Background: [President and chief creative officer Steve] Rosa grew up on Wickenden Street in Providence's Fox Point neighborhood. He founded Advertising Ventures in Boston in 1989, after leaving EMC Corp., where he helped start an in-house ad agency for the company. Rosa moved the firm to Providence in 1992. In October, Advertising Ventures was named to the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing companies in the nation, after the agency grew 615 percent from 1997 to 2001, growing from $232,000 to more than $1.6 million during that time. In November, Bank Rhode Island made Advertising Ventures its public relations agency, and Cox Communications New England made Advertising Ventures its advertising agency of record. The company's other clients include CVS/pharmacy, Textron, Hasbro, Fleet Financial, Baxter Healthcare and Novartis.

ROSA: One of the big frustrations I have in Rhode Island is that a lot of the smaller companies we run into are like, ‘Oh, we’re not going to be an industry leader, we’re just a Rhode Island company.’ That drives me insane. We have incredible talent here, we’ve got incredible assets, but people limit themselves. Yeah, we can lead industries!