Steve Moysey, EG98, G01

Cold Case

Tufts graduate is helping to change the way we eat ice cream.

Steve Moysey had made up his mind. After much deliberation, he was going to leave the world of engineering management behind to explore other professional opportunities. The motivation behind this career change had little to do with the field itself, as Moysey had enjoyed his time working for companies such as Gillette, Bose, and Boston Scientific. Rather, he simply wanted to try something new. This "something new" was writing.

Moysey's decision culminated in the recently published The Road To Balcombe Street: The IRA Reign of Terror in London. The book, Moysey's first, focuses on the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) involvement in London between October 1974 and December 1975. During this period, a team of IRA operatives carried out over 30 bombings in London and the surrounding area. Tracking down the operatives were the men and women of London's Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad, many of whom Moysey interviewed for his book. The title of the book refers to the London street in which the "reign of terror" concluded with the arrest of four IRA members who had taken a local couple hostage at gunpoint.

Moysey, who holds a master's in engineering management from Tufts as well as a Ph.D. (earned through the Interdisciplinary Doctorate, "IDOC," program) in the psychology of behavior within organizations, first studied the Balcombe Street story while he was a Tufts doctoral student.

"I researched two hostage negotiation events as part of a paper I wrote for a class taught by Dr. Sinaia Nathanson of the psychology department," says Moysey, who is originally from England and has studied conflict resolution and negotiation extensively, both at Tufts and independently. "One of the events was the Balcombe Street siege."

Once Moysey completed the assignment, things started happening. The paper, which was titled "The Balcombe Street and Iranian Embassy Sieges — A Comparative Examination of Two Hostage Negotiation Events," was published by the "Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations" in 2004 and a few years later, at the urging of the journal's publisher, Moysey decided to write a book exploring not only the happenings at Balcombe Street but the events leading up to them as well.

Moysey's first book, The Road To Balcombe Street: The IRA Reign of Terror in London, was published last September.

The Road To Balcombe Street, which was published in September 2007 by the Haworth Press, has received praise from, among others, noted crisis intervention specialist Sharon Leviton and Lord Peter Imbert, who was the lead negotiator during the Balcombe Street crisis.

One might assume then, with the success of his first book, Steve Moysey has left engineering behind for good. While it's true that he has other writing projects in the works, Moysey was drawn back into the world of engineering management recently by two irresistible forces — advanced technology and ice cream.

A HAPPY PRODUCT
Steve Moysey was sitting at his desk one day last June when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was a recruiter who told him that a company was interested in his services. The company in question was MooBella, a Taunton, Massachusetts-based business which was developing machines capable of producing individual servings of fresh ice cream in a variety of flavors and varieties. The company was looking to fill its newly created chief technology officer position and Moysey's name had come up. At first, Moysey told the recruiter he wasn't interested, citing his desire to focus on writing full-time. But after a few more calls from the recruiter, he agreed to meet with the company's president and chief financial officer.

"When I met with them, we talked about the company, the job, and the role that I would play," says Moysey. "I soon realized that the position would be different, from the equipment side of it, than anything that I had done before. And, let's face it, people like ice cream. It's a happy product."

Steve Moysey with members of his MooBella team.

As MooBella President and CEO Bruce Ginsberg shares, Moysey was the perfect person for the job.

"Throughout his impressive career, Steve has helped introduce ground-breaking technology to the marketplace. He has launched start-up divisions within companies, developed new technologies, and helped forward strategic business plans. This background made him uniquely-suited to a fast-paced and forward thinking company like MooBella."

Moysey began his work at MooBella in August 2007 and, at the time, the company's ice cream delivery machine was in the prototype stage. Moysey was brought in to "take a look at what needed to be changed, determine how it needed to be changed to make it production ready, and to build a team that could deliver the next generation product."

Moysey achieved the most important part of his mandate—building a team—a few months after arriving at MooBella. This process involved identifying and interviewing potential employees and, with approval from the President and CFO, bringing them on board. Today, the team Moysey helped build includes computer engineers, software engineers, and mechanical engineers. Together, with Moysey taking the lead, they are working to bring the MooBella machine to market this spring.

When asked about his work, Moysey says,

"I'm basically working with my team to develop the machines on time, on budget, and to specification. It might sound simplistic, but my role is to really give my team what they need to get the job done and to keep as many obstacles out of their way as possible."

Moysey, who likens his role at MooBella to that of a football coach, believes that what he learned at Tufts is helping him meet the challenges before him.

"I apply the principles of what I learned at Tufts every day, whether it's working with my team, negotiating with a supplier, or dealing with a vendor," says Moysey, who earned his graduate degrees in 1998 and 2001, respectively. "The IDOC program, in particular, was probably one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic life. I enjoyed the close camaraderie that developed among the students and I'm still friends with many of the people I went through the program with."

WELCOME TO THE MACHINE
From the outside, a MooBella machine looks like a typical vending machine. But this is where the similarities end. While many vending machines contain pre-packaged snacks or drinks, MooBella ice cream is made fresh to order for each consumer. This is made possible, as Moysey shares, with the help of what lies within the machine

Using cutting-edge technology, MooBella machines can make fresh ice cream in less than a minute.

"We are taking a real dairy ice cream base and flash freezing it," he says. "In the span of 45 seconds, the ice cream mix is then flavored, blended, aerated, and flash-frozen into ice cream. Once this process is complete, the mix-ins the consumer has chosen are added and the ice cream is formed into a 4.5 ounce scoop. So, when we talk about our ice cream being the freshest ice cream you'll ever eat, we're speaking literally. Our ice cream is not sitting in a store freezer for a week or so."

With a spring rollout planned, Moysey's team is working around the clock and once the machine is ready, they hope to place it in a variety of locations across New England. The final production version of the machines are being built by the IDEX Corporation of Chicago.

When asked if he has any regrets about putting his writing career on hold, Moysey replies,

"I just couldn't pass up this opportunity. It's very rewarding to watch a team grow and come together to build a product. Plus, we get to eat ice cream every day."

To learn more about The Road To Balcombe Street: The IRA Reign of Terror in London, go to http://www.theroadtobalcombestreet.com/.

More information about MooBella can be found at http://moobella.com/.

Article by Robert Bochnak, G07, senior writer/communications manager, Office of Graduate Studies

Photos by Melody Ko