Bragging About My Kids, er, Team

The father loves to brag about his kids (as I do). The CEO loves to brag about his team.
I’ll spare you the kids. But I do want to introduce some of the team, and brag about their accomplishments.
Tracy Beach is our COO and one of our creative leaders. He’s been with Portent since 2000, starting as an HTML developer and designer. On his first day here he had to help move the office. He stayed anyway, and has masterminded projects like GOIAM.ORG, the Tour of California web site and momAgenda. Really, though, he influences every design we do, and makes Portent one of the best at executing internet marketing.
Branden Root is our CTO. He started as an intern in 2001, showing up for work on his first day in a 3-piece suit. I’m not 100% sure what to call his expertise. I strongly suspect he thinks in code. He’s brought Portent the best in tools and techniques and keeps everything working as it should. Branden designed the system behind Bella Sara, and built the multiple-store software that runs Groomstand and its sister stores.
Anna Abraham designed this web site. She rocks!
Chris Furniss made this site a reality with Movable Type and his expertise in the social media world.
Matthew Henry built and continues to refine sophisticated tools for search engine optimization. He also understands regular expressions, which scares me a little.
Jade Ingmire heads up our copywriting team, but also provides creative leadership on all sorts of projects.
Cathy Braun has somehow found a way to introduce real quality assurance in a marketing agency. No small feat.
Our account team includes Ariana Burgess, Matthew Guiste, Stacy Conner, Sarah Mackay and Mike Fitterer. They bring not only project management expertise, but also strong marketing backgrounds. That’s why we call them account strategists. They don’t just hand messages back and forth. They guide marketing strategy.
Christopher Bachmann, Jann VanOver and Andy Schaff are some of our crack developers. They’re regularly called upon to figure out everything from Flash data integration to advanced, web-based printing systems. They’ve never failed to solve complex problems and roll out great software.
Sooo many others, too. I won’t stuff the blog full of my kvelling (Yiddish for bragging about someone’s accomplisments). Suffice it to say that I’m very proud of the folks we’ve gathered at Portent.
Now that I’ve got that out of my system, my future posts will be chock-full of marketing thinking.