Crains New York - November 19, 2012 - (Page 29)

HELLUVA TOWN INSIDE Text-messaging firm gets busy Superstorm Sandy knocked some New York companies to their knees and played havoc with voting on Nov. 6. But the combination of the storm and the election gave Mobile Commons the busiest weeks it’s ever had. The four-year-old Dumbo-based tech company, which runs textmessaging campaigns for businesses, nonprofits and local government agencies, had its hands full texting some 250,000 New York and New Jersey voters to help them find their polling places. It was also messaging parents about school closings and sending out texts about power outages. And as if that weren’t enough, Mobile Commons—which was the lead mobile strategist for the Obama campaign—recruited 1,500 volunteers in Virginia in 10 minutes, via text, to help keep people on voting lines after polls closed. “Between Hurricane Sandy and the election, we sent out 10 million messages, which is probably double what we would have expected to do,” said CEO Jed Alpert. The boost to the company may help it more than double revenue this year, to $10 million. —matthew flamm Source Lunch ABC Carpet sweeps up after storm PAGE 30 Out and About Inflation hits New York PAGE 31 Rolling Stones film is a gas The Rolling Stones will perform at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Dec. 8 to celebrate the group’s 50th anniversary. Last week, the greatest rock ’n’ roll band showed up at the Zeigfeld Theater for the New York premiere of their HBO documentary Crossfire Hurricane. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood made their way down the aisle to cheers as they stood with filmmaker Brett Morgan to introduce the film. The two-hour movie covers the group’s humble beginnings as a blues cover band; its antiBeatles, anti-establishment era; the murderous concert at Altamont; and finally its reinvention as a mainstream rockmusic machine. Off-camera interviews with the band are used to provide perspective on historic footage covering early concerts, backstage scenes, songwriting sessions and drug busts. The movie ends in 1981 as Mr. Jagger admits, “You can’t stay young forever.” At the event, the 69-year-old rocker, dressed in a tailored forestgreen velvet suit, thanked HBO for buying the film on faith, though, he joked, “at a bargain price.” He also took a shot at his own flamboyant style. “When I look back at the clothes, all of which I’ve kept,” he said sheepishly, “I’m never going to wear those clothes again.” —valerie block PIED PIPER: Heidi Levine of DLA Piper oversees free legal clinics for the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund. The right fight JUSTICE SERVED Pro bono time leveraged elizabeth pantaleo taamallah Lawyers find personal and professional fulfillment through pro bono work A BY SAMANTHA MARSHALL ll his life, the gay Russian soldier had tried to hide who he was, but he was soon outed at the military college he attended and was subjected to routine verbal abuse, physical torture and even rape. ¶ When he was left for dead after one particularly brutal attack and then hospitalized with multiple broken bones and fractures, the young man decided to leave his family behind and seek asylum in the U.S. The problem was that he had no way of proving what he knew for certain: that if he was sent back to his country, he would surely be killed. ¶ But U.S. immigration court was no match for his lawyer, Pablo Hendler, a partner at Ropes & Gray. Mr. Hendler, who specializes in pharmaceutical and medical-device patent litigation in his day job, spends as much as 15% of his time doing pro bono work for LGBT asylum-seekers, a specialty of his firm, which has taken more than 50 such cases since the beginning of 2011, and this July won the Human Rights First Marvin E. Frankel Award for its service. ¶ “This work gives me a tremendous sense of personal satisfaction, because not only is it a good fight, it is truly the right fight,” See TAKING on Page 30 $18M $20M newscom 2010 2011 Source: The City Bar Justice Center November 19, 2012 | Crain’s New York Business | 29

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - November 19, 2012

IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
THE INSIDER
SMALL BUSINESS
BUSINESS PEOPLE
OPINION
GREG DAVID
REAL ESTATE DEALS
OWNED COMPANIES
THE LIST
CLASSIFIEDS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS

Crains New York - November 19, 2012