Richard Jaffe

Richard Jaffe /
Richard Jaffe /

AGE: 36
POSITION: Director of external relation, Trinity Repertory Company
RESIDENCE: Little Compton
LIFELONG AMBITION: To find the perfect balance between family work and family
FAVORITE BOOK: “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” by Dave Eggers

GUILTY PLEASURE: Reading the Sunday New York Times
Richard Jaffe was 30 when he co-founded Live Audience Business Solutions Inc. in New York City, a technology firm that developed a Web-based sales reporting, data analytics and “business intelligence” software package for live entertainment and sports organizations.
The goal was to find a better way to deal with ticket sales, and the concept worked so well that the firm not only raised more than $1.8 million in two rounds of financing, but it also signed up major entertainment clients such as Disney Theatricals and, less than four years later, was successfully sold to a larger company.
For Jaffe, the experience provided “a thorough education in all aspects of business operations,” he wrote in his 40 Under Forty application.
By the time he sold the business, he was working for his current employer, Trinity Repertory Company, and he used the same systematic approach he took in New York to make the nonprofit theater more successful as well.
Jaffe also brought New York-level entertainment experience to the job. For six and a half years, starting before he graduated from the University of Vermont in 1993, he’d worked at Madison Square Garden, rising to director of event marketing and MSG Advertising, the agency of record for the facility. After that, he had worked as regional marketing director for Radio City Entertainment, promoting the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and other high-profile shows.
At Trinity, Jaffe led a strategic analysis of the theater’s marketing, sales and front-of-the-house operations, and the result was a major restructuring of staff, pricing strategies and marketing initiatives that he said boosted subscriptions by 18 percent in two years.
He also helped Trinity improve customer service and maximize efficiency in the front of the house, revamped the subscription packages to make them more attractive, and launched a re-branding campaign that has given the 43-year-old theater a new, fresher, younger look.

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