Claudia Brooks D'Avanzo is founder and
president of Creative Communications
Consultants, a marketing communications
and public relations agency started
in 1998 in Atlanta. With 20+ years of
experience, she's designed
award-winning programs in consumer marketing,
healthcare, hospitality,
travel/tourism, sports marketing, retailing,
business-to-business and
not-for-profit. She expanded the firm
in 1999 with Healthcomm, a healthcare
communications practice.
In 2008, as Creative Communications celebrated
its 10th anniversary,
Claudia found herself wanting to do more—and
reach deeper—into the
community. She created Altruistics, a specialized
consulting practice
featuring marketing and management consulting
services for non-profits
offering "community-minded" rates
and select pro bono services. Her
husband, Michael D'Avanzo, an Auburn alumnus
with 20 years' experience in
international management and an M.B.A. from
Georgia State University, is
co-managing the venture.
From 1992-1998,
Claudia was senior vice president for Fleishman-Hillard
International Communications, part of
Omnicom. There she managed the
consumer marketing and healthcare practices
for the firm's Southeast
headquarters office. She was a senior
account manager for Manning,
Selvage & Lee for seven years prior
to F-H and began her career in public
affairs for Lockheed Martin.
Her expertise
covers strategic planning, program management,
marketing
communications, sales promotions, event
marketing, media relations, social
media campaigns, public education initiatives,
issues/crisis management, and
digital, print, broadcast design/production.
During her career, her work has
been honored with 10 Phoenix Awards from
the Public Relations Society of
America, four Gold/Silver Quill Awards
from the International Association of
Business Communicators and a President's
Citation for Private Sector
Initiatives.
A native of Marietta, Ga., she
received a bachelor's degree in speech
communications and journalism from Auburn
University and earned a master's
degree in English literature from Georgia
State University. She is the past chair to the Auburn University PR Advisory Council for the Department of Communication/Journalism and funds the William T. Brooks Endowed Scholarship in Public Relations at Auburn. An avid horse lover, snow skier and soccer mom, she lives in Atlanta with Mike and their two children–Arielle, a senior at the University of Georgia majoring in journalism and public relations, and Adrian, a sophomore at Grady High School.
Manning Fairey has been working in PR for about 10 years. She started her career with Creative Communications Consultants and later joined Jackson Spalding in Atlanta. She rejoined our team in 2011. Manning has extensive experience in consumer brands, cause-related marketing and media relations for clients, including multi-million dollar companies across diverse industries. She is a respected leader of media strategy, traditional and social media planning, and account management, with expertise in media relations, business-to-consumer PR, business-to business PR, and client relations.
A Spartanburg, S.C. native, Manning graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Washington & Lee University where she played on the nationally ranked women’s tennis team. She was named to the Academic All-American Team her senior year. She continues to play competitively through the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA) and serves on the board of the Friends of Bitsy Grant Tennis, a non-profit group working to improve and maintain Atlanta’s historic Bitsy Grant Tennis Center, a public park.
Manning and her husband John live in Buckhead with their 1-year-old son, Jack. When she’s not playing tennis, practicing PR or being a mom, Manning enjoys snow skiing (she taught little kids how to ski in Whistler, B.C.), running and watching college basketball.
Nancy McCardel is a communications professional with 20 years of PR experience
in both corporate and agency settings. Her background includes consumer
marketing, employee communications, media relations, crisis communications,
special events and reputation management. Nancy and Claudia have worked
together for more than 10 years. Nancy previously was a vice president
for Fleishman-Hillard International Communications and managed lifestyle
accounts for a wide variety of companies. Prior to joining the agency,
she was employee communications manager for Reynolds Metals Company, managing
communications for 30,000 employees worldwide, and for five years before
that, was the communications manager for Southwire Company. Nancy gained
her first agency experience with Cohn & Wolfe, a division of Burson-Marsteller,
and started her career working for Georgia-Pacific Corp. She is a 1984
graduate of the University of Georgia with a degree from the Grady College
of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her work has won more than 15 national,
state and local PR awards.
Anne Elizabeth Thomas, assistant account manager, hails from North Carolina. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and holds a degree in journalism and political science. She is now in her second year with Creative Communications, where she has worked primarily on consumer products and food accounts handling such assignments as national promotions, media relations, social media marketing, research, media relations and publicity, and special events. As a student at UNC, she worked on several non-profit campaigns and interned in the press office for North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue. She was an active member of the Public Relations Student Society of America and her sorority, Kappa Delta. Anne loves to travel and has studied abroad in both Italy and England.
A media consultant to Creative Communications, Charles Haddad was a journalist for 25 years. He works with us in helping clients to gain a deeper understanding of the media and prepare for media interaction and interviews. Charlie worked as an editor and writer at such news organizations as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Business Week. His coverage of companies included AOL Time Warner, BellSouth, CNN, Federal Express, Turner Broadcasting, UPS and WorldCom. He also wrote a weekly column about Apple and the Mac that became the most popular column at Business Week online. Now a journalism professor at Stony Brook University in New York, Charlie directed the Knight Fellowship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a program that brings in journalists from around the world to work at the world's premier public health agency. A graduate of Harvard University and Sarah Lawrence College, he has also written three children's novels, all published by Random House.
Jessica Karp is a web and graphic designer. She graduated from the
University of Central Florida with a B.A.
in digital media with a specialization
in internet and interactive media. Jessica has worked with dozens of brands, creating identities, websites, sales materials, interactive media and social marketing. When she's not pulling all-nighters on behalf of her clients, she can be found restoring her atomic ranch house or hitting the open road.
Jonathan Blackwell is one of our
go-to design guys. As owner of Graphic
Anthem, he provides a fresh perspective
when it comes to visual
communications for our clients' brands.
He graduated from Mississippi
College in Jackson, Miss., with a B.A. in
graphic design. He was named the
2008 Graphic Designer of the Year by the
American Advertising Federation of Jackson,
Miss. When he's not working (which is rare),
Jonathan can usually be found out running,
cooking, traveling and listening to, watching
and playing his music.
A media consultant to Creative Communications
Consultants, Eileen Drennen is an independent
writer and editor with 27 years of daily
newspaper experience. The last 22 were
at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
where
Eileen oversaw award-winning arts coverage,
managed teams of critics and
reporters and wrote arts and entertainment
features and reviews. She
reported on local communities during the
last three years as one of the
paper's first "mobile journalists" (have
laptop and camera; will travel). She received
an MFA in creative writing from Queens
University in Charlotte, N.C. She has
a bachelor's degree in English Literature/Classics,with
a minor in Spanish, from Florida State
University.
Meet our Great Dane mascots—Lola, Linus and their pup, Samantha Lucille (Sammi Lu). These gentle giants occasionally hang out with us at the office, where they spend their time sleeping, scratching, sniffing, eating and distracting the intern. They also make great watchdogs for those late work-nights and help keep any unruly clients in line.
