Drexel had a co-op program for students, placing them professionally at firms on Wall Street – it was school for six months, and then at a firm for six months earning money and credits in the position.
It was through this program that Perry found himself at Bankers Trust in New York on Wall Street, a huge global investment bank. Perry excelled and his passion for trading bloomed. He was all in and finsihed the program.
“I know what I want to do,” he told his wife. “I want to be a trader.”
During his senior year at Drexel he saw a posting for a job on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange as a clerk. Even though the position was for grad students, he applied undeterred by the qualifications for the job.
“I figured out who the partners were and went to Philadelphia Exchange and waited in the lobby,” he remembered.
Introducing himself to one of the partners, Phil Gocke, Perry told him he had applied for the clerk position. Gocke clarified that they were looking for a person with an MBA, and he did not qualify.
“I asked him for five minutes of his time,” Perry recalled.
“I know more about options trading than any of the candidates you are interviewing,” he confidently told Gocke, adding, “my theoretical knowledge is AS good as any trader that you have.”
Gocke digested the bold statement, looked at Perry for a moment, and said, “Come on upstairs.”
They spoke options trading theory for 45 minutes. Perry had read volumes about the subject and had no problem articulating his beliefs. Gocke asked him to hang on and brought in his partner. They continued discussing options theory for another 45 minutes. When they concluded the discussion, Perry was hired on the spot.
That was the beginning of his 27 year career on Wall Street. He had a terrific run, including starting his own hedge fund during this time, but like so many highly successful people in the year of Covid – 2020 – he pivoted to a new career, this time to media, giving birth to
The Transportation Channel .
“I spent a lot of time, almost two years, just working to see if it was viable,” said Perry, adding that “I knew nothing about media. One of my Wall Street buddies made a great suggestion: build a team around you that was media savvy and that shared the same vision as you have.”
Perry followed that advice and added Michael Trujillo, who spent time at DISH network, MAVTV Motorsports, Ride TV and WeatherNation, among others. He got feedback from Michael Weiss, a leader at CBS Radio for over 25 years who loved the idea. Jim Battagliese was brought in because of his deep understanding of the traffic and transportation sector, and his wealth of knowledge about this arena. When traffic radio stations in every major market were becoming a huge business, Battagliese led Shadow Traffic’s expansion from three to 16 markets.
In Perry’s home market of Philadelphia, he found Wendy Saltzman, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and founder of The Power Media Agency.
Another key addition to the team was Bill Greco. Recommended to Perry through a friend, Greco’s storied career in the transportation industry is well-known. Co-founder of the Tra/Fax groundbreaking traffic-reporting service in LA, Greco enjoyed stints with traffic.com, Shadow Traffic and Westwood One.
“Transportation is evolving in lighting speed,” says Co-Founder Greco. “It is a once-in-a-century event, the biggest evolution since the introduction of the automobile.”
“The content is never ending as people choose new ways to get from point A to point B. The public needs to hear of these stories that affect their daily lives. Quality of life is part of the equation for people as they choose where they live with the ability to get to the workplace easily.”
Greco made a lifestyle change in order to join the team.
“I actually came out of retirement because I saw a tremendous opportunity to build to The Transportation Channel, something very special with Matthew.”
Like all entrepreneurs, Perry and Greco had a vision that inspired them. They would develop the first of its kind – a consumer-facing video platform dedicated entirely to transportation.
There was a void the marketplace for a Transportation Channel. Most of the coverage when they started the business was centered on accidents; headline grabbing stories of train derailments, car and plane crashes along with delays, or road closures. Even today, clicking the TRANSPORTATION tab of the digital Washington Post, you’ll see stories of plane crashes, an “almost crash,” a rail strike, along with a plane that flew 10 minutes without a pilot. Absent are recent discussions about the growth of driverless cabs, driverless trucks, the soon to be “Flying air taxies of LA” getting ready for the LA 2028 Olympics, or Japan’s first full battery-driven electric workboat.
Greco believes that “there is a real thirst for fresh authentic transportation content that is not being covered in traditional media. Layoffs in both print and broadcasting staffs have eliminated many of the once ‘transportation journalists’.”
As Greco describes, every day there are new opportunities to tell stories of the industry. For example, when January’s devastating fires hit Los Angeles, many had evacuated and were unable to go back to their homes to survey the damage. Cars were not allowed back to the scene for many days and the E-scooter rental business – a relatively new transportation choice – boomed as people were able to get back into neighborhoods navigating their next steps.
Another traffic radio alum, Julie Gates, joined The Transportation Channel in January 2025 as Chief Content Officer. A traffic reporter from Seattle, Gates was well versed on the industry, at times reporting on traffic for as many as nine stations during her shifts high above the Seattle skyline.
Gates and her late husband also co-hosted a highly successful morning radio show that aired in six markets, four of them in the top 10.
However, by 2017, she began to see many of her colleagues lose jobs as the radio industry began downsizing. So in 2018, she jumped at the opportunity to go work in PR for TransLoc, in Raleigh NC – a transit technology company,
She was extremely fortunate when
MODAXO, a global Canadian technology company and transportation software company – bought TransLoc from Ford – a move that saw her shift into a new role as the Director of Marketing and Content.
Next was the programming. MODAXO’s Paul Comfort, the host and producer of MODAXO’s Transit Unplugged TV Show, a program focused on the world-wide transit industry sealed a distribution deal with The Transportation Channel in 2024. The Travel Show advises travelers how to navigate their transportation via public transit in countries all over the world. The exciting part of the deal was global distribution rights for Transit Unplugged TV.
It only took about a week for MODAXO to start smiling.
“As a Wall Street guy, my eyes were always on MODAXO,” recalls Perry. “To get in bed with a multi-million dollar global company, you just never know what might happen. I was in LA and got a call from Paul telling me that the MODAXO team was ecstatic with our relationship, ecstatic that our stuff was showing up on
MSN.com.”
No comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.