People

Jamie began his career in 1986 as a below average account person at Fallon McElligott in Minneapolis. Hoping he’d do less damage in the creative department, Fallon rehired him as a copywriter. Inspired by the switch, Jamie went on to create hundreds of print ads, most of which are stored in labeled boxes in his attic.

In 1990, Jamie left for Portland, Oregon where he began an eight-year run at Wieden+Kennedy. There he wrote award-winning Nike work for Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Tiger Woods, and the Atlanta Olympics. In 1996, he was named the lead creative director on the Nike business.

In 1998, Jamie joined Fallon, NY as Partner and Executive Creative Director. Within two years the shop had won four Cannes Gold Lions, and its billings had quintupled to $250 million. In 2000, Jamie was named Adweek’s National Creative Director of the Year.

In January 2002, Jamie checked with his wife and found they had three children under the age of two. Together, they made the decision to leave New York City and relocate to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. In his first four years there, Jamie developed award-winning work for Saturn, eBay, HBO, the Oakland A’s, and Comcast. In 2002, his Saturn “Sheet Metal” commercial was awarded Commercial of the Year by both Adweek and Advertising Age. In 2004, his eBay work was awarded Campaign of the Year by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). In 2005, Comcast was named Adweek’s National Campaign of the Year. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Jamie was named one of Creativity’s Top 50 creatives. 2009 and 2010 were landmark years for Comcast and the NBA. Comcast’s “Rabbit” was the world’s most awarded commercial, according to Ad Age’s Creativity magazine. And the NBA’s “There Can Be Only One” campaign won a Cannes Lion as well as being parodied by Saturday Night Live and on the cover of Time magazine.

In the fall of 2012, Jamie and Patrick Kelly had a beer at the Old Ship Saloon in San Francisco and decided to start barrettSF.

Patrick is an embittered Seattle Supersonics fan who has not entered a Starbuck’s store since Howard Schultz moved the team from Seattle to Oklahoma City.

Fortunately, Patrick has been more successful in advertising than as a sports fan. He began his career in 2001 as an account manager at Ogilvy and Mather in New York City working on the IBM software business. He managed the global rollout of research and advertising, and led its repositioning from “software” to “middleware”. This included management of EMEA, the AP and lots of ordering of conference room foods.

In 2003, Patrick joined Fallon, NY as an account supervisor working on Virgin Mobile. He worked on award-winning domestic campaigns and helped bring the brand into the digital media landscape.

After Fallon closed its New York operations, Patrick took a job at Anomaly Communications where he helped run the Virgin America account. At the time, Virgin America was just a six-person company. Patrick did everything from helping develop the interiors of the planes and inflight entertainment systems, to managing their massive online booking engine. Along the way he forged partnerships with Burton, HBO and Boing Boing, and helped establish the media strategy Virgin America still employs today.

In February of 2006, Patrick joined Goodby, Silverstein and Partners in San Francisco to launch a new department called Brand Publicity. Over the next five years he touched virtually every piece of business at the agency including Got Milk?, Chevrolet, Yahoo, HP, NBA, Adobe, Pepsico, Sonic, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Sprint. He was also involved in virtually every new business pitch and ran a first-of-its-kind internal training program that spanned all departments.

Patrick left GSP in 2011 to attempt his own technology start up in the social media space. Lucky for him, it didn’t really “start up.”

Molly is an Account Director and Associate Partner with 10 years of strategic management experience who believes in the magic of branding, dogs, and the Minnesota Vikings.

She started her career at Mortar, a small start-up advertising agency in San Francisco. In four years, she swiftly moved from ambitious intern to Senior Account Manager, mastering the art of talking passionate creatives and indecisive clients off the proverbial ledge. Her accounts ranged from education and non-profit accounts such as Golden Gate University and Business for Social Responsibility, to a slew of B2B technology companies, including Isilon Storage, MediaMind and SK Telecom Americas. She also managed to single-handedly carry back 11 drinks from Starbucks, and win the agency’s inaugural March Madness pool.

