How He Does It

Nick Mattiello is an ace at managing his time.

Doubling up on his courses, the 25-year-old Stillman School of Business student is earning his M.B.A. in just 14 months while holding down a full-time marketing-strategy job at Samsung’s North American Headquarters. There, among myriad other duties, he works with marketing and media agencies to book product placements and advertising on, say, “The Jimmy Fallon Show.” Add to that, he’s a volunteer firefighter at Rescue 1/Engine 2 in Secaucus, where he has to respond to emergencies at any time.

“There are sleepless nights,” he admits. Yet he says successful multitasking can be done with the help of mental flexibility, drive (which he calls “momentum”), and lots of support from understanding bosses and professors at Seton Hall.

Mattiello’s race with time and his drive to do more likely began at age 18 when — on top of serving as a 911 operator for his local police department and the state police — he took the oath as a volunteer firefighter. His reasons were very personal.

In 1997, when Mattiello was just 2 years old, he saw a strip mall burn in Pompton Lakes with billowing black smoke. “I watched my family’s business and livelihood go up in flames, literally and figuratively,” he says. Then, in his teens, a natural gas leak obliterated the house across the street from Mattiello’s “in a huge ball of fire.” These two incidents convinced him that he “wanted to be on the other end of a fire — by fighting it.”

This past summer, firefighter Mattiello entered a burning apartment complex. According to Deputy Chief Joseph Schoendorf, Engine 2 arrived to find “heavy smoke and fire in the building and people trapped. Nick was inside conducting a search.” He won a unit citation for “effort under combat conditions.” Just weeks before, his company saved two tots locked inside an overheated car.

He also played his part in New Jersey’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, risking infection while responding to calls at senior centers, hotels, hospitals and homes. During these times he often breathed bottled air.

In his professional life at Samsung Electronics, Mattiello has helped promote the Galaxy Note 9, Note 10, S-10, Galaxy Fold, and other blockbuster products through integrated marketing communications support, budgets, planning, contract agreements with vendors and compliance, says his boss, Rey de los Reyes, a senior director.

All this activity won Mattiello a Samsung Marketing “Guru Award” in 2018, his first year at the company. And for his recent performance while the company reorganized amid the pandemic, he became a project manager supporting the digital marketing team, says de los Reyes, who is “impressed by Nick’s ambition.”

Equally respectful of Mattiello’s work ethic is Stillman Professor Paula Alexander. “During this summer, as part of our Leadership Seminar course, Nick led an employee engagement initiative for his division of Samsung,” she says. That experience became not only grist for a business school paper, but a template for Samsung best practices.

It was created “to boost morale and bring everyone within my division together virtually,” Mattiello explains. As co-chair, he devised online trivia contests, an MTV Cribs event, a happy hour and “Family Feud” game to get “everyone together and laughing again from home.” On a more serious note, the group, which numbered as many as 50 employees per session, discussed issues relating to the social climate of the country, says de los Reyes.

Whatever motivates the hyperkinetic Nick Mattiello seems innate, and de los Reyes characterizes him as “thirsty to get things done.” Chief Schoendorf calls him “a real go-getter.” For Professor Alexander, “Nicholas Mattiello embodies the Seton Hall ideal of a servant leader.”

While living such a packed life may not appeal to everyone, he asserts that “as long as you have support, momentum and a focused mindset, anyone can do it.”

Bob Gilbert is a freelance writer based in Connecticut.