Meet our people: Sales & Marketing
Brooks Alford
Brooks is part of our sales team, having joined Emma from the laboratories of Vanderbilt University, where his work as a biophysics research assistant had him planning and performing fluorescence imaging experiments with a confocal microscope. If there’s one thing we’ve found, it’s that most of your talented sales folks are somewhere out there performing fluorescence imaging experiments with confocal microscopes. Seriously, go get them. Brooks has a working knowledge of written and spoken German, and we’re not sure if that’s somehow related or not, but rumor (or perhaps rumour) has it that Brooks will occasionally take on the accent of the person with whom he’s speaking on the phone. If, by luck, you sound exactly like Murray from Flight of the Conchords, please call now.
Suzanna Best
Suzanna is on Emma's sales team. She joined us from the literary world following stints in publishing at the now-defunct Men's Vogue magazine and with the Jane Rotrosen Agency, a literary agency on the Upper East Side (of New York, not Terre Haute, to be clear). She in fact holds a journalism degree from the University of Mississippi, where she received the school's highest award for poetry and had the honor of reading in front of the late Barry Hannah, who reportedly sat in the front row chomping loudly on carrots the entire time. When you've won the William Faulkner Prize, you can chomp loudly on carrots any damn where you please, thank you. Speaking of Faulkner, Suzanna is among the few who can say they read Faulkner while sitting on Faulkner's front porch, and not always late at night when the estate caretakers weren't paying attention to who might be reading on the front porch, with or without carrots.
Jamie Bradley
Jamie is a member of Emma's sales team and wears gigantic sunglasses. Not all the time, mind you, just when it's particularly sunny or time to show someone with regular-size sunglasses how it's really done. A native of Texas and attendee of both St. Edward's University and Belmont University, Jamie managed a shoe store (Bandolino) and worked as an account executive at an artist merchandise company (Stuph Clothing) before joining Emma. She lists Raising Arizona as her favorite movie of all time (well done) and lists Combos as her favorite snack (editor's endorsement withheld). And when she's not using her voice to dazzle Emma customers on the phone, Jamie can often be found doing vocal impressions of other people, all of whom invariably end up sounding like a 70-year-old woman from Mississippi. When it comes to vocal impressions, the conventional wisdom goes, do one elderly voice from the Deep South, and do it well.
Cliff Corr
Cliff is a member of our marketing team, spearheading work around advertising spends and budgets, SEM and -O, website performance, sponsorships, and the like. He is also way into music, as a singer songwriter who performs out regularly, and as a fan of bands like Dave Matthews and really anything from the '90s. Still, he's often willing to play stuff not from the '90s (note to '90s fans: other decades exist!) and has been known to transform himself into Jeff Lynne with the right wig and glasses — a fact that will come in quite handy should Emma's ELO tribute band ever get off the ground. Incidentally, launching an ELO tribute band isn't nearly as easy as you might think. Stupid drummers.
Lisa Creamer
Lisa heads up our business development efforts in the Portland area. She is also a soccer mom, but not in the stereotypical "soccer mom" way you're thinking, unless you're thinking of a mom whose kids are old enough to play soccer but not old enough to drive themselves there. Before joining Emma, Lisa developed business for a series of pharmaceutical companies and also lived for six years in Brazil, where she learned Portuguese. Among the boards she participates on is the American Society in São Paulo, where speaking Portuguese comes in much handier than it does on, say, a weekly Emma sales call. Not that a weekly sales call can't be spiced up by the occasional infusion of Portuguese — or Caipirinhas, if the sales meeting is happening after 11. Fine, 10. Lisa pours an excellent Caipirinha, incidentally, and may be the only graduate of the University of Tennessee who can make that claim. Just a guess.