From there she spent three years at Eleven helping to produce award-winning work for clients like Virgin America, Dignity Health, Yahoo!, Apple, Sun Valley Resort & Visit Sun Valley, Coinstar, and Callaway Golf.

Since joining barrettSF in 2013, Molly has become the heart and soul of the agency while leading a long list of clients including Salesforce, Rubio’s Coastal Grill, 2K Games, Exchange Bank, In-Shape Health Clubs and Tipping Point Community.

Molly still dreams of living with a dog and without a landlord.

Jillian is a surprisingly warm Minnesota native who loves figuring out how creativity can impact business.

She started her career in public relations, pitching pet products to editors who rarely returned her calls. She quickly realized she was passionate about technology’s impact on brands and people, and jumped on an opportunity to build a social and digital PR discipline at Carmichael Lynch Spong in Minneapolis.

A desire to create truly breakthrough strategies and creative work led her to mono in Minneapolis, where she spent 5 years in a growing planning department. In addition to brand positioning and messaging work for Target, Lucy Activewear, MSNBC, and Phillips Distilling Company, she worked on experiential projects that became some of the agency’s most awarded work: The Blu Dot Real Good Chair Experiment, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s ‘Human Doing’, The Lucy Light Forest, and Target’s Tweet-to-Runway Show.

After 30+ winters in the frozen tundra, Jillian realized she could spend the whole year somewhere warm(ish). She made the move to San Francisco’s sunniest neighborhood and started building a brand strategy department at Office. Working closely with the marketing team at Whole Foods Market, she helped extend the brand to several new ventures, including the Whole Foods Rewards Program. She also developed a brand and marketing strategy for Stanford Children’s Health and worked on projects for Google, PepsiCo, and nonprofit 826 Valencia, a creative writing center for underserved kids in the Bay Area.

Since she joined barrettSF, Jillian has been a strong voice for more charts, less screen time, and more happy hours.

Conor is best known as a former professional athlete.

Okay, that’s not exactly true, but it is true that after college he moved to Holland and played a season of professional water polo. It turns out water polo isn’t quite as lucrative as Conor had hoped. So in 2007 he took a “real job” as an Assistant Account Manager at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. Within a year, he figured out that his passion wasn’t in account managing, but production. So he switched departments and quickly climbed up the production ranks at GS&P.

Conor has produced award-winning campaigns for the NBA, Xfinity, the California Milk Processor Board (“got milk?”), and Chevrolet, amongst others. Career highlights include: shooting with 3-time Academy Award winner Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, traveling the world for Chevrolet’s 100th anniversary campaign, and beating Kevin Durant in one-on-one while on set.*

In 2016, Conor joined the barrettSF family as Head of Production. Since his arrival, the office is significantly louder and redder.

*Editor’s note: it remains unclear if Durant knew they were actually “playing one-on-one.”

When Todd Eisner was in third grade he got in trouble for turning a math test over mid-exam and drawing a picture of Heathcliff on the back. Later, when his teacher handed him back his ‘F,’ she informed Todd that doodling was not a realistic career goal. Incorrect, Ms. Colvin.

Years later Todd enrolled at the University of Delaware, whose mascot is a fighting chicken. Upon graduation he moved to New York City, where he spent the better part of a decade doodling professionally as an art director on brands like Oreo, Planters and Diet Coke. He was also able to pursue a variety of illustration and animation projects and even did some writing for literary powerhouse MAD magazine.

Despite claiming he would never leave New York, Todd ran for the hills of San Francisco in 2011 when an alarmingly tall man named Jamie Barrett offered him a job at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. While there he helped reposition Chevy trucks, made some debatably disturbing Cheetos commercials, and later ran the trader segment of TDAmeritrade and Sonic Drive-In accounts.

In 2016, Todd was reunited with Jamie when he joined barrettSF as a creative director, proving that time is a flat circle. Whatever that means.

