ABOUT
BusinessPOV.com is an online video magazine featuring completely original, locally produced video profiles of companies, people and products that drive innovation and entrepreneurship in Chicago and beyond.
The site is the product of Mark Scheffler, a former staff reporter at Crain's Chicago Business and award-winning contributor to the Chicago Tribune Magazine. His brother and business partner, Peter, is the co-founder of XFA, one of the largest independent brokerages at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The site — launched September 25, 2006 — was the subject of a Chicago Tribune profile last year. (We'd link to it, but the Trib archive is no longer public.)
Everything you see on BusinessPOV is journalism. That is, we seek these stories out and report on them as we would any newspaper or magazine story, the only difference being that they're video segments instead of text stories. The segments aren’t advertorials or paid placements. They aren’t videos produced by the companies depicted in them.
We think of the site as a community builder and hub for unique business voices. How does the site sustain itself? We do freelance video production work for both editorial clients such as Crain's Chicago Business and commercial clients like Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. If you are interested in talking about video production work, please contact Mark Scheffler using the information below.
Thanks for visiting.
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PRINCIPALS
Mark Scheffler
Principal and Executive Producer
Mark Scheffler is in charge of the content and editorial direction of BusinessPOV.com. In addition to shooting and editing segments, he oversees each production as well as the site's team of videographers.
He was most recently a staff reporter for Crain's Chicago Business, where he covered consumer trends, residential real estate and executive culture. He wrote about everything from Boeing’s corporate-giving tactics to Hugh Hefner’s effectiveness as editor of Playboy. His comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the MacArthur “genius grants" for literature won accolades locally and nationally.
While at Crain’s, he was a reporter on a three-person team that traveled to Beijing and Hong Kong to cover the China strategies of Hyatt, United Airlines, and local manufacturing and private equity firms. The section won both a Society of American Business Writers and Editors (SABEW) award for "Project Reporting" and a Lisagor award from the Chicago Headline Club for "In-Depth Reporting." Most recently, he was on the editorial team that traveled to India to cover McDonald's, Motorola, John Deere and Beam Global. In addition, he has worked on the breaking news desk for the Crain’s web site and was a multimedia producer behind the publication’s first-ever audio slide-shows for the web.
He is currently the videographer/coproducer for Crain's "Entrepreneurs in Action" profiles, and his videos and audio slideshows from his Crain's India trip can be found here.
Prior to Crain’s, he was a frequent contributor to the Chicago Tribune Magazine. One of his cover stories chronicled recruits vying to be elite Navy SEALs and in 2005 won a “Distinguished Reporting” award from the Association of Military Reporters and Editors. A second cover story assessed new research about the sexual customs of Chicagoans compiled by a University of Chicago sociology professor.
Earlier in his career, he worked as a senior editor on books published by Prentice Hall, Henry Holt and World Almanac. His work has also appeared in the Chicago Reader and Salon.com, and he wrote two cover stories for Slate.com, one of which — “Goose-stepping: the Dance Craze of Dictators” — was one of 50 pieces selected out of a field of 32,000 for the online magazine’s 10th anniversary book published in 2006.
His interest in independent film production began in the mid 1990s when he served for three seasons as editor in chief of the Chicago International Film Festival publications department.
mscheffler at businesspov.com
773-330-9485
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Peter Scheffler
Principal
Peter Scheffler is in charge of business development and handles the financial management of BusinessPOV.com.
A member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), he has worked in the financial services industry since 1990, serving in various capacities within the Chicago futures and options exchange community.
He’s a co-founder and Managing Member of X-Change Financial Access LLC (XFA), the largest independent floor brokerage serving Chicago’s three main exchanges: the CME, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
Prior to starting XFA in 2001, he served as Vice President of CME trading-floor operations for BNP Paribas Brokerage Services from 1996 to 2001.
In the mid-90s, he was Vice President of equity-trading floor operations for Cargill Investor Services.
He began his career in 1990 working for International Futures and Options in various positions in the Swiss franc, German deutschmark and S&P trading pits.
He graduated from Loyola University of Chicago in 1991 with a BBA in Economics. During that stint he spent a semester studying at the John Felice Center in Rome.
He received an MBA from Depaul University in 2001.
pscheffler at businesspov.com 312-399-8295
