Featured Fellow: Doss Struse

To ring in the New Year, we’d like to honor an invaluable member of our team: Doss Struse. Doss began his fellowship in July, and his work with us is focused in developing relationships with potential sponsors for the fellowship program. During the initial phase of his Fellowship, he identified the need to build a more comprehensive plan that included pricing refocusing on work hosts as sponsors and building deeper and richer messaging to build the Encore Fellows reputation and brand. Doss came to us from a brilliant and diverse career, starting with directing market research departments at several large consumer packaged goods companies (Oscar Mayer, Carnation, and General Mills) during the first half of his career, then transitioning to marketing and general management for several information and research companies. Since retiring in 2015, Doss sought a way to use his knowledge and experience to contribute to the vitality of the community. Learn more about Doss here. Here are the main takeaways from our interview with Doss earlier this month:

How does your Fellowship relate to your previous career?

The last 15-20 years of my career was providing consulting services to a variety of large corporations - the foundation is relationship marketing and selling from which one can become a trusted partner and sell one’s skills and services.

What has been your biggest “aha” moment or insight gained from your time with SVP?

I think the aha moment was seeing a group of passionate, engaged people with great insights and instincts working hard and delivering results, but lacking an overall framework to channel their energy and skills for the greatest impact.

Why did you decide to become a Fellow?

I felt ready to contribute back to the Portland community but felt unfulfilled in simply volunteering to do short-term tasks. I was looking for a venue to leverage some of the hard lessons I had learned for the benefit of my community. I am a believer in the concept of venture capital and venture philanthropy so Encore and SVP felt like a way to have a more profound impact that working with a single non-profit organization.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I am amazed and awed every day by the genuine commitment, passion, and energy of the SVP and Encore staff. These are people who are making our little part of the world a better place now and for the future.