Brad graduated from design school at about the exact moment all things “dot-com” were closing shop. This awkward timing led to a job in something called “advertising” where his title seemed to change daily from “designer” to “interactive designer” to “art director” to “creative” (and every other corporate combination of those words).

In the years since, Brad has worked at large and small award-winning agencies in Boston and San Francisco and has done work for clients ranging from Volkswagen, Audi, Google, Intel, 2K Games, Ubisoft, Bleacher Report, Puma, Timberland, and eBay. His work has appeared in Communication Arts, Graphis, Print Magazine, as well as winning design and ad awards from Cannes, D&AD, The Museum of Modern Art NYC, The Smithsonian/Cooper Hewitt, and AICP.

Additionally, Brad continues to work on passion projects outside the day job including freelance poster work for The Fillmore in San Francisco, photography, and playing in a band that’s entirely too loud.

Rafi began his career in advertising as an assistant media planner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. After 5 years working in media and a down economy, Rafi wanted to get closer to the creative work itself, and started over as a creative intern. From there an opportunity opened up to work with Jamie Barrett, who was a partner and Executive Creative Director at GS&P. What formed was a friendship, and mentorship, and an invite to Rafi’s wedding, where Jamie proceeded to be a distraction on the dance floor. Eventually, Jamie encouraged Rafi to try his talents at recruiting, and so he did. Rafi learned to recruit with multi-year runs at FCB, and Pereira & O’Dell.

While there, he created internship programs, learned to recruit across all disciplines, and made critical hires from the ECD & Managing Director level on down.

When Jamie reached back out to Rafi to help him recruit and build for barrettSF, it was an exciting opportunity to get the band back together. Rafi excels at creating strong relationships with students and alumni from schools such as VCU Brandcenter, Creative Circus, and Miami Ad school, Academy of Art among others. He loves representing barrettSF and has even gotten involved in the agency PR side of the business.

Beyond advertising, Rafi is a proud father of two, and tries to get out to play soccer and run whenever his life, or his wife, lets him.

“When he’s around anything can happen…and usually does…he may be hard to handle…but he’s easy to like…he’s not what you’d expect…but there’s one thing you can count on…he’s the best friend a good time ever had.”

These words not only describe Patrick Swayze in the trailer for the 1989 classic “Roadhouse,” but throw in the phrase “wears a lot of denim” and they also happen to describe Phil Fattore.

But Phil didn’t always wear a lot of denim. He used to wear other things. Like a shirt and tie every day for 12 years of private school, maize and blue on Saturdays for 4 years at the University of Michigan, and back sweat for a year and a half of portfolio school at The Creative Circus in Atlanta.

In 2015, Phil wore a fake mustache to a job interview with Jamie Barrett and Pete Harvey. Shortly after, Phil took off for San Francisco to join them. And shortly after that, he took off the fake mustache as well.

Since then, Phil has spent the majority of his time doodling on the creative briefs and walls of barrettSF. Many of those doodles involve an anthropomorphized hamburger that was born from a combination of fast food chemicals and the mood ring from a careless fry cook. He hates his life.

The burger. Not Phil.

Aryan Aminzadeh joins BarrettSF from Eleven Inc., where she was a copywriter and creative director on brands like Virgin America, Aria Resort & Casino, and Dignity Health. Previously, she worked at various agencies with ampersands, including Saatchi & Saatchi, David & Goliath, and Pereira & O’Dell. Her campaigns have been recognized at The One Show, CLIO, and Cannes Lions advertising festivals.

She once recorded a jingle with Naughty by Nature. Her mom still doesn’t get that she writes commercials, not stars in them.

The head shot you just saw of Aryan is actually a reshoot. The original shot was taken first thing on a Monday, after a very rough weekend. It wasn’t Aryan’s best.

