Mike Heasley

Principal

Mike Heasley IMS

Greatest Professional Accomplishment: 
Being a part of the soft drink explosion on the 1980’s and 1990’s and playing a key role in catapulting the Dr Pepper brands into the number one (non-cola) status in the state of Arizona through its bottler network.

Passionate About: 
“Photosynthesized art” and chocolate!

Dream Job: 
Can’t get much better than here at IMS.

Personal Philosophy: 
One job at a time; finish what you start.

Best Attributes: 
Common sense, analytical, decisive, creative.

Key Strengths: 

  • Blending organizational/analytical skills with the creative side in areas like PowerPoint presentations and collateral materials.
  • Organizing just about anything.
  • Developing and managing client budgets and projections.
  • Original illustration.

Biography:
When people ask where I’m from, I have a hard time answering the question.  I usually say, "We moved around a lot."  Am I a military kid? Son of a fugitive?  No, I grew up in a traditional American family with a civil engineer for a father.  Day in and day out I watched my father work on the “big projects”  like the Vertical Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center for the Apollo and now Shuttle missions, numerous Minute Man missile silos during the Cold War and more large manufacturing structures, road projects and dams than I can mention; even in such far away places as Papua, New Guinea.

While I didn’t ever call the South Pacific my home, I did hang my hat everywhere from Idaho to Florida, to California to Texas to Connecticut and plenty of places in between.  Most often, that hat took the form of a baseball cap or a football helmet.  I loved sports—especially playing them—and was a decent athlete.

You’d think a father who was so involved in his work would encourage his only son to follow in his footsteps and be an engineer.  But not so.  Both my parents were intent on letting each of the kids in our family be who we wanted to be.  For me, that meant leaving Connecticut after high school and attending Arizona State University—sight unseen.  Yes, risk-taking is part of my make-up, but it was a great decision from the start. ASU and my marketing degree provided me the launch pad I needed to put my analytical skills (thanks, Dad) and my creative talents (thanks, Mom) to work for a variety of companies and then for my own.

While I may have moved a lot as a kid, I didn’t much at all when it came to employment.  I worked for Hills Brothers Coffee and along with our product development team launched the first sugar free flavored coffee line to the American market.  The experience of working in San Francisco, the coffee epicenter, and for one of the oldest roasters was intoxicating…literally.  The aroma of coffee permeated every corner of our offices.

But after several years, Arizona called me back and I transitioned from coffee to soda.  Dr Pepper to be exact and spent the next decade-and-a-half managing multiple markets for the nation’s number three soft drink and number one non-cola.  Creating marketing programs, managing franchise bottler relations, motivating and inspiring employees and managing big-dollar budgets became second nature.

The work was challenging, yes, but still through it all, something was always missing.  It was only at IMS that I discovered the missing ingredient.  Only at IMS have I been able to engage my true talents and be analytical one minute and creative the next.  I love handling the finances as much as I love developing presentation templates. And IMS gives me that variety and our clients are the winners.  Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but my Dad and my Mom gave me an equal amount of right brain and left brain talent—heart and mind.  Blending them is something I love doing every day at IMS.