The Negotiating Bells Are Ringing
Robert Mendez Brings His Distinguished Career Full Circle
Hoover Hall, the epicenter for Whittier College’s business major, is quiet, washed over by the lull of lectures and frantic note-taking. One distinguishable noise, however, breaks through the deafening silence — the ringing of a bell.
Following that sound as it echoes through the hallways and you will find the gatekeeper of the business department, Robert Mendez, standing proudly in front of a class of first- and second-year students. He is equipped with 30 years of work experience, a bell, and a guiding principle that “education has made all the difference in his life.”
“When I found myself working in entertainment, what I realized was that I was one of one. There weren’t a lot of people that looked like me and there weren’t a lot of people with my background.”
Bob Mendez has been one of one throughout his life. The first in his family to go to college, Mendez earned his bachelor’s degree in American and English History from Pomona College. He fondly looks back on this time, chuckling to himself as he pauses to find the words to describe it. “It was a furnace for me,” he says. “The way I went in and the way I came out was very different.” After graduating, he decided to continue his education, landing at the University of California, Davis — School of Law. Still unaware of his future goals, Mendez found his voice there.
Mendez eventually rode his legal expertise into the highest levels of Hollywood. Sometimes, it seemed like he was one of one. “I was working in an industry where there were very few people that looked like me, minimal consciousness of an awareness of the community that I came from, and the kind of consumer that we made up within the marketplace,” he says.
Mendez rose through the ranks of NBC, Paramount Pictures, and Disney ABC Television Group.
“I’m a competitive person, I like to compete,” says Mendez. “I’m not the kind of person that has to win, so much as I like the process of competing and see where we end up, and more often than not, I tend to win, which I also kinda like.”
His love for competition and the communication skills he developed in Law School drew him to negotiating. “I like testing myself against others, and the negotiation world gave me the perfect opportunity.”
During his time at Paramount, Mendez participated in various contract negotiations, including the Dr. Phil Show. Mendez describes the intense negotions. “Dr. Phil was discovered by Oprah Winfrey and was under contract to a powerful syndication company called King World,” he says. “I had to negotiate a deal With Dr. Phil, King World and Oprah in order to close the deal. Normally, a deal of that sort would take months to complete, including drafting and signing the applicable contracts. I flew into New York, was secluded in the offices of the agent for the parties, and completed the deal in one week. It was the highlight of my negotiating career.”
That’s saying something, considering while at Disney, he worked on deals for Live with Regis and Kelly and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
After working in the entertainment industry more than 25 years with jobs ranging from senior attorney at NBC to Senior Vice President of Business Legal Affairs, Mendez felt it was time for a shift. “There is a high burnout factor when you’re in that world, it requires everything of you for an extended period of time, and by the time I got around to be 60 years, I wanted more balance in my life.”
Mendez did not expect to become a business professor. He had never taken any business classes in undergrad or during law school. Still, when he found out about the Adjunct Professor position at Whittier College, he reflected on what his teachers and mentors had done for him and saw an opportunity to pay it forward. “It was closing the circle for me. It was the opportunity to say, ‘You know, all those people who invested in you during all those years of preparation, you’re supposed to give back. You’re supposed to close that circle, and Whittier has been an amazing place for me.”
“You’re supposed to give back. You’re supposed to close that circle, and Whittier has been an amazing place for me.”
Over his past ten years at Whittier College, Mendez has fostered deep relationships with his students and colleagues. Professor Rik Ichiho, an accounting and business law professor at Whittier College, started at the same time as Professor Mendez. As Business Administration is the largest major on campus, its professors interact with the largest portion of the student body. Ichiho believes that “[Bob] is absolutely the right person to get the students interested in more classes in business… You have to understand that sometimes it’s difficult for professors because they are teaching the same thing over and over again, but he continues to bring a newness to it every semester.”
Just as it was during Mendez’s entertainment career, negotiations are his love. At Whittier College, that love has translated into his unique course called “Negotiation Strategies.” The focus of the class is not to sit and read a textbook but instead spend a semester negotiating against another team to create employment contracts between two entertainers and a TV show. “I can give you a manual to drive a car, but you won’t really know how to do it until you get behind the wheel. The negotiations class lets the student get behind the wheel.”
“The negotiations class lets the student get behind the wheel.”
In the class, Mendez plays the role of a puppet master in the mock negotiations to ensure neither team is ever fully satisfied. The goal is not to be annoying, but instead to “shift students from a style of negotiations where you are just butting heads to a style of negotiations where you figure out I know what you need, and you know what I need, and is there way for us to put the two things together.”
Like many, Mendez worries about the level of discord occurring throughout society and the lack of communication ability. Learning how to negotiate might help. “We need to learn to talk to each other and we need to learn to solve problems together,” he says.
His hope is that every student from his negotiation class is more equipped to have those hard conversations and can work towards solutions in a more productive manner.
“I still remember one student; I gave him the bell, and he jumped up and yelled I finally got the bell.”
Besides his expertise, Mendez also brought to Whittier College something else he learned from one of his bosses, Vance Van Petten, while working for Paramount. Van Petten was Mendez’s mentor at Paramount. Van Petten held senior positions at Paramount, Fox and later became the Executive Director of the Producer’s Guild. “he was a really good lawyer, but an even better manager of people,” says Mendez.
Van Petten kept two stamps on his desk. “One was a happy bear, and the bear was dancing, and the other was a sad bear,” says Mendez. “If he thought what you gave him to review was good, he’d give you a happy bear on the corner. If he thought it needed more work, you’d get a sad bear. It is a silly thing, but it really motivated you to produce good work.”
When Mendez started teaching, he wanted to find a way to emulate the dancing bear for his students, and that is how the infamous bell was born. Mendez is under no false illusions about it. “Corny? Absolutely, but it works. I still remember one student: I gave him the bell, and he jumped up and yelled ‘I finally got the bell!’ That was pretty cool, and I still get a little emotional thinking about it… It is amazing what a motivated individual can do.”
From Mendez’s foundational years at Pomona College, to law school to his career in entertainment, he has gained the experiences he hopes will mold students into problem solvers and better people who are more equipped for the world. His simple goal now is to inspire students, and he hopes to have even a fraction of the impact on a student that his mentors had on him.
"I am a believer in providence. Life has a way of putting you where you're supposed to be. I know that sounds hyper-philosophical, but in my life, I have been very fortunate,” he says. “I've been in some pretty cool places, and life just took me there. I don't know how I ended up in Pomona, but there I was.I don't know how I ended up in law school, but there I was. I don't know how I ended in entertainment, but I did. You know, I've been to the White House. I’ve been in places where I look at myself and keep saying what the heck am I doing here. Whittier College is exactly on that list of things for me, these providential experiences."
