Jim Fredericks

Jim Fredericks wasn’t the kind of kid who collected bugs. He never had a board of pinned and labeled insects or tried to find unusual species. “I was interested in science and being outside, going into the woods, but it wasn’t about the insects,” said the executive director of the Professional Pest Management Alliance (PPMA).

But when Fredericks was a senior in college at Millersville University in Lancaster County, Pa., he took an entomology course during his last semester before graduation. He recalled a field trip his gung-ho professor orchestrated at a local farm with two ponds. One was as nature intended, the other treated for swimming. “We piled into his conversion van and drove there, sampling insects from both ponds to compare them,” he said.

“We diligently collected insects along the edge of the pool and I heard this loud splash. There’s the professor, doing the backstroke. ‘C’mon in! The water’s great!’ We all jumped in and I’ll never forget the real passion he had for entomology. That sparked something in me.”

So, what does a college graduate who decided weeks before turning the tassel to trade teaching biology for something else do next? “Go to graduate school,” Fredericks quipped.

At University of Delaware, where there is a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) quarantine facility, Fredericks studied weed biocontrol. His specialty was the “mile-a-minute weed” that was introduced from China in the 1940s. Also called devil’s tail, and formally Persicaria perfoliata, the herbaceous vine is considered noxious, forming thorny mats that take over native vegetation.

This was right up Fredericks’ alley as an ecology guy. His goal was to hunt down insects that would destroy the problem weed.

He basically sat in thorny bushes for two years, examining every insect chewing on the weed. “Bottom line was, nothing was eating this thing,” he said. (But there is some good news: Since then, biological agents have been introduced and a successful program is long underway.)

Graduation time arrived again. “I had to make a decision: Do I want to work for the USDA? Stay in academia?” On a job board — the cork kind predating Google — Fredericks spotted a recruiting poster for a technical trainer position at Home Paramount in Forest Hill, Md. He was intrigued, as the job combined his interest in learning with a passion for entomology and problem-solving.

He interviewed, and “the rest is history,” Fredericks said. “I fell in love with the people and the work.”

Fredericks described his career as an arc that started with training individual technicians at the pest control company level, then being involved with company operations, and eventually heading up industry-wide initiatives in technical and regulatory affairs roles at the National Pest Management Association (NPMA). He joined NPMA as vice president of technical services and rose into a merged role representing the association at the state and national levels.

Now, Fredericks’ audience is the industry and consumers as executive director of the consumer-facing PPMA. He said, “Let’s talk to everyone about why pest control is so important — that is what I am enjoying the most, and it is a message I really believe in.”

Field Days

Despite years of technical and field training on complex entomological topics, Home Paramount was Fredericks’ first foray into urban pests. “I studied in the department of entomology and applied ecology, not structural pest control,” he said.

Case in point: A friend from grad school invited Fredericks to his parents' home and asked, “Do you think these are termites?” Fredericks thought, no way. “I looked at these mud tubes trailing up the wall. I said, ‘I don’t think so, termites are little white bugs that live in the ground.’ They were definitely termites — but I had no clue.”

A few months later, Fredericks was steeped in termite ID and treatment, working daily with technicians and picking up routes whenever he could lend a hand. “Jim always took a lot of interest. He wanted to learn, and he wanted to grow within the industry,” said Steve Miller, a mentor who Fredericks shadowed his first two years in pest management. At the time, Miller had 20 years of tenure and has since retired.

“He worked alongside me on projects, and we spent long days in the field together,” Miller said, noting that Fredericks was not an “office person.” Instead, “He wanted to take part in the projects we did. He was a team member; even when he became a director, he wasn’t ‘the boss.’ He was a leader.”

Fredericks and Miller wrote and implemented training programs for Home Paramount and held annual meetings called Hands-On Termite Training, which they dubbed HOTT. “The biggest thing about Jim is, he would help anyone with anything — he really would,” Miller said.

Fredericks would watch Miller carefully and learn. “Steve devoted his life to pest control and being a student of pest control, so the one thing he impressed upon me is to be a lifelong learner in whatever capacity you can be,” Fredericks said. “He was constantly reading and learning more about the industry. He was proud to share that knowledge, and his work ethic inspired me.”

Fredericks, a longtime runner who has completed 10 marathons, knows firsthand that commitment and hard work gets you to the finish line. And his curious nature in the times when he is not working is also a reflection of his continuous journey professionally. Living on 10 acres outside of the Washington, D.C., sprawl, he and his wife, Alison, and two daughters Lydia and Annabel — ages 18 and 16 — have a large garden with chickens. “We started on vermiculture,” he said, adding that his days today are similar to those he spent as a boy exploring the outdoors — always learning.

Fredericks was promoted to technical director in a growing training department at Home Paramount, where the firm created a quality assurance program, further expanding his industry knowledge. He spent 12 years at the company and was appointed to the NPMA QualityPro board. “I was starting to get a taste of what NPMA was and meeting folks at other companies and collaborating on technical issues, in particular,” he said.

A position at NPMA — director of technical services — opened and Fredericks threw his hat in. “My first day on the job was in Honolulu, Hawaii, which is a pretty nice gig, though it was daunting because it was the first day of our convention,” he relates. “I showed up at the daily staff meeting and was told I would be the liaison for the canine scent detection committee the next morning.”

Fredericks hit the ground running.

“I got a taste of the magic of NPMA,” he said. “You have all of these competitors who are really working together to find solutions and better ways to do pest control, better ways to promote ourselves and the industry to consumers, and ways to lift up the industry as professionals.”