Frank Cuden
Frank can do the worm, which is a skill that doesn't come in as handy as you might think. He works on our sales team, and, no, he doesn't mind at all that he shares a name with Frank the Tank in Will Ferrell's Old School. You'd think people would throw more Old School references his way, really. Before joining Emma, Frank got a degree in music business from Belmont University, where he may or may not have acted out several Old School-style scenes. So if you thought the Old School references were over, think again. Actually, we're done now. Frank went on to drumming greatness, opening on tour for bands like the Foo Fighters and Rascal Flatts. If you're ever lucky enough to meet Frank, you'll be tempted to ask him what that was like — or what it was like to play drums on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Instead, you should just mention the phrase "complimentary hotel room toiletries" and see where the conversation goes. You won't be disappointed.
Jeremy Ellis
Jeremy is a member of Emma's sales team. He also ranks The Lord of the Rings trilogy ahead of Star Wars. (Note from the editor who remembers standing in line for several hours for the theatrical release of SW in 1977: Interesting.) Jeremy's somewhat questionable taste in trilogies aside, his taste in the finer things in life is indisputable. He likes watches, fine food, wine, cigars and good bossa nova. Know who probably has good bossa nova music? The Chalmun's Cantina on the planet Tatooine. C'mon, give it a chance, dude. Incidentally, droids aren't allowed inside the Cantina, because droids ruin everything, and there's even a droid detector positioned at the front entrance to alert management of any droids attempting to crash Bossa Nova Night. It's the first Tuesday of every month, and please remember that in this trilogy, a month has seven weeks. Please plan accordingly.
Sam Farkas
Sam is a member of our sales team, having joined us after stints at Compass Records, a campus radio station (that'd be WMTS 88.3 if you’re in the local listening area), and the fabulous restaurant Flyte, where Sam tended bar. A recording industry major, Sam won a writing award at MTSU — that’s first place, folks — and is a fan of, in no particular order, The Big Lebowski, Zappos.com, Mr. Show, The Onion, Nashville Cream and NPR. Actually, that turned out to be in exactly the right order. Sam Farkas is a talented guitarist — not to be confused with Sam Farkas, a talented guitarist with faster domain registration skills — and has played in a band called Casio Casanova, which Sam Farkas swears is like ten times better than any band the other Sam Farkas has played in. We're sensing a little URL envy, yes we are. You can catch Sam all over town, and in other towns, too, as part of the stellar band Space Capone.
Casey McCormick
Casey is a member of Emma’s sales team. A graduate of Beloit (pronounced “bell-wahh”) College in Wisconsin, Casey studied environmental geology as a result, we’re told, of having gone through the course book and circled everything she didn’t think she could teach herself. Oddly enough, she hates rocks. But she loves camping and drinking beer outside, so it worked out just fine in the end. In addition to her outdoor pursuits, Casey loves travel and food, particularly in combination. Her favorite treat from the road? Trout from Lake Titicaca. Her least favorite? Inca Cola, which looks like Mountain Dew but tastes like bubble gum. Casey also enjoys being part of a wine club and a book club, though she admits the two sometimes get mixed up, and before you know it everyone’s halfway through chapter nine of a Chalone 2003 Pinot Noir. It’s a wonderful read. Before joining Emma, Casey was with Aspect Software as a customer support consultant and a technical support manager. She was named an Aspect Top Performer of 2006, which she no doubt celebrated over a bottle of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Theresa McLoughlin
Theresa is part of our sales squad, having joined Emma from Mohawk, where she was part of a slightly more carpet-oriented sales squad. Hence her extensive knowledge of plush, shag, sisal, saxony, berber, and shard. Incidentally, and the Mohawk scientists will tell you this, you shouldn’t try making carpet out of shards of things. A devout Buckeyes fan, Theresa has two cats named Allie and Foxy and 57 cousins named, well, um, how about we just tell you about cousin Tata Young, a singer billed as Thailand’s very own pop sensation, and whose song “Temperature Rising” claims: “You’ve got my temperature rising like El Niño.” Sorry, other Theresa cousins — you’ve just been out-cousined. Theresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Ohio University in Athens. Not *that* Athens.
