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Field of His Dreams

There is nothing lax about Josh Fenton’s approach to life. He’s highly committed to his family (wife, Julie, and their two children) and to his career, and he has been quite busy since getting his journalism degree in 1985.

In between, and sometimes concurrently with, stints as minority leader of the Providence City Council, aide to U.S. Senators George Mitchell and the late John Chafee, and as the assistant director of the Department of Environmental Management under former Rhode Island Governors Edward DiPrete, Bruce Sundlun, and Lincoln Almond, he has also found time to complete the Leadership Rhode Island program, earn an M.A. in Environmental Policy from Brown, coach his kids’ lacrosse teams, and even play basketball most Thursday nights.

Fenton heads up The Fenton Group, an advertising and public relations firm in Providence. Prior to opening his own shop in early 2003, he founded another advertising agency, Trion, which was picked by Adweek magazine as one of the fastest-growing agencies inNew England.

Fenton gets to have all the fun. In a typical day he might be dreaming up image-shaping campaigns for corporate and non-profit organizations, coaching lacrosse, shooting a TV commercial at an edgy film studio in New York City, playing lacrosse with his kids, or setting up press conferences for his clients.
The downside to his abundant energy and numerous talents may be that Fenton has more ideas than he has time to express. His solution to this strategic problem? Cell phone-based multi-tasking. It allows him to meet his commitments in parallel whether he’s taking marketing ideas from concept to completion, coordinating child care with his wife, or rescheduling a rained out (or sometimes snowed out) game.

And he hasn’t forgotten his alma mater, even at this pace. Fenton is now serving on the Communications Advisory Committee.