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The First UROP Grant Recipients Where are they now?

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David L. Gray '89
Major: communication
Job title: Regional vice president, marketing and sales, Time-Warner Cable
Hometown: Darien, Conn.

David L. Gray '89

What have you been doing since graduation, and what are you doing now?

A week after graduation I started working at the Warner Cable operation in Nashua. I worked in Business Operations for several years before making the transition to Sales and Marketing (by then the company had changed its name to Time Warner Cable). After a couple of years I had the opportunity to assume a role with more responsibility in the Marketing group in our former Boston Division, which led to stints as the head of marketing in our Albany, New York Division and our Wisconsin Division.

I got married to the former Laura Pesce in 2004. We had known each other for a number of years—she worked at Lifetime Television and later at the International Channel. After Laura made the move from New York City to Wisconsin, that meant we weren't flying on a plane every weekend, which allowed us to really settle in and enjoy our time in Wisconsin very much. Laura got a job at the NBC affiliate in Milwaukee, we made some terrific friends and we started building our life together. A couple of years later, when a larger role in our corporate office in Connecticut presented itself, we were both excited about moving back East, but we also knew we'd miss our time and our friends in Wisconsin very much.

I'm still at Time Warner Cable, now overseeing Marketing in the Eastern half of the U.S. including markets in Maine, across upstate New York, New York City and the Carolinas. Laura and I have twin boys, Alexander and William, who are about two and a half, and we live in Darien Connecticut.

David Gray with his wife, Laura, and sons William and Alexander.

Your UROP project was entitled "Analysis of Metaphor in Bergman’s Persona: Adapting Black’s Interaction Method." Can you tell us what you did, and what you got out of it?

One of my favorite classes at UNH, which happened to fill a Gen Ed requirement for my Liberal Arts degree, was Introduction to Film, taught by Phil Nicoloff in the English Department. Class met in the auditorium at Murkland Hall, and once or twice a week we got to screen a movie—it was terrific. We saw some great films and we learned a lot—stuff I think about when I watch movies today. One film we watched—Persona—was fairly unlike anything else we'd seen, and there was a good deal of metaphor and symbolism interspersed in what was otherwise a dense, dreary, black and white Swedish-language film with English subtitles. At the same time I'd been reading Max Black's Metaphor for a Rhetoric course. Black developed a framework for understanding the use of metaphor in philosophy. In my UROP project I applied Black's approach to the Bergman film and found a way to fit two seemingly separate pieces of work together in a way that added understanding and new insights.

Did your research have an impact on what you did later?

Yes, I think it did. For me the most powerful implication was that I found insight and greater understanding in one course's subject matter by applying a construct from another unrelated class. Dr. Larry Prelli, my Rhetoric professor, felt that the analysis was compelling, and supported me in developing my approach, and ultimately he encouraged me to submit the work to UROP. Later in the year I presented my paper at the National Undergraduate Honors Conference at DePauw University.

What do you remember about being on the cover of the Alumnus (assuming you remember it)?

Yes. My mother framed that cover at she still has it on the wall in one of the bedrooms in our lake house.

Anything else you'd like to add? Any advice for current students?

My UROP experience was a very positive one. It represented hard work, on my own, and it required more discipline than I initially expected it would, but the encouragement I got from my two excellent professors was invaluable. Aside from the cover photo and a free trip to Indiana, the experience was its own reward. For me it was a very real lesson of getting out of an experience what I had put into it. It's often worth traveling the extra mile.

Back to the '88 UROP stories