Allison Weigel has been an educator and yearbook advisor for more than six years. She has earned degrees in Organizational Communication from the University of Delaware and a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from Farleigh Dickinson University. Allison worked in magazine promotions in New York City prior to becoming a teacher and yearbook advisor.

As yearbook advisor, she has helped her team to consistently score very well in both state and national journalism competitions while continuing to grow readership and advertising sales. She attributes this success to her team's ability to market a high quality product which now includes more color pages, better layout design, enhanced graphics, and improved editorial quality. "When I saw how hard these students worked to make the best yearbook the school has ever seen, I knew sales would grow significantly. Simply put, when you create a high quality product, add value such as color pages, market it aggressively, and make the purchasing process easy, more people will buy it."

Ms. Weigel's vision of the purchasing process was to provide a simple way to sell yearbooks, tied to an even easier way to purchase them-without creating extra stress for advisors and editors. Turning her idea into reality gave birth to the idea for PurchaseYourYearbook.com.

Ms. Weigel teamed up with Mr. Laurence Paruta, a management consultant with extensive experience in marketing and web-based technologies to create Yearbook Management Systems, LLC (YMS). YMS brings the PurchaseYourYearbook.com service, and its companion service, CongrAD.com to schools, universities, and colleges nationwide.

Laurence Paruta
Co-Founder

Mr. Paruta, a New Jersey-based entrepreneur and consultant has more than 27 uninterrupted years of senior management experience in Marketing, Advertising, Information Technology, and Business Process Design.

In 1987, he founded Carl Laurence Consulting, a marketing and management consultancy whose clients included entrepreneurial start-ups to large national corporations. The firm assisted its clients in identifying key strategic business opportunities, and provided insight, concepts, and implementation expertise for brand identity, marketing, and advertising programs.

Mr. Paruta is an expert in the use of the Internet as a marketing tool, and in the development of web-based, hosted database systems. His interest in information technology began in 1983 when he purchased his first computer as a means to help him perform routine marketing functions. He adds that, "In those days there were few, if any, programs that performed the tasks I needed so I took it upon myself to learn basic programming skills. About two years later, and many days and nights spent in developing the programs I needed, the industry exploded with software opportunities. But the training I received in those days helped to give me a much better foundation and understanding of how to utilize technology to achieve business goals."

In addition to helping numerous businesses through his consulting firm, Larry has had direct involvement as a partner in several technology-based businesses, as well as being the President of the Electronic Medical Billing Network, a national association of third-party medical billers. He holds a degree in Psychology from Rutgers University.

Cliff Allen
Chief Technology Officer

Cliff Allen began his computer career in 1973 when he left the broadcast industry to start his own software company serving the advertising industry with statistical analysis software used to analyze audience rating data.

Donna Bassolino-Klimas, Ph.D.
Senior Programmer

Donna Bassolino-Klimas, a resident of Mercer County, NJ, has been involved with computer programming and development projects for over 20 years.