Meet Us

Tate is Chief Creative and founder of Stokefire.  He stays challenged by providing a creative spark to nearly every project we take on, and actively leading many of them.  Tate developed the initial analytical process we use to evaluate brands, and co-developed the current implementation of our proprietary FAINTS brand analysis tool with Dr. Florence Webb.  He's an in-demand speaker for national organizations and associations, and has been featured in articles in The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Washington Business Journal, among others. 

Tate is the driving force behind Stokefire's involvement in the developing field crowdsourcing, working to resolve the many issues that prevent the power and creativity inherent in crowds from benefitting organizations.  He also serves on the board of the Imagine Project - a non-profit organization in the DC area whose purpose is to celebrate and advance the field of commercial creativity. 

Among the many brands he's worked with or developed are ADP, General Electric, Causeworth, Columbia Sussex, Primark, OpenText and EMC.  He's worked with a veritable alphabet soup of non-profit associations as well, including AAOE, H2E, ASAE, AIIM, STIPDA, and dozens more.  He's led discussions and talks for employees of Accenture, Canon, Deloitte, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Kodak, The Washington Post, Xerox, and more than one hundred others.   

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. 

Her M.A. and Ph.D. are in education, with an emphasis 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.  And we're not done--recently she was selected as an Examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program for 2009.

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.)

Elizabeth came to Stokefire as a Summer intern in 2007, doing such a stellar job that we nabbed her for our team in 2009 shortly after she graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Business and Media studies. She is an avid world traveler, spending time studying in China, and volunteering in Argentina, Costa Rica, and England. Along the road she has picked up loads of real-world international marketing savvy that we count on daily at Stokefire HQ. 

A lover of all things advertising, Eric Frost brings a decade of PR and advertising account management and leadership skills to Stokefire.  Eric is our primary contact for most client interaction, handling tasks that surround the creative process, from project management, to client support.  He has had the opportunity to work with and develop campaigns for great organizations that range from humanitarian assistance to entertainment, including the American Red Cross and The Spy Museum of Washington, DC.  Oh, and also throw in little shops like US Airways, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Global One, Marriott International, and Donatelli & Klein.  A Virginia Tech graduate, his agency experience includes Rosenthal Partners, The AD Group, Marcom Group and most recently Merrick Towle Communications.  Chances are good that if you're in the DC area and in advertising you know Eric - or have at least seen the award-winning work his teams have produced.  

Colleen is the junior Stokefire brander aka intern. She recently graduated from the University of Virginia (much to the alarm of Eric, our ‘Stuff’ handler and rival Virginia Tech alum) where she earned a degree in Psychology. She brings passion and creativity to her work, including experience in the health care, retail, and philanthropic capacities. As a newbie to the team she takes everything in with such enthusiasm and delight, we’ve dubbed her our very own Stokefire cheerleader.

Kathy's our organizational and leadership guru.  If you want a coherent strategic framework in which to ground your brand, this is the woman to call on.  She ensures the brands Stokefire develops match up with your organization’s ability to execute.

Kathy's experience runs the gamut from manager and administrator to leader and Board member.  Throw in author, teacher, presenter, certified strategic planning facilitator and trainer.  She's a frighteningly successful executive coach (frightening because her levels of insight are just plain scary) who "gets" organizational change from the inside out. Which is critical, because a successful rebranding effort is in large part an organizational change, not just a graphic update.

We know how good Kathy is, because we called her in to work with Stokefire as we dealt with the complications brought on by our own growth and brand update. Once we saw what she can do, we had to have her for our clients.  'Nuff said?