A PGSF Success Story: How One Former Recipient Found Industry Success
It’s a positive sight to see all of the 2013-14 Print and Graphic Scholarship (PGSF) recipients, and we wish them the best of luck in their education and future careers! Did you know that since 1956 recipients like them have been making significant impacts as industry professionals? And PGSF is still pushing forward to give more print and graphic arts students an education upon which they can build thriving careers.
We caught up with Joseph Schember of Mohawk Paper, a former PGSF Scholarship recipient who’s just joined the new PGSF Board of Directors. Here he talks about his experience as a student recipient and now as an accomplished industry professional. Joe was excited to share his story and eager to leverage his new role as a board member to give back to PGSF, which he credits as the platform for his success. From where he sits in his big office at Mohawk today, he still expresses his gratitude to PGSF and its drive to help students go from the classroom to the pressroom, boardroom, or wherever opportunity lies.
Q: Tell us about your current work in the graphic arts industry and what you’ve accomplished since graduation.
Joseph Schember: I have been with Mohawk Paper for the last 2½ years as Specialty Digital Product Manager. I assess our clients’ needs and how we can help them make high-value products using their digital equipment by using premium substrates. I enjoy my work here at Mohawk and respect how the company has expanded over the last 80 years and expanded their brand around products for the rapidly growing digital printing market.
Before Mohawk, I was with Canon USA doing product marketing of the Canon Color imagePRESS family of digital presses after graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology. Working with two different suppliers allowed me to see the market as a whole—while with Canon, I would help printers by selling them needed equipment; now with Mohawk, I’m talking to those same printers, but this time I’m showing them ways to leverage their digital printing equipment to produce premium customer applications on high-value substrates. It’s given me a round perspective of their operations and how they work together—finding out where the opportunities are for them to make money.
