elfing it

Sarah is willing to accept the "princess" title! In fact, according to her mother, the name Sarah actually means princess in the "language of names."

Like Kristine Dang, Sarah Watson is a neighbor of Elfster CEO Peter Imburg, and he found her via our handy neighborhood listserv. She joined Elfster in Fall 2007, and over the past few months has done a variety of projects for the company, from managing customer support, to making "customer experience" recommendations for the site, performing our most comprehensive survey to date, writing marketing collateral and developing a strategic plan.

Sarah has more than 15 years of experience in marketing and communications, and has worked as both a consultant and employee for companies including GE Capital Computer Leasing, Sybase, and IDG. She has also worked and consulted for nonprofits, most recently as the associate executive director of HLAA, a leading disability advocacy association. Prior to her work in marcom, Sarah obtained her degrees in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley (Peter's alma mater) and taught classes in persuasive writing to undergraduates for two years.

Today, Sarah continues to manage various marcom projects for Elfster, including blogging. Comments or ideas for Elfing It, or for marketing the site? Get in touch! We'd love to hear from you - over the years we've implemented many cool ideas that were submitted by Elfster's customers.

 
"Better to be called a queen than a princess," was Kristine's response to her new nickname from Elfster's CEO, Peter Imburg.

Kristine Dang first joined Elfster as a merchandising and marketing advisor in June of 2007.  Peter Imburg discovered and reached out to Kristine after reading about her in an article from the Oakland Tribune, which covered her involvement with her community, Dimond District in Oakland, and her background in merchandising and branding at RedEnvelope. 

For the past eighteen months, Kristine has been heavily involved in the Web 2.0 area, specializing in social networking, social shopping, social media and blogging. Kristine was recently consulting full-time for ThisNext, a social shopping website, where she was interim CMO and Content Director. Prior to consulting in Web 2.0, Kristine was Executive Vice President of Merchandising + Design and Corporate Officer for RedEnvelope, a leading online gifts retailer.  Kristine was the founding merchant at RedEnvelope and was part of the team that took the company public in 2003.  During her eight years at RedEnvelope, Kristine was the company's Gift Expert, where she gave gift-giving advice to numerous print media, including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Men's Fitness Magazine.  Prior to RedEnvelope, Kristine held positions at Williams-Sonoma, Macy's, Sony, The Nature Company and The Gap.

Today, Kristine is a happy blogger and social networker. She joined Elfster as lead blogger in October, 2007. You can also find Kristine blogging at her personal blogs, GrenadeFishing and Dimondites.