Again, Fredericks found a career synergy in his role at NPMA that wove together training, technical knowledge, customer service and promoting the pest control industry. At NPMA, he could marry entomology with public policy — a sweet spot for Fredericks.

Technical & Policies Together

“There is a ton of overlap between technical and regulatory issues,” Fredericks explains, noting how he would collaborate with the government affairs team and attend meetings to answer technical questions, offering perspective on how pest management professionals would be impacted by potential rules.

This was a non-traditional approach, said Bob Rosenberg, who retired from NPMA in 2016 after serving as CEO. When Rosenberg worked in a government affairs capacity at the association, he and Fredericks teamed up often to educate various policymakers and legislators.

“Jim was interesting because he was a technical person who got involved in government affairs issues, and we had a mutual respect for one another,” Rosenberg said. “You know, technical people don’t usually think that government affairs people know what they are talking about. Typically if you go to a meeting, the technical people hang out together and the government affairs folks go their own way.”

Rosenberg calls Fredericks one of NPMA’s “good gets” because of his understanding of both technical issues and government affairs. “We worked together on a range of issues like honeybees, rodenticides, fumigants,” he continued. “Our thinking was, if you have a regulator who is more informed and better educated, they will make better decisions.”

Working alongside Rosenberg, Fredericks said his colleague’s steadfast advocacy and friendly demeanor opened doors. “Bob always had the industry’s agenda in mind, and at the same time, he was never looked at as an adversary in those rooms and was instead looked upon as a resource. I really tried to model that, and it was extremely helpful and effective.”

When Rosenberg was named NPMA CEO, he created a new position for Fredericks, combining the technical and policy sides of the industry — a progressive move. He became vice president of technical and regulatory affairs, regularly working with USDA, EPA and state departments of agriculture.

“It was an easy transition at the time because I had been operating in that world as we took a team approach,” Fredericks said. Also, he became more involved in the Professional Pest Management Alliance (PPMA), helping vet technical information for the consumer outlet, PestWorld.org, and serving as an expert spokesperson for media inquiries.

Fredericks recalls an experience in NYC for a popular national morning TV show. “I was going to be the ‘bug wrangler’ because we were taking live insects to the show,” he said. “We had some ants that were in Petri dishes, black-legged ticks and big, showy millipedes and centipedes.”

They stayed in Fredericks’ hotel room because the set was hands-off with the bugs. They weren’t going to touch them like other “props” on the set. Fredericks got a 3:30 a.m. wake-up call so he could prep and arrive by the call time at 6 a.m. “I had to transfer bugs from containers, and some were easier than others,” he said.

The lab-ready black-legged ticks did not carry Lyme disease — but are the variety that could transmit a bacterial infection. Fredericks manipulated a pair of tweezers as if they were forceps, in hopes of transferring the ticks from a vial into a Petri dish for display on the show.

Well, that didn’t work out. “They got out and were crawling on my arm,” he said. “I’m doing everything I can to get them back in, and it was like the episode of I Love Lucy and the chocolates on a conveyer belt, but it was me in a Manhattan hotel room at 4 a.m. with black-legged ticks.”

Fredericks decided to put the stopper on the vial and wash the ticks off his arms in the hotel bathroom sink. “Then they were crawling out of the drain and I’m like, ‘I infested a hotel room.’”

He performed what he calls “creative pest control” and, “suffice it to say, we got the ticks. It was a pretty frantic experience (but) it was really cool to be there on the set.”

His first interview on camera was in 2010, during the bed bug resurgence that was attracting major media attention. Fredericks was in Washington, D.C., for a congressional bed bug summit. During lunch, he got a call. A local TV station wanted to report a story about bed bugs in the George Washington University dorms and needed a bed bug expert.

“Sure, I’ll talk about bed bugs,” Fredericks replied.

The news crew set up a camera on the sidewalk in front of where the conference was taking place. “This reporter was asking me softball questions, and I could not string together a complete sentence when the camera was on,” he said. “They were really nice. They tried a few times and finally said, ‘How about this. Walk down to the corner and we’ll get some footage of you. Then, we’ll talk over the video and explain what you said to us.’”

Now, Fredericks knows, when he watches the news and sees the subject matter expert walking up the street — he has sympathy because it’s likely the person “froze on camera.”

Message That Resonates

Now nearing his first full year serving as PPMA’s executive director, Fredericks reflects on the last 25 years and how far the industry has come in building public awareness of the pest control industry as a protector of public health.

“We have gotten away from the negative stereotypes that were around for years, if you think about how pest control was portrayed in movies, like John Goodman in Arachnophobia,” Fredericks said. “But we have more room to grow.

“The work that the pest control industry is doing to protect public health, food and property is so important, and we need to continue to talk about that in a way that isn’t complicated,” he continued.

“The same message we have to deliver to consumers is what we need to communicate to job seekers,” Fredericks added, speaking to employee attrition as longtime pest control technicians retire and companies across service industries struggle to attract young blood. It’s a perennial challenge.

But PPMA can help change the conversation to one centered on quality assurance, food safety, health and wellbeing — concepts that resonate with consumers and potential workers who, more than ever, are looking for meaningful work where they can make a difference.

Fredericks knows. “I never imagined the opportunity in this industry,” he said. His best advice is to “explore everything, say yes to new opportunities and never stop learning.” That’s what he did. “My story is a great example.”