Byron asked his dad to write a bio for him. He may have been drinking at the time. This is what he sent us:

“Driving The Creative Process To New Heights”

“Byron studied Marketing and Spanish at the University of Georgia. Driven by a deep desire to create, he continued his pursuit for excellence in the creative arena¹ at The Creative Circus in Atlanta. While at The Circus, in addition to building his portfolio, Byron led several award winning campaigns as Art Director and as a Creative Intern at Fitzgerald + Co.²

Wanting to explore what the Advertising Industry and the creative process could provide,³ Byron moved from Atlanta to San Francisco to begin his professional career as an Art Director Intern at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. From there, he moved to barrettSF where he is part of an award winning team leading campaigns for clients such as The Bleacher Report,⁴ Stand Up for Cancer,⁵ Cost Plus World Market, GolfNow and the Redwood Association Growers of Northern California.”⁶

1 – I don’t know what a creative arena is, but I want to go to there
2 – Not entirely true
3 – Big fan of this sentence setup
4 – “Bleacher Report”
5 – “Stand Up TO Cancer” slight difference there
6 – “Humboldt Redwood”

Parents are the best.

Abby Hindle supports advertising practitioners with beautifully coordinated daily bits of inspiration and sustenance to help them flow through multiple-hour long client meetings and to survive late-night disillusionment. Her style blends the mystical practices of man’s ancestral beginnings with the realities of our industry’s fast-paced technologically-infused environment. Since her arrival, the agency has tripled in size and her flock of creative’s work has been recognized by the One Show, The Clios, The Andys, AICP, The Webbys and more. When she’s not facilitating award-winning creative thinking at barrettSF you can find her at any number of Napa & Sonoma’s finest vineyards trying to keep up with the cumbersome contractual obligations of her numerous wine memberships. Well, that and watching Gossip Girl. Obvi.

xoxo

Charlotte “Shark” Dugoni originally hails from Portland, Oregon, though she often embarks on seasonal migrations to the warm waters of Mexico where she preys on innocent and helpless baby seals.

But before becoming a flesh-eating predator terrorizing coastal towns all over the world, Shark was a soccer player and student at The University of Montana in Missoula, Montana where she discovered her love of film.

Since entering the murky and occasionally treacherous waters of advertising, Shark has been a part of producing award-winning work at Goodby Silverstein & Partners (Comcast’s “Emily’s Oz”) and has found her home as a Broadcast Producer at barrettSF, working on range of tasty clients including 2K/WWE, Rubio’s Coastal Grill, Humboldt Redwood, Zappos, Cost Plus World Market, Toto and many more.

Lyndsey (with a y) is an account supervisor who happens to be a total brand nerd with a passion for production. Following four years of school in the Arizona desert, she moved to another nearby desert to join the brand marketing team at ARIA Resort & Casino. Here she learned the ins and outs of running a 4,004 room resort and casino, and how to make a brand stand out in a sea of sameness.

Next, Lyndsey moved to the east coast to work on a tech startup and met the man of her dreams. She soon realized she liked the man better than the coast, so together they packed up and headed back west.

Settled back in the Bay Area, Lyndsey began working at Eleven, where she had the opportunity to work on the ARIA account as well as GoToMeeting and other GoTo products.

Lyndsey’s hiring at barrettSF was a bit of a serendipitous event, and she is happy to share the longer version of that story over an adult beverage. You can find her currently working on Cost Plus World Market, Zappos.com, Humboldt Redwood and Exchange Bank.

Oh, also. Lyndsey is a lifelong Cubs fan and has a bad habit of overusing commas. And one of her favorite places on earth is literally called Home – Home, WA – look it up.

Angie is bSF’s graphic designer and resident Antipodean.*

Prior to settling in the bay, Angie worked in independent design studios in Sydney, Australia followed by a two-year stint in Berlin, Germany. While in Berlin, she worked on brand, web design, and illustration projects for both local and international clients ranging from artists, to start-ups, to independent publications.

Angie loves the challenge of working with limitations, and has a taste for stuff that’s clever, well-executed, and a little quirky.

