"As Adam Hersh, AS'01, describes it, eBay began as "an online garage sale." And he was among the first to tag his wares and hawk them to his eNeighbors. "I sold everything I had of my own," Hersh says. "Textbooks, cell phones, you name it."

We’re not talking penny-ante profits. "This was working," says the Jericho, New York, resident. "Then a friend called and asked if I would sell something on eBay for him. Then a friend of a friend, and then someone I didn’t even know.

"That’s when I decided," says today’s high-powered eBay broker, "to take a percentage."

Hersh has long since expanded beyond the garage. With several hundred employees and riding a recent spate of news coverage, Adam Hersh Auctions completes 25,000 auctions a week. The organization is the top-ranked trading assistant company in New York and is included among the top twenty worldwide.

The auction process is simple. "First," Hersh says, "the client calls my twenty-four-hour toll-free hot line." The merchandise for sale may range from an attic full of random items, to an old painting, to "a complete factory continuously manufacturing goods," he says. The company can then help inexperienced sellers by writing item descriptions, designing layouts, or taking high-quality digital photos of the stuff up for bid. After the eBay sale is complete, professional shippers can pack and send items to their new owners.

An in-demand Hersh doffs his hat to Northeastern, where he received a bachelor’s in communications and completed a two-year part-time certification program in e-commerce and international marketing. "I really liked that NU program," he says. "Now I’m very, very busy, but I love it."

— Katy Kramer, MA’00

Talk-Show Triumph

"When there’s a seat open in the business," a colleague advised the intern, "sit down." So Megan Wasserman, AS’04, did. And last October, the Westport, Connecticut, resident landed a gig as a researcher for the Dr. Phil show, which tapes in Los Angeles.

"I was prepared to go back to Boston when my internship ended in December," says Wasserman, who had two months under her belt when a full-time position opened up. "They interviewed me on a Thursday, and I got the job the same day." She nearly fell out of her chair. "I always thought I’d get in the credits of something—a movie, TV, or a magazine—by age forty. But I really thought it would take twenty years. This is surreal."

Wasserman didn’t just tumble into the plum post. "I built my resumé at Northeastern and worked hard," she says. She sought out internships that gave her diverse experience in the entertainment industry, including positions at Boston’s Allied Advertising, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, and the New York publicity firm PMKHBH. "I tried to do a little of everything so I’d be well-rounded when I applied for jobs," she explains.

Now Wasserman culls potential guests from hundreds of letters and e-mails. "It’s a hoot to hear them screaming [on the phone] when they realize the Dr. Phil show is calling," she says. She also assembles background briefings, coordinates field shoots, and participates in postmortems, where her team, the producers, and the big guy—Dr. Phil McGraw himself—evaluate every program. But just as important, says Wasserman, is her role as intermediary. "Because Dr. Phil is so busy, I’m the person whom guests contact first. They reach out to me for help before Dr. Phil, and I can put them in touch with him."

The job is definitely her idea of sitting pretty. "I wanted to be good at what I do," Wasserman says. "I also wanted the entertainment, the glitz and glamour. But what I really like is that I’m helping people. It doesn’t get any better than that."
— Katy Kramer, MA’00

Another Kind of Wordsmith

"I’m always noodling with something," says Todd Basche, E’78, the 2004 Staples Invention Quest champion. He started tinkering young. As a teen, he rigged up a newfangled wake-up call. "I had a turntable that played thirty-threes, and I hooked it up to an electric timer. The needle would drop on the record exactly when I wanted to wake up, with the song I wanted to hear."

Ingenuity is in his genes. "Dad, an engineer at RCA, was always fiddling with tubes in the basement," Basche says. Northeastern was a family affair, too: Basche’s older brothers, Larry and Ken, are also alums. The heritage and the hard work paid off. Basche not only received $25,000 as Invention Quest champ, but WordLock—his winning creation—is scheduled for sale on Staples shelves this fall.

The idea for WordLock was born in 1998. "I had three gates around the pool to keep my young son out," Basche says. Thinking he and his wife might have a hard time remembering three different combinations, the Los Altos, California, engineer came up with a key concept: Use letters instead of numbers; form words. Last October, Basche entered his lock in the Staples contest, competing against 8,500 other people with 10,000 inventions.

Basche was called to Los Angeles to make a presentation to contest judges. Six weeks later, he was summoned again, this time to the Big Apple as one of a dozen finalists. The panel narrowed the finalists down to three. And then there was one. "I was just flabbergasted," Basche says of the moment he locked up the win.

Fortunately, he has a way with words. Surrounded by microphones, video cams, and flashing bulbs, the winner held a three-hour press conference with major media outlets. "It was just like in the movies," Basche says. "Since it went via satellite and syndication, people called from all over the world. It was an amazing experience. Who’d-a thunk?"
— Katy Kramer, MA’00

Everybody's All-American

"They called him ‘Century Sid’ Watson," says Jack Grinold, Northeastern associate athletics director, "because you could count on him for a hundred yards every game." Indeed, by the time of his death in April, Watson’s never-fail attitude had earned him not only a place in the NU Hall of Fame, the Bowdoin College Hall of Honor, and the Maine Sports Hall of Fame, but legendary status within college athletics as both player and coach.

Watson, BA’56, came to Northeastern on a basketball and football scholarship, beginning his football career on the undefeated 1951 team. The Andover, Massachusetts, native played linebacker and guard his first year, then held down the fullback position.

And made school history. "Watson still holds the NU records for the highest average yards per rush and points scored per game," says Grinold.

In high school, Watson had also mastered a third sport—hockey—and had his sights set on joining the NU team. After pleading his case to the hockey coach, he made the team, and got to play in the first Beanpot tournament, in 1953. "Sid was one of only two to hold a varsity letter in basketball and hockey at NU," Grinold says.

The phenom went on to four years of pro ball with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Washington Redskins. Then his passion for hockey prompted him to take a temporary coaching position at Bowdoin, and in 1959 he became the college’s full-time hockey coach.

It was a good fit. During Watson’s twenty-four-year tenure, the Bowdoin Polar Bears won four Eastern College Athletic Conference Division II championships. He was honored as National College Division Coach of the Year three times, and was twice named New England’s Coach of the Year.

In 1983, Watson became Bowdoin’s athletics director, another good fit. As Terry Meagher, his protégé and successor as hockey coach recalls, "Sid had the ability to make people at ease with him. He could talk to people in all walks of life."

Watson’s renown extended well beyond the Northeastern and Bowdoin campuses. He served as chairman of the NCAA Ice Hockey Rules and Tournament Committee and received the Hobey Baker Legend of Hockey award from the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

"Sid taught [students], through his example, to be people of integrity and principle," says Bowdoin president Barry Mills. Adds Grinold: “Sid will be remembered as one of the people who made such a tremendous contribution at Bowdoin. He influenced four decades of students."
— Katy Kramer, MA’00