Lee Bowers: Founder at BluStarr in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Primary liaison between clients and production teams, utilizing my broad knowledge of catalog/retail, in-store signage, and print production workflows. Establish and promote excellent customer relations through effective and proactive communications to update clients and other stakeholders on project status. Lead day-to-day management and optimization of projects, entering specifications using job management software and ensuring proper priority was given to each job to meet client expectations. Constantly seeking to optimize workflows and legacy systems by drawing on my extensive understanding in each Creative Services area, including project management, design, print production, and prepress. Attend and set relevant client meetings, production, and project management status calls, bringing in appropriate resources from Creative Services as needed. Maintain contact with clients and production to set project milestones, create project estimates, track schedules, advise of job progress, scheduling concerns, and any requests for additional information or materials, when required. Perform invoicing, forecasting on a pre-set deadline, and monitored clients’ budgets for accuracy and timeliness. Maintain the master schedule for all project activities and conduct periodic status checks to assess progress against the schedule. Make changes to plans when requirements/scope changes/shifts. Track and report on quality metrics, strategize with the client and deliver services that attract and retain customer loyalty. Train other employees as needed. Perform other related duties and participate in special projects as assigned.

Worked on a contract basis, as a Creative Project Manager/Client Services Project Manager for regional and national ad agencies and in-house marketing departments, overseeing the design, production, and management of digital creative assets. Managed projects from initial sales contracts to brand development, creative executions, and final deliverables, including digital (SEO/SEM/PPC/WEBDEV), DM, print, OOH, etc.

As a digital creative/designer and liaison between Account Services & Creative Services, I was responsible for the creation, development, management, and successful execution of digital creative projects for AdPro360, PhilLong.com’s internal advertising & marketing agency for all 15 of its regional dealerships. Work included, but was not limited to, print, Online/Digital Ads, Social Media, Website Maintenance, in-house video production, and other media. Responsible for all vendor communications, negotiations, estimating, purchase orders, product quality, and on-time delivery of outsourced projects. Protectively communicated project status updates, including any issues that may have arisen, accompanied by mitigation/contingency plans, to all relevant agency stakeholders/departments to ensure on-time delivery to our internal clients. Freelanced to full-time. Phil Long is a privately owned dealer network with over 750 million annual sales.

Global Information Security Team. I was responsible for managing the creation and distribution of all branded digital creatives as a part of Pearson’s strategic goals to increase internal information security awareness to help mitigate the risk of data breaches and the substantial corporate liability they could incur. Responsible for creating and maintaining corporate brand standards throughout all communications. Reported to Cathy Pitt. Conceptualize strategic initiatives and implement details of campaigns. Execute strategies with cross-functional teams. Manage internal and external marketing partners. Supervise brand content. Create and manage access to brand assets. Assist integration of campaigns with brand consistency.

Creative department manager for a mid-sized, 50-year-old ad agency working with clients primarily in the automotive industry. Responsible for scheduling, budgeting and coordinating all digital creative projects with Account Services, Media and Traffic. Additionally, I was tasked with reviewing and re-engineering the creative department's production workflow and job tracking systems with the goal of optimizing employee billable hours and increasing productivity and profitability. Over a 6 month period I implemented new job tracking software, revised the creative production workflow and created new vendor policies. These changes increased individual employee productivity from 65% to 95% which increased department profitability by nearly 50% while fixed costs remained the same.

Managed the design and production of all digital creative assets for print, online, and other media. Responsible for maintaining corporate brand standards for each client throughout all creative collateral and communications. Responsible for ensuring projects were produced on time and at or underestimated budgets. Responsible for all vendor estimates and purchase orders. Coordinated and managed vendor outsourcing of digital mechanicals from submission to completion, ensuring all deliverables arrived on time, were of the highest quality, and were billed at or under budget. Attended all press checks and signed off on all color/contract proofs (Traditional Print/OOH/Signage/Etc.).

Worked under a three month contract with lead QA engineer and related departments to create and implement test plans, identify and isolate defects and communicate with installed users to provide data and other feedback to the QuarkXPress development team. During that time I was the lead/primary QA Engineer on Printing/PDF/PPML/EPS component testing for QuarkXPress 7’s Universal Binary build for the new Mac/Intel based Macintosh computers.

Contracted full time to train their newly formed prepress department in the use of Adobe InDesign using the XMPIE variable data integration software plug-in to print to their newly purchased iGen printer after converting the existing workflow from PrintNet to an automated InDesign PDF workflow.

In 1992 I relocated to Colorado Springs from CA and founded AGP, a full service commercial graphic services company that specialized in providing branding, marketing, pr, prepress, production, scanning, digital imaging, and presentation services to the local creative, media and printing community. By developing and implementing business and marketing plans in conjunction with a targeted marketing strategy I was able to take the company from its start-up phase of only one person and no revenue to a healthy and profitable enterprise generating annual sales over $1M with a staff of 20 employees. After selling the company in 2004 I provided digital workflow optimization consulting in Denver and Colorado Springs for two years before being brought on full time as a project manager at Vladimir Jones, one of AGP’s largest clients.

Produced and managed a yearly Supercross event at Penrose Stadium in Colorado Springs, CO. The 1 day event had 5,000 spectators, 500+ participants and 72 employees.

Manager of Graphic Services company.