Christopher Wyatt Tippie, Managing Partner

Christopher Tippie, 40, founded Maroon in August 2006.  Tippie has provided the digital media industry with thought leadership, acting in executive management roles on behalf of clients.  This includes the Find N Save Joint Venture, the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium and Media News Group.

As Acting CEO of Find N Save , Tippie managed the acquisition, integration and public launch for the joint venture which includes Advance Digital, A. H. Belo Corporation, Cox Media Group, Gannett Co., Inc., Hearst Corporation, MediaNews Group, The McClatchy Company, and The Washington Post Co.

Additionally, Tippie has served as the founding Executive Director of the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium – a group of 35 newspapers companies who have entered into agreements with Yahoo, Inc. He has also served as the Transition Officer for MediaNews Group heading up the integration of the online assets of the San Jose Mercury News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Contra Costa Times and Monterey Herald.

Prior to Maroon Tippie, served as Vice President of Marketing and Client Services for WebVisible, a Search Engine Marketing company based in Irving, California. During his tenure at WebVisible, Tippie was responsible for new product development and reseller management working with companies such as Dex Media, RH Donnelley, McClatchy, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and MediaNews Group. Previously, Tippie lead technology initiatives for MediaNews Group Interactive as Vice President of Service Delivery. In this capacity, Tippie managed software development, support, ad operations and program management for the interactive division of MediaNews Group, the fourth largest newspaper company in the United States. He was responsible for the online technology infrastructure including content management systems, search, archival systems, corporate email and graphical ad platforms. Tippie has also served in an executive capacity at Managed Business Solutions (MBS), the Indigio Group, and Planet Technologies.

Tippie earned his Masters in Business Administration from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and his Juris Doctor from the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University. He also holds a BA in Economics from Marietta College. Chris Tippie lives a charmed life living in Crested Butte, Colorado. He is married to photographer Andrea Tippie. They have two wonderful daughters, Eleanor and Samantha and enjoy spending as much time as possible in the high country.

Christopher Tippie can be reached ctippie@maroonventures.com or 303.807.2022.

Charity Huff, Partner

Charity Huff draws on a wealth of search engine marketing, newspaper and yellow pages experience to bring media products to local markets. Since joining Maroon as a partner in 2007, Huff has assisted both media companies and digital starts ups in designing and implementing their go-to-market strategies, leveraging her knowledge of the local SMB market.

Additionally Huff continues to provide her services to Tru Measure, a standalone business incubated within Maroon.

Before joining Maroon, Huff managed strategic relationships for WebVisible, an online media company specializing in local search engine marketing products. Huff leveraged her experience with both newspapers and yellow pages to double WebVisible’s affiliate revenues.

Huff’s media experience includes an account management role at MediaNews Group, where she helped to establish a service delivery practice for the company’s interactive division. In this role, Huff managed the relationship between MNG corporate and its Los Angeles and Northern California newspaper properties. These websites represented 40 percent of the company’s interactive revenues.

Before joining MediaNews Group, Huff worked for eight years in the Internet yellow pages industry at Dex Media (now R.H. Donnelley). As part of the Corporate Program Management Office, she managed the cross-functional efforts required to bring new product to market. During her tenure she gained extensive experience with digital products, sales force automation tools, competitive response marketing and sales campaign planning.

Huff earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Washington State University and a Masters in Business Administration with an emphasis in Operations Management from Regis University.

Huff takes full advantage of what life has to offer in Denver, Colorado. She is married to Brian Huff, a Chemical Engineer whom acts as Group Leader for Golder Associates Water Treatment practice. They share their life with two children, Trenton and Sarah. She enjoys directing her creative energies into her oil paintings, creating landscapes and interiors that capture life with family and friends.

Charity Huff can be reached at chuff@maroonventures.comor 303.886.6816.

Julie Brahler, Associate

Julie Brahler joined Maroon in 2007. Previously she was with MediaNews Group Interactive as a Project and Account Manager. Brahler’s most recent focus was establishing a process for efficiently redesigning MediaNews Groups’s 80 newspaper websites, creating consistencies across sites and focusing on user experience and effective ad placements to optimize revenue.

