for free. Years later, without seeking the work, the department hired her to do email marketing.
In the end, whether it’s for-profit assignments or charity, DiSpirito continues to guide Glad Works because she loves it.
“I’ve always loved art,” she said, and “I get to make a difference in my community.” •

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