(The following article by Chip Jones was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch on December 23.)
WASHINGTON — Cubicle 4E-327 at Amtrak’s national headquarters has two desk phones, two cell phones and three computer screens.
There’s also a machine to issue train tickets.
Dan Stessel’s boss marvels at the amount of gear jammed into the modest work space.
“Stessel is Mr. Electronics,” said Cliff Black, director of media relations. “He’s really good at it.”
As spokesman for Amtrak’s Northeast corridor, Stessel covers a 457-mile-long stretch of railroad between Washington and Boston. Richmond, which feeds that market, is also tucked into his domain.
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At 28, Stessel is one of four media-relations managers Amtrak posts around the country. But, as Black noted, “He happens to be in charge of the most active region for Amtrak.”
Last week’s derailment of a CSX Corp. train – which halted Amtrak trains in Virginia – put Stessel’s skills to the test once again.
After his pager awoke him with the news about 6 a.m. Thursday, he said, “I was on the air live with WTOP radio in Washington within half an hour.” By the time his workday ended 16 hours later, he had made six live TV appearances on stations from Philadelphia to Orlando, Fla., and taken about 40 calls from reporters.
Along the way, he managed to compose and post a series of service updates on the railroad’s Web site.
Such yeoman’s work has earned him high marks inside and outside of Amtrak.
“There have been so many events and issues – massive snowstorms, Hurricane Isabel and the summer’s Northeast blackout,” said Matt Glassman, assignment editor for WRC, the NBC television affiliate in Washington.
He praised Stessel for going the extra mile, from providing updates during emergencies to being “accessible and honest.”
Glassman coined a nickname that seems to fit the young spokesman’s 24/7 style: “Dantrak.”
David Lim, the railroad’s chief marketing officer, calls Stessel “the highest-energy-level person I’ve ever met.” Stessel worked as a temp in Lim’s office in 2000.
Early on, Lim realized the young worker had a talent for graphic design and project management. He started giving Stessel more important work, including developing lounges on Amtrak’s new high-speed trains – “Club Acela.”
“Dan is one of those people that you sense everyone relies on,” Lim said.
Stessel earned a communications degree from nearby George Washington University, but spent his first couple of years out of school working as a disc jockey in local clubs.
After two years, he started rethinking his career path.
“I was envisioning a Fortune 500 executive sitting across the desk from me, looking at my resume and saying, ‘What is this nightclub stuff?'”
Stessel was given increasingly responsible jobs by Lim, including a stint as Amtrak’s director of sports marketing. That took him to New York, Boston and Philadelphia, where he worked with Amtrak partners such as the Boston Celtics and the New York Mets.
It also gave him a chance to ride the Northeast corridor trains and learn about the railroad’s operations from the ground up.
The summer of 2002 was a particularly bad season for Amtrak, with two major derailments and equipment failures on its vaunted Acela high-speed trains. The media-relations department sought relief, and Stessel offered to pitch in.
He has been manning Amtrak’s phones ever since – along with its pagers, Web site and other communications devices.
Stessel has found he has a knack for thinking on his feet. Laughing, he said, “For whatever reason, I tend to speak in sound bites.”
One secret may be the amount of time he spends researching questions. His desk is lined with folders and books – everything from the history of Amtrak train stations to the latest “talking points” on delicate political issues.
A self-confessed “multi-tasker,” he returns phone calls while checking messages on his computer and pager. He also eyes The Weather Channel’s Web site for updates on New England’s storms.
The Amtrak frontman never knows what issue or query might be around the next bend. For example, a graduate student called from New England to ask whether Amtrak competes with cruise-ship lines in the leisure-travel market.
Stessel thought about the somewhat implausible question and managed to stifle a laugh, before wryly noting that cruise ships have one distinct advantage over the railroad “in that they can go across water.”
Such calls are common, he said, because a lot of students are in business classes “and want to apply a Fortune 500 model to Amtrak. You have to walk them through the history.”
Formed in 1971 by an act of Congress, Amtrak was supposed to maintain passenger rail service and, despite the nation’s declining railroads, somehow make a profit.
Today’s Amtrak officials call this “the big lie,” and under the current president, David Gunn, they have been trying to tell their side of the story to reporters and members of Congress alike.
As Black put it, Amtrak wants to stop “the charade that we could operate without government funding” – particularly when the airline and trucking industries reap huge benefits from federal support of airports and highways.
“There’s no more happy talk,” Stessel said.
To handle call volume, Stessel developed a central repository – called Sharepoint – that lets Amtrak’s insiders know what’s on the media- and public-relations plate that day.
“The great thing about Amtrak,” he said, “is there’s never a shortage of things to talk about. Unlike many companies, we actually at times have to slow reporters down or beat them back.”
He has never tried corporate communications elsewhere, but he said, “I don’t know how I would do, quite frankly, in an environment where I’d have to be pounding the pavement to drum up interest.”
He compares his average day to “punching a dial on a car radio rapidly.”
Strolling near Union Station, he said it’s a great place to work, even if he could make more money elsewhere. “Passion is something you can’t fake,” he said of his ardor for Amtrak.
Plus, he said, “You never get bored, and the days fly by.”