After establishing the initial process and launching the first round of sites, Brahler applied this process to successfully transition the newly acquired San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Monterey Herald and SiliconValley.com. Each newspaper site not only needed to be redesigned, but transferred onto MediaNews Group systems and processed within 9 months, as required by the acquisition terms. All newspapers were successfully transitioned ahead of schedule.

Brahler’s other project management experience includes three years with the Indigio Group managing efforts for Dex One including a complete redesign, reengineering and functionality overhaul of the online yellow pages site www.dexknows.com. She managed additional projects including www.budgettrucks.com , www.yellowtruck.com , www.imove.com and various initiatives with Mini Moves and Re/Max. Brahler started her career as a business analyst and project manager with Qwest Communications focusing on building Qwest’s Intranet, “theQ”.

Since joining Maroon, Brahler has managed MediaNews Group’s migration to Yahoo!’s Ad Serving Platform (APT) including working very closely with Yahoo! during the pilot launch for www.mercurynews.com and subsequent MNG papers. As one of the first sites to launch on APT, Brahler was tasked with tracking many moving parts including timelines and contractual obligations, establishing processes and writing documentation for the implementation process. Her experiences with the APT platform launch have allowed her to work with various other newspaper companies on pre-migration activities. In addition, she has worked with the Newspaper Consortium’s project managing activities associated with Yahoo! HotJobs.

Brahler has a BS in Information Systems from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Julie Brahler lives in Denver. Her husband Mark is a Software Engineer. They have two wonderful little boys Matthew and Zachary. Julie has a passion for U.S. history and secretly harbors a desire to live in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Julie Brahler can be reached at jbrahler@maroonventures.com or 720.323.9394.

Sarah Garrison, Project Manager

Sarah Garrison joined Maroon from Zillow.com. While at Zillow, Garrison held responsibility for migrating the 700+ newspapers involved in the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium onto the Zillow real estate platform. Her focus was three-fold: technology build out to port listings sold by the newspaper channel to the Zillow platform, establishing new operational processes that govern the partnership, and training Zillow’s newspaper partners on the Zillow product line and platform.

Previously Garrison was with MediaNews Group Interactive as a Project Manager where she managed the implementation of Yahoo! HotJobs and numerous Yahoo! Content initiatives. In this role, Garrrison acted as liaison between the individual newspaper properties and Yahoo!, managing multiple content integration initiatives and managing the technology build out for HotJobs.

Additionally, Garrison was responsible for migrating new newspaper acquisitions onto MediaNews Group’s systems. A master of juggling multiple projects to completion, Garrison managed the redesign initiative for over 40 newspaper Web sites within one year.

Garrison has also spent time in the newsroom. She was the New Media Editor at The Daily Herald Co. (www.heraldnet.com) where she was responsible for content on the site. As a result, she worked closely with News, IT, marketing, circulation and advertising to develop and maintain content, create workflow, evaluate new products, train staff and develop efficiencies. Though a newshound at heart, Garrison also managed online sales efforts working with print sales reps and over 50 clients involving billing, scheduling, creative, placement and reporting.

Garrison holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Washington State University. She currently lives in the Seattle area with her husband, Travis, and two cats. She enjoys sipping on strong black coffee in the Seattle drizzle.

Sarah can be reached at sgarrision@maroonventures.com or 425.772.8910.

Henry Chung

Henry Chung joined Maroon in 2009, and is based in the New York City office.

Prior to joining Maroon, Henry was with Hearst Newspapers and was responsible for their new business investments in Digital Media. Before joining Hearst, Chung’s 20-year media finance career includes senior finance and strategic planning positions in both start-ups and large public companies.

Henry holds an MBA in Finance from New York University and a BS in Economics and Management from Carnegie-Mellon University. He lives in New York with his wife and two boys.

Henry Chung can be reached at hchung@maroonventures.com or at 212.726.4422 x106.

Industy Connections

Maroon Is proud to promote the activites of our friends in the industry:

Cadence Enterprises
A software company focusing on custom applications that run businesses.  You can reach Cadence Enterprises at  inquiry@cadenceenterprises.com .

Dean Burney
Designer, Information Architect, Front-End Developer, User Experience Consultant. Contact Dean at dean@deanburney.com