*The Antipodeans were a group of Australian modern artists who asserted the importance of figurative art, and protested against abstract expressionism. They staged a single exhibition in Melbourne during August 1959. We didn’t know any of this until we looked it up.

Kevin’s path from Richmond, VA to San Francisco, CA was fairly straightforward. That’s typically how planes fly.

But his path to barrettSF wasn’t quite as linear.

After college, Kevin signed up for a one year commitment to AmeriCorps which quickly morphed into three.

In those three years, he built trails in Big Bend National Park, provided disaster relief in Galveston, TX, rebuilt homes in New Orleans, jumped in quicksand and played chicken with a bear.

Oddly, working in New Orleans at a rebuilding non-profit is what steered him towards advertising. There, he got to run social media accounts and manage fundraising campaigns, one of which was a successful Pepsi Refresh Project campaign.

From there, Kevin returned to the East Coast and began working at a small ad agency in Richmond, VA; managing accounts and copywriting for local businesses.

Kevin then attended VCU’s Brandcenter and it was there that Kevin met barrettSF hype men, Rafi and Jamie. (They gave a talk. Then had students compete for prizes. Kevin hit a chore ball shot* and won a conversation with Pete Harvey)

After graduation, Kevin took a job in San Francisco at experience marketing agency, George P. Johnson. There he did strategy work for tech user conferences and a couple SXSW installations.

“I miss the emotional, psychological parts of advertising…” is not something he said out loud, no one wants to hear that… but he felt it.

Kevin got back in touch with Rafi, met a bunch of people at barrett, had some great conversations, vibes were flowing, and then they said “Sorry. We’ve already got someone that looks like you. His name’s Conor. It’d be weird to have two of you.”

Ultimately, the two parties compromised.

Now he’s here doing strategy work on Humboldt Redwood, Jet, & Cost Plus World Market and enjoying the office’s open dog policy.

It took Jocelyn six months and two tries to get this job. What really sealed the deal was when she agreed to shovel snow off the roof of Jamie’s vacation house. (Jamie was mostly kidding about the snow thing. Mostly.)

While she was still interviewing for the job, Jamie compared this position to that of a “Glue Guy” in basketball; the person in this role would be the Draymond Green of bSF. Not yet versed in Bay area sports teams, the name Draymond Green meant nothing to Jocelyn, but what did resonate with her was the opportunity to be a grade A baller and all around valuable asset to the team.

When Rafi called to offer her the job she happily packed up her immense collection of Oregon Duck gear, tie dye, and Oregon Duck tie dye, and headed for San Francisco.

Since her arrival at barrettSF she has taken the glue guy mentality to heart, diving in on whatever projects come her way. While she doesn’t work on any accounts directly, Jocelyn manages Jamie’s schedule and coordinates travel for most of the teams, so she likes to tell herself that she works on every account. At any given time you can catch Jocelyn snapping pictures for the barrett social media profiles, updating this beautiful website, or enabling her co-workers’ moderate La Croix obsession with weekly Costco deliveries.

While she’s mainly been fulfilling her role as Executive Assistant and general office backup, Jocelyn’s official bSF contract also lists “Medieval re-enactment expert” so keep your eyes peeled for the first annual barrettSF jousting tournament. If Draymond is looking to expand his glue guy skillset, Jocelyn would gladly show him the ropes.

Jessica Sugerman is an art director with a background in painting. 
 
She graduated from the SUNY Purchase School of Art & Design and worked for The Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn, NY. When she wasn’t driving a 40-foot trailer filled with sketchbooks around North America, she was developing partnerships and managing their staff.
 
One day, Jess googled “creative grad programs”, stumbled onto something called the VCU Brandcenter, and thought “that seems pretty great.” Two years later, she received her Master’s Degree and started her new advertising career at barrettSF.

Jess is happy to be referred to as “Shugs”, or “J Shugs” if you say it the right way. It’s your call.

