Meet Us

Tate is our Chief Thingnamer. He's the guy that turned an obsession for developing honest brands and a proclivity for creating enormous analytical spreadsheets into a revolutionary new way of building powerful and genuine names, taglines, and brand messaging. He's developed brands for companies such as ADP, General Electric, Columbia Sussex (owners of The Tropicana), Primark, and emPivot. He's spoken for employees of Accenture, Canon, Deloitte, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Kodak, The Washington Post, Xerox, and more than one hundred others.  He is frequently quoted and interviewed by national and regional press - including appearances in The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, The Washington Business Journal, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, The Financial Post (Ontario), Star News, and The Times-News.  In his career he's been responsible for the launch of more than sixty products and services and for more than a hundred names and taglines. Tate is the spark-plug for Stokefire's creative engine.  He may not develop every naming idea, but he ensures each project has ideas that are worthy of the Stokefire brand - and more importantly - our clients.

Florence spends most of her time wrestling process details to the ground.  She's in charge of developing internal best practices and making us stick to 'em.  She has decades of experience developing, recording, and refining procedures for everything from association business processes to school accreditation protocols.  Florence has chaired or facilitated literally hundreds of meetings, and has unilaterally prevented any (significant?) bloodshed.  In the course of her career she participated in program evaluations throughout the Western U.S. and the Pacific.

She's done such a great job on process that we've added Small Business Services to her responsibilities, too.  Any time you need a small business branded you're probably going to be spending the next few weeks getting to know Florence quite well. 

Her M.A. and Ph.D. are in education, with  emphases on organizational dynamics and policy development, from the University Of California at Berkeley.  At the time of this writing -- in addition to holding her position with Stokefire -- she teaches educational planning at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

Someone has to keep the creative types in line and Liz is just the person to do it.  Liz has worked for over 25 years in "just-make-the-business-work" positions.  While it's her ability to manage the day-to-day stuff that keeps the lights on for us, her skills with the tool belt (and her ability to sass the boss effectively) make her truly invaluable.  And it doesn't hurt that she doubles as our chief party planner and developer of employee incentives.  Liz majored in Health Physical Education and Recreation at Longwood University.

Erin McKean likes to call herself a Dictionary Evangelist (and in fact she authors a popular blog with the same name.) When not consulting for Stokefire she occupies herself as the Chief Consulting Editor, American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, and the editor of VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly. She was the editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2e, and is the author of Weird and Wonderful Words, More Weird and Wonderful Words, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, and That's Amore (also about words). She has served on the board of the Dictionary Society of North America and on the editorial board for its journal, Dictionaries, as well as on the editorial board for the journal of the American Dialect Society, American Speech. She also serves on the advisory boards of the Wikimedia Foundation and Credo Reference.   (We're pretty sure that she doesn't have any spare time.)

When it comes to developing executive messaging, few have better credentials than Christy.  Former manager of the Air Force media training program, on-air TV and Radio reporter, and current Public Relations Officer in the Air Force Reserve, She’s in charge of ensuring that once we craft your message you’ll be comfortable in the spot-light when you deliver it. 
She's prepped executives for appearances on NBC Nightly News, ABC's Good Morning America, CNN's American Morning, and Fox & Friends.  One of her clients was listed as one of the top 25 stories by NBC for 2005. 

Siayko (pronounced "Shy-co") is the guy Stokefire turns to when we need visual inspiration.  He's responsible for making our names, taglines, and brand strategies jump off the page.  His work provides context, setting, emotion, and all the other good stuff the great brands need to succeed.  His background gives him the hands-down coolest street-cred of anyone that works for Stokefire.  He's been a lead member of an Indie rock band named Phaser that toured the country a few years back.  He actually has the screaming fans that the rest of us at Stokefire wish would somehow materialize when we release our brand identities.  Other good stuff?  Well, he's been in graphic design for more than a decade, working as the behind-the-scenes creative for dozens of graphic design firms - putting out great work for bands, hotels, restaurants, housing developments, paint manufacturers & national hardware stores.

If you're talking to Peter then you can expect good things will happen to your brand in the near future.  Peter's job involves finding the folks that need the kind of help that Stokefire can provide.  After he finds 'em he does some sort of voodoo thing and suddenly we find ourselves with clients.  It's rather cool, if you think about it - which we advise against, incidentally.  He's succeeded in several VP-level marketing and business development positions for technology and marketing firms in the DC metro area, which means he is entirely overqualified to work with us.  We apologize in advance to our future clients, who may meet Peter and think that everyone here dresses as nicely, has impeccably groomed hair, and always seem to be in great spirits.  We're doing our best to get him to growl menacingly on occasion, but it just isn't taking.  In fact, it tends to make him seem more approachable. 

David comes to Stokefire with extensive experience in branding, design, and advertising.  He has more than forty years of experience in the industry, having held leadership positions with DDB, Corporate Identity & Communications, Inc., Defense News Media Group, Lee/Grant Productions, Edge Advertising, America3 Yachting Syndicate and Tullivision.  He has directed and developed creative projects for clients such as Citi Financial Group, Cover Girl, New York Life Insurance, Volkswagen, USF&G, U.S. Treasury, Wall Street Journal, Ziff-Davis Publishing, the National Republican Committee, The America's Cup Challenge, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

David handles key aspects of brand development for our clients, ensuring that we're developing brands to their fullest potential.  It's his job to link the brand strategy to the many visible facets of the identity - from design, to marketing, to advertising and even executive leadership.  David's job isn't done until every aspect is working together.