The Alzheimer’s Association‘s San Diego-Imperial counties chapter, has named former KUSI creative services director Doug Friedman as its new director of communications.
Friedman succeeds Kristen Cusato, a former KUSI-TV news anchor who relocated earlier this year to Southington, CT, to serve as director of communications at the Alzheimer’s Association Connecticut chapter.
A veteran of television production and marketing, Friedman started as a writer on “The Newlywed Game” and later was responsible for the national launch of “Access Hollywood.” He also operated his own advertising agency, Malibu Marketing, for eight years, and worked with Paramount Television, Lions Gate Film and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
At the Alzheimer’s Association, Friedman will oversee publicity and marketing initiatives. “I’m thrilled to be helping with the important work promoting Alzheimer’s care and research,” he said.
Cusato left KUSI in 2015 to work at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute as communications manager until 2018, when she joined the local Alzheimer’s Association chapter for a year. Cusato’s mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2009 and passed away prior to Cusato joining KUSI in 2013.
San Diego’s Kazuhm was Product of Year Winner at NAB
San Diego-based Kazuhm, developer of a workload processing platform, received a Product of the Year award at the recent 2019 National Association of Broadcasters Show, held earlier this month in Las Vegas. Kazuhm was recognized in the IT Networking, Infrastructure and Security category.
Kazuhm’s platform allows organizations to recapture existing IT resources and intelligently manage work across a fabric of desktops, data centers and cloud. The user interface helps to limit an organization’s dependence on IT support. The company said benefits include lower IT and cloud costs, enhanced security, improved performance and reduction of latency.
“Since our company’s inception, we’ve seen tremendous excitement and opportunity to apply our best-in-class solution to telecommunications, media and entertainment,” said Tim O’Neal, Kazuhm CEO. “These industries often require low-latency solutions for delivering entertainment services, or compute resource-heavy applications to support transcoding and rendering.”
NAB Show Product of the Year award winners were selected by a panel of industry experts in 16 categories. To be eligible for an award, nominated products and technologies had to be on display at the 2019 NAB Show for the first time and available for delivery in calendar year 2019
“Nominees like Kazuhm are revolutionizing the way people experience media and entertainment,” said Chris Brown, NAB executive vice president. “The 2019 NAB Show Product of the Year Awards highlight the best of what’s new at the premier launch-pad for breakthroughs at the intersection of media, entertainment and technology.”
L7 Creative Names Derrick Gallego as Director of Customer Engagement
L7 Creative, a Carlsbad-based digital brand engagement agency, has hired Derrick Gallego as director of customer engagement. Gallego will help clients foster the brand loyalty it takes to make them successful, the company said.
Previously, Gallego spent the past 10 years in the financial services industry as a mortgage consultant, banker and service representative with Wells Fargo and USE Credit Union.
“As Ben Hogan once said, ‘the most important shot in golf is the next one,’ and that is how I look at business,” said Gallego. “I work strategically to make sure the next sales call, the next client, the next campaign is as successful as possible.”
Founded in 2001, L7 also has an office in Boston.
Jenna Brossman Leaves PR Agency for Engineering Firm
Jenna Brossman has left J. Walcher Communications, a San Diego public relations and marketing agency, after five years and joined NV5 Global, an engineering and consulting company as an integrated marketing specialist.
Brossman will support NV5’s public agency, construction, capital improvement, environmental and economic development projects, creating and managing community outreach campaigns. NV5 has worked in San Diego with the Padre Dam Municipal Water District, San Diego County Water Authority, Vallecitos Water District and Olivenhain Municipal Water District, as well as the cities of Oceanside, Imperial Beach and Carlsbad.
With 10 years of experience in the communications field, Brossman previously worked at Cook + Schmid. She also interned at the Hotel del Coronado. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from San Diego State University.
Rick Griffin is a San Diego-based public relations and marketing consultant. His MarketInk column appears weekly on Mondays in Times of San Diego.
