Tattoo leadership
Karen Post
A branding enthusiast, entrepreneur, and businesswoman, Karen ignites action. For more than 29 years, she has been developing solutions and implementing methods that make things happen and help organizations prosper.
She started her first business at the age of 22, built two successful companies—an award-winning ad agency and a legal communication firm specializing in high-stakes litigation. In 2001, she took her vast marketing/communications and branding expertise to the international stage as a speaker, author and consultant.
In 2006, she launched Brain Tattoo Publishing, an online enterprise for creatively-charged entrepreneurs, business professionals and marketers that now produces digital learning tools in niche markets.
Her work has benefited Fortune 500 organizations and emerging small businesses in both consumer and business-to-business sectors.
She has worked with diverse retail, technology, healthcare, hospitality, finance, real estate, media, and consumer packaged goods companies. Specific expertise includes research design, administration and analysis, strategic brand planning, development and management, brand naming, public affairs and media relations, packaging, marketing, sales, promotions, social media and internal and external branding programs.
Karen is a down-to-earth communicator and visionary thought leader. She has been featured in international business and marketing print, broadcast, and online media outlets including Brandweek, Adweek, Bloomberg TV and radio, ABC, NBC, FOX, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Financial Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, and National Public Radio. Karen authored two books, Brand Turnaround (McGraw-Hill 20011) and Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds that was published by American Management Association (AMACOM) in the US and this year in Korea.
In addition to more than two decades of real-world practitioner experience, Karen studied commercial art and communications at The Art Institute of Houston and later became a guest instructor. She also completed Harvard Business School’s OPM, a multi-year management, leadership and entrepreneurial business program. Karen is also an advisory board member of University of Tampa Entrepreneurship Center, a UT Board of Fellows, and is a member of Leadership Houston Class VIII Alumni.
Denis Calabrese
Denis Calabrese is a communications professional whose expertise encompasses public policy, governmental affairs, public relations, media relations and high stakes litigation. He is one of the nation’s foremost policy/issue advocacy experts, and advises senior elected officials at the federal, state and local levels as well as some of the largest and most high-profile corporations in the world, numerous prominent national law firms, medium and small businesses, non-profit foundations, professional associations, professional sports franchises, and many others.
Denis has extensive experience leading communications teams for high-stakes, high-profile lawsuits defending businesses and often entire industries from abusive litigation. He has worked on the defense side of virtually every major national litigation crises including asbestos litigation, breast implant litigation, diet drug litigation, employment discrimination litigation, environmental contamination litigation, gulf war syndrome litigation, lead paint litigation, mold litigation, tobacco litigation, and MTBE gasoline additive litigation. He has extensive experience in forming and managing coalitions made up of numerous defendant companies or individuals. He has also served as chief strategist for the most successful state based tort reform group, Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), since its inception in 1994.
Denis has planned and managed multi-million dollar national advertising campaigns, and directed national and international communications programs for extremely high profile business transactions, policy initiatives, and high-stakes litigation. He has also developed and run the strategic, grassroots and public relations elements of sophisticated legislative and regulatory initiatives on the local, state and national levels. He has worked on virtually every major US economic policy issue including civil justice reform, tax reform, spending reform, education, health care, regulatory reform, social security and climate change. His Washington DC experience includes having served as the first Chief-of-Staff for the past Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.
As a policy expert and media spokesperson, Denis has appeared on, or in, virtually every major television, radio and print media outlet including The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Hannity and Colmes, and many others.
Denis is a graduate of Rice University in Economics and Political Science, and taught a course on political communications at his alma mater. He is also an entrepreneur with multiple successful business startups to his credit, including founding and still operating the largest running/walking fitness program in the world, USA FIT.