Jeff Tune is a copywriter who sharpened his writing chops while pursuing a rap career for over a decade. After graduating from the University of Colorado, he moved into a 31-foot RV and began touring the country. Signing record contracts in Japan and Canada, Tune is well versed in… verses.

Jeff learned the advertising craft at the VCU Brandcenter. There he found his creative partner Jessica Sugerman, participated in The Martin Agency’s intern program “The Kitchen”, and learned how to read.

Married since 2009, Jeff is a husband and a French Bulldog dad. He roots for the Mariners, the Seahawks, and the 29 NBA teams that play against the Thunder.

He will play darts or sing karaoke with you. No questions asked.

At an Orlando Magic charity event in 1997, Meredith challenged her favorite basketball player, Horace Grant, to a game of pool. He not only accepted the challenge, but also said his agent would get this little girl whatever she wanted if she could actually win.

Meredith proceeded to nearly run the table on him.

True to his word, Horace gave Meredith his agent’s contact information. Meredith’s mom suggested she ask the agent to star in a Pepsi commercial alongside Horace. Even as a young kid, Meredith knew this was wildly unreasonable. So instead, she decided to learn how to write the things her mom so badly wanted her to star in.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina and a short stint on the account side of advertising, Meredith spent two years at ad school in Atlanta. From there, she headed to San Francisco, where she worked at Venables Bell & Partners, writing for brands like Audi, Google, Reebok and SKYY Vodka. After four years at VB&P, Meredith went to LA, where she became an Associate Creative Director for clients like National Public Radio and the One Love Foundation. Missing the need to always have a light jacket, Meredith moved back to San Francisco to join barrettSF.

Meredith no longer hustles professional basketball players in pool, but she does have a pretty great autographed Horace Grant shoe. Courtesy of his agent.

William didn’t always know his path was winding into advertising. He was obsessive with architecture and music in his younger years, and was convinced one of those two would be his forever-job. After a quick summer internship at an architecture firm in San Francisco, William learned that the field required too much math to ever be fulfilling, so the focus became music. After 4 grueling years of musicianship training, music history memorizing, music analysis debating and plenty of playing at U.C. Berkeley, he wanted to find an industry that celebrates creative, but can apply a more rational strategic and business filter to what they do. Enter Advertising. 

Post-graduation William immediately started working at SF-based agency Venables Bell & Partners, working on all facets of the Audi of America business. Through this exposure in leading fully-integrated campaigns for their lineup of cars, he realized he wanted more hands-on experience with an agency focused and versed in the digital landscape, bringing him to work on the global Skype business at Pereira & O’Dell. This experience, coupled with an intense year on national fast food brand SONIC Drive-In at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, has shaped much of his approach on finding innovative and digital solutions for clients, but understanding integrated and holistic ecosystems to help bring them to life. 

William has a love and passion for all things wine, dogs (especially his two pugs aptly named Zinnie and Pinot) and travel.

Dan’s the guy wearing the green visor, counting the money and keeping the creatives honest to ensure barrettSF can survive and thrive for years to come.

Dan has an alter ego named DJ Spinnerty, who can get the party started in a club, a bus, or a small conference room.

Rachel Zoe Nash, aka ‘wiz bang’, is an accountant / finance wizard / business consultant who enjoys a challenge and creating colorful spreadsheets.

Nash came to barrettSF in 2013, and has served as its fiscal second in command, acting directly under CFO+DJ Spinnerty. Under her tenure she has called the firm “one of the top advertising agencies I’ve worked at in San Francisco”, and declared it to have “a pretty sweet selection of La Croix carbonated beverages”.

While employed at the firm, Nash has continued to nurture her passion for debits and credits, while keeping an artfully trained eye on the company’s bottom line. When she’s not looking out for the agency’s financial health, you can find Rachel cheering on the Giants, hanging out with her favorite mouse in Southern California, or visiting her boyfriend in “sunny” Seattle.