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Mission: Ignition

Kelly Liyakasa

Mar-04-10, 12:48 PM

33 Votes

Topics: Green, Small Business

Steve Mochel’s wife fired him – and then they began a business together.

The owners of Rye-based Fresh Green Light are taking the right of passage known as Driver’s Ed and flipping it on its decades-old head.

Mochel worked with wife Laura Shuler for more than 20 years at Jack Morton Worldwide, an experiential marketing agency with clients ranging from Subway Restaurants to the Olympics.

Shuler was president of U.S. business, living a life full of first-class flyer miles and fancy hotels.

But, the Great Recession upended the marketing world and Shuler found “that when you’re part of a public company (it was formerly private) the dynamics change, particularly when times are tough in the economy.”

One such change was the layoff of her husband Mochel, a senior account director.

The couple had been tossing around ideas for a backup plan – one that would satisfy their concerns as parents, but fulfill their professional drive in marketing.

“I became aware of the state of driver education in this country and it had changed dramatically since I was a kid,” Shuler said. “It’s in less than 30 percent of schools now and where it does exist, in most cases it’s incredibly substandard.”

The duo had a 16-year-old son who needed to learn to drive and Mochel said, “The options were so disappointing.”

“We thought that there was definitely an opportunity here because it’s still a mom-and-pop industry for the most part,” Mochel said. “It’s such a critically important time because it represents freedom for kids and for parents; it’s the biggest fear in the world.”

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