Donna Drake

Awards and Events March 27, 2019

Breakfast of champions

Hundreds turn out to honor LI’s brightest innovators (photos by Bob Giglione) In a rare breakfast networker that delivered all the feels, Innovate Long Island saluted its 2019 Innovators of the Year Tuesday at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury. More than 200 guests turned out to honor two dozen of Long Island’s brightest and boldest researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs and executives, including 2019 Master of Innovation Mitch Maiman and Stony Brook University Vice President…

Media February 12, 2019

Loving the Drake (and other productions) at LG Studios

By GREGORY ZELLER // They’re living it up in Edgewood, where “The Donna Drake Show” has a new name and a new home. The relentlessly optimistic, widely syndicated video magazine – featuring the eponymous host and a team of chipper correspondents serving up slices of life with studio guests and remote reports – has a new home base: LG Studios, a three-headed collaboration by Lorraine Gregory Communications, Hauppauge-based production studio Mirrorland Productions and the Drake…

Media May 3, 2018

At Lorraine Gregory Studios, they’re making the scene

By GREGORY ZELLER // They’re (almost) ready for their close-up at Lorraine Gregory Communications, where the curtain is about to rise on a new video-production studio – and an even bigger sequel is coming soon. Emboldened by the success of a new video-interview segment produced by his spinoff C-suite consultancy Greg’s Corner Office, Lorraine Gregory Communications founder and CEO Greg Demetriou is excited to announce the near-completion of Lorraine Gregory Studios – and “doesn’t that…

Startups December 4, 2017

The case of the $2M (and counting) stay-home dad

By GREGORY ZELLER // Philip Smith follows plenty of leads. It makes sense the Port Jefferson native and lifelong Suffolk County resident would land in the lead-generation business. Smith is a true entrepreneurial detective, more apt to study a problem than to charge ahead, always picking up clues to unravel the bigger mystery. It’s evident throughout his tactical business career. After earning an online degree from the University of Phoenix, the then-23-year-old started his first…

Media August 28, 2015

Living it up on good news and positive thinking

By GREGORY ZELLER // If you’d suggested back in 2009 that “Live It Up!,” a kinda-web, sorta-television Long Island video magazine, would be seen in 25 countries and draw 100,000-plus weekly TV viewers, Donna Drake might have expressed doubts. Then again, she might not. Relentlessly optimistic – think Katie Couric meets Gidget – Drake probably would have liked her chances. Her hook, as she sees it, is that she’s a “good-news journalist,” which are in…