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She's hired...
8/27/2004 -
The Times Union
Mark McGuire
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A Slingerlands native will go head-to-head with The Donald this season
Jennifer Crisafulli has a job -- a good one -- in real estate in Manhattan. But the 31-year-old Slingerlands native has put her career on hold for a shot at an apprenticeship.
Not an apprenticeship, exactly. The apprenticeship.
Crisafulli, a 1990 graduate of the Academy of the Holy Names in Albany, is one of 18 contestants who attempt to last through a season in Donald Trump's clutches on NBC's reality show "The Apprentice." The network is announcing the names of the new slate of contestants today; the show's second season premieres at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, on WNYT Ch. 13. (Episodes will run regularly at 9 p.m. Thursdays starting Sept. 16, with reruns airing at 8 p.m. Saturdays starting Sept. 11.)
Crisafulli, who survived a winnowing process that started with more than a million applicants, is currently barred from speaking to the media. As with every reality series, the results of "The Apprentice" -- from the identities of the contestants ousted at the end of each episode to the ultimate winner -- are closely guarded secrets.
But the contestant would have a hard time finding a better publicist than her mother.
"It didn't shock me that she was accepted -- she's always loved competition," said Dale Crisafulli, who still lives in Slingerlands.
Even as young as age 10, her daughter would enter horse-jumping competitions that included adults. Before her first event, "We said, 'Don't feel bad; you can't win the first time,' Dale Crisafulli said. "She won the blue ribbon."
Jennifer Crisafulli still competes in equestrian events, and takes part in fox hunting.
Her competitive streak will be tested by Trump, the multimillionaire developer who scored a surprise hit for NBC.
"I thought I was the biggest star before, but now I'm bigger," he said at last month's Television Critics Association press tour.
True to form, Trump says the upcoming season will be even better than the original.
"Out of the million (applicants), we took 18 rather than 16. ... Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton -- literally tops in their class," Trump said. "Then we have people who didn't have a big education ... but are really smart and very accomplished."
Crisafulli graduated with honors and a fine arts degree in 1994 from Syracuse University. She rose quickly to become one of the youngest magazine photo editors in the nation, with stops at Spin and Rolling Stone.
But sales was always in her future. "When she was about 16, she worked at Merry Go Round in Crossgates," her mother said. "She was the top sales person every day."
In 2003, Crisafulli switched careers and went into real estate with the New York City firm of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Crisafulli's mother said her daughter was told it could take more than six months to close a deal and start making money.
"Within three weeks, she sold a building worth three-quarters of a million dollars," her mother said. "She was off and running." Jennifer Crisafulli is now selling high-end residential properties -- an area that Trump is pretty familiar with.
Crisafulli's work ethic, her mother said, might have been handed down by her father, Vincent "Jim" Crisafulli, who died in 2003. A World War II vet, he founded Crisafulli Brothers Italian Grocers, which grew into United Food Service, the region's largest independent food service distributor.
The baby of the family, Jennifer Crisafulli has three half-brothers and two half-sisters. All the kids were expected to work in the family business; she started at age 14.
"She worked from the bottom up -- filing, at first," her mother said. "This was just after school and summers. She also had a job training the police horses for the Albany mounted police. She even helped the young police officers learn how to ride."
Both Trump and "Apprentice" Executive Producer Mark Burnett -- whose "Survivor" kicked off the reality genre -- said Crisafulli and the rest of the sophomore class learned a lot from studying the show's first season. (The DVD set was released just this week.)
"I would say that collectively it's a smarter group, and that came as a result of (drawing) five times the number of applications," Burnett said. "I think it's equally dynamic, and I think there are a few people here who you will never, ever forget."
The show became a demographic hit for NBC by drawing an inordinately high number of the affluent viewers that advertisers crave. NBC said 41.5 million people watched the two-hour season finale this spring.
And if you see Dale Crisafulli around town, don't try to squeeze her for details on her daughter's performance: The Donald
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