In his role as Chair of Wessex Press, Noel Capon brings a unique perspective as an experienced Marketing educator, researcher, author and professional, originally trained as a research chemist.

“I knew when I completed my doctorate in Chemistry that I didn’t want to be a ‘bench’ chemist.” By that time, Professor Capon was very interested in Marketing and began his career working in Marketing for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in his native Britain.

Professor Capon has been a leader in Marketing ever since, applying an analytical approach to solving business problems.

That’s what led him to launch Wessex Press, Inc. (formerly Axcess Capon) almost 20 years ago.

“I knew there had to be a better way to provide high-quality textbooks, globally, at a more affordable price.”

Professor Capon previously served two terms as elected chair of the Marketing Division at Columbia Business School. He held faculty positions at UCLA (where he also was Marketing Chair) and Harvard Business School before joining Columbia in 1979. 

Professor Capon teaches Marketing Strategy, and Sales and Strategic Account Management courses to MBA and EMBA students. He also has taught at many educational institutions as a visiting professor, including INSEAD (France), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, PRC. Professor Capon is Honorary Dean, Marketing and Innovation College, Beijing, PRC.

In addition, Professor Capon contributes to Columbia Business School’s Executive Education program and has designed, directed and taught in a variety of Marketing, Sales Management, and Strategic and Global Account Management programs. He also has developed and directed customized programs for major corporations globally. Professor Capon co-founded The Chief Sales Executive Forum (2001), and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA).

Professor Capon has authored or co-authored more than 40 Marketing and Account Management books, including many international editions. Some books of note:

• Key Account Management and Planning, Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2001. This was the first major book on key (strategic) account management and is known as “the bible” of key account management.

• Managing Global Accounts, Wessex Press, 2005. This is the only book to date that addresses the growing field of managing global customers.

• Managing Marketing in the 21st Century (4th edition, Wessex Press, 2016), Capon’s Marketing Framework (4th edition, Wessex Press, 2017) and Capon’s Marketing Essentials (Wessex Press, 2017), in various editions, offer a new and powerful way of approaching the Marketing discipline.

He earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from University College, London University; Dip. B.A. from Manchester Business School; MBA from Harvard Business School; and Ph.D. in Marketing from Columbia Business School. 

GUS MAIKISH has over 40 years of experience in IT, sales, business strategy and management. He was at IBM for 37 years working primarily with financial services firms. For his last eight years at IBM, he was the IBM managing director for Citigroup with the global responsibility, including revenue and profit, for IBM’s largest financial services customer. Prior to this assignment he was vice president of sales for the financial services sector. He had management responsibility for the largest 300 financial firms in the United States and over 200 sales professionals. Gus was promoted to that position after successfully managing the Merrill Lynch account team as a certified client executive. Gus managed the IBM Merrill Lynch sales team for eight years. He also held sales and sales management positions on other financial services accounts including JP Morgan, The New York Federal Reserve Bank, Irving Trust, US Trust and National Westminster USA.

Gus also worked at the corporate level of IBM as an internal marketing consultant. There he was responsible for reviewing strategies for a number of IBM product sets as well as IBM sales in Asia. Prior to joining IBM in 1972, Gus worked in application development, served in the US Army, and completed an MBA degree at Pace University. He is currently a guest lecturer at the Columbia University Business School on the subject of Global Account Management. Since retiring from IBM, he has provided coaching and development for IBM’s sales teams in Vietnam and helped to establish business relationships with bank executives there on behalf of IBM. He has also worked on account management transformation projects at Xerox and several other firms as a part of the Insight Group consulting team where he is a managing partner.