Team

Karla Trippe
Karla W. Trippe, APR
Founder & President

Karla brings more than 25 years of marketing experience from the agency and client perspective to her role as president of Trippe & Company. She specializes in product positioning, messaging and brand strategies as she has introduced more than 50 products worldwide during her career.

Karla’s philosophy has always been that you need to learn your craft before you can run the department. She first learned media planning and direct marketing at a Dallas advertising agency. She studied the craft of communications at one of Denver’s largest PR firms. She discovered the interplay of copy and design as an in-house writer at a Silicon Valley software company.

With her apprenticeship complete, Karla began directing Symantec’s worldwide advertising program. To improve results she created the company’s first market research department, specializing in product concept, positioning, and advertising testing. Her work resulted in receiving the prestigious Vice President Award for developing Symantec’s first brand-building ad campaign.

As vice president of White & Company, the public relations subsidiary of BBDO LA, Karla transformed this PR firm to an integrated marketing agency. Based on her efforts, Karla was asked to sit on the integrated marketing team for Omnicom Worldwide.

She then joined Porter Novelli as vice president of the consumer technology group. While there she managed the multi-million dollar Iomega account where she took over developing positioning & messaging for Iomega’s storage products and created one-of-a-kind brand-building PR campaigns for Zip.

Education:

BA in Communications from the University of Missouri.
APR from Public Relations Society of America

Boards:

Silverthorne Town Council, 2002 – 2007
Silverthorne Planning Commission, Vice Chair, 2001
Summit County Telecommunications Consortium Chair, 2005
Evocative, Inc., San Francisco Bay Area-based colocation and managed services provider, 2005-present
Healthy Women/Healthy Babies, 2009-present

Robert Ferri
Investor Relations

Bob keeps his focus on early-stage and public company growth having the experience in investor-related marketing that many would envy.

Bob has helped found, grow and finance a number of companies in the United States and Europe, including online securities brokers, trading and other transaction technology providers, and enterprise solutions companies. He maintains a similar focus as a founding partner of Catapult Technology Ventures, which concentrates on private technology companies in the U.S.

Bob has international experience in financial communications, having launched and headed media relations departments for The Nasdaq Stock Market and its parent organization, the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., as well as Montgomery Securities, a prominent investment bank focused on growth companies.

At two Omnicom firms, Bob launched the Financial Communications and Investor Relations Practice, which grew quickly to serve publicly traded and IPO-track companies, as well as financial services firms, throughout the United States.

In Washington, D.C., Bob was Executive Assistant for Communications to United States Senator John Heinz. He also was a columnist and reporter in the Washington bureau of Thomson Newspapers, Inc., a chain of more than 100 daily newspapers.

Education:

M.S. in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Boards:

Etherstack, Inc., a London-based wireless software company
Minerva Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology licensing company based in the Bay Area of California.
Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council of Harvard’s Kennedy School
San Francisco Area Advisory Committee of the Center for Public Interest Careers at Harvard College
Resource Center for the United Nations
American Liver Foundation’s Northern California Chapter
Presidio YMCA in San Francisco

Rich Miller
Communications

Rich has led media campaigns for more than 60 companies through his work at leading agencies on the East Coast and in the Rocky Mountain region. While Rich specializes in managing communications activities for emerging companies, he has lent his PR expertise to companies in a wide range of consumer-oriented fields including financial services, consumer electronics, sports marketing, marketing promotions and non-profits.

Rich is the lead geek at Trippe & Company having worked with organizations in nearly every sector of the IT industry, including network security, data storage, IT infrastructure facilities, mobile computing, satellite imaging, component software, project management software, IT consulting, application services, avionics, encryption, semiconductor equipment, statistical software, applications services and display technology.

Rich’s agency experience includes working for Schwartz Communications, one of the country’s largest and most respected independent technology PR agencies as well as Metzger Associates, one of the larger agencies in the Rocky Mountain region.

Rich’s work does win awards such as the Best of COMDEX Award for best new technology. His work has also been recognized by the PR industry including the PRSA Gold Pick Award, The BMA Gold Key Award, The Sabre Award and the Communicator Award.

Education:

B.S summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in Economics and German from Bowdoin College