About Us
The successful execution of a clear vision makes for good business. BeeAudio has assembled a group of very experienced professionals who make sure that top quality products are created by a stellar team for delivery on time, every time, at a price the customer can afford.
James Adams – Founder/CEO
James is also Chairman of ADRevolution, an Austin, Texas based company that has developed innovative software for monetization in the digital space. He is a Board member of 44Doors a mobile marketing solutions company.
James was trained as a reporter in England where he graduated first in the country. He had a long career at the London Sunday Times where he became Managing Editor. He was the CEO of United Press International and was then the founder, Chairman and CEO of iDEFENSE, a cyber-intelligence organization with clients in the intelligence community, the government and Fortune 100 companies. The business was sold to Verisign in 2004 for $40m.
He is a former member of the National Security Agency’s Advisory Board and the founding Chairman of the Technology Advisory Panel of the Signals Intelligence Directorate at NSA. At NSA, he was responsible for setting a new strategic direction for the 15,000 person Signals Intelligence Directorate to address the current and future very challenging high technology environment. He was the first recipient of the NSA’s Special Recognition Award for his ”outstanding contributions” to the Agency.
He is the author of 13 bestselling fiction and non-fiction books with an emphasis on warfare and intelligence. His most recent book, The Next World War, a study of information warfare, is published by Simon and Schuster. His other books include The Financing of Terror, Secret Armies, New Spies and two biographies, Sellout, the story of CIA spy Aldrich Ames and Bull’s Eye, the story of Iraqi supergun maker Gerry Bull. He is the author of the screenplay for Spycraft a videogame published by Activision. His written work has appeared all over the world in publications ranging from The New York Times to Asahi Shimbun.
He is the narrator of around 150 audiobooks, both fiction and non-fiction.
He is an enthusiastic rower and fly fisherman and lives with his wife and two daughters in Ashland, Oregon.
Jennifer Stoke – Executive Producer
Jennifer’s love for literature and competition was cemented early in life, when she used to challenge her father to see who could check out and read more titles from the local library in one week. Later in life, she translated this passion into a career in the arts, working at many regional theaters around the country as well as film & video, but always preferring to be behind the scenes where the true magic happens. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival brought her to Southern Oregon in 1989 and her roots have been growing here ever since. Jennifer embraces the challenge of finessing the spoken word expediently to create a seamless, deadline-driven package while juggling the competing demands of dozens of projects being produced simultaneously. This requires a steady nerve, an encouraging but firm hand and a willingness to say and do the difficult while everyone else might prefer the easy. Her ultimate goal is to be sure that each audio production at BeeAudio surpasses the client’s—as well as her own—expectations for excellence.
Sarah Red-Laird – Director of Business Development [Voiceover]
Sarah got an early start in the creative industry with her first two jobs at Ashland’s art house theater, the Varsity, and at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her love of the industry brought her to Los Angeles where she worked for Oliver Stone’s Ixtlan productions and Fraser Communications advertising and public relations agency. She left LA for more mountainous states which led to a spell in the world of non-profits with a focus on environmental issues. She has always remained passionate about the arts, literature and the future of the digital world. BeeAudio brings together both her creative experience and passions. Sarah is also an enthusiastic beekeeper and beekeeping mentor and teacher for the community and Southern Oregon University.
Tamara Marston – Casting Director
TAMARA MARSTON brings a lifetime as an actor, voice artist and stage director to the complex task of finding just the right voice for the range of projects that come BeeAudio’s way. It is Tami who reads the text and hears just the right voice in her head be the project a complex piece of women’s fiction or the right tone to bring Tacitus alive.
As a stage director, Tami has helmed productions at Oregon Stageworks and the Oregon Conservatory of Performing Arts, and has been the Music Director for Oregon Srageworks, Oregon Cabaret Theater and Teen Musical Theater of Oregon. She has also been the Music and Choir Director at the UU Church in Ashland since 2004.
As a singer and actor, she has appeared in recent years at the Oregon Cabaret Theater in shows including Nunsense, Pantomonium, Kathy and Mo, and Parcel From America; other productions in Oregon include Woody Guthrie’s American Song, The Odd Couple, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well, and Nickeled and Dimed. She has also sung about every style of music in about every venue imaginable, but her favorite gigs were the folk music concerts and classes she gave with her late husband, Dave, and their children.
After years of voiceover and jingle work, Tami entered the world of audiobooks in 2009. She has narrated over 15 books thus far, and became Casting Director for BeeAudio in 2010.
Tami is very grateful for her multifaceted life in the arts, and one day she’ll discover how to make it finance a fabulous trip around the world.
John Stadelman – Remote Narrator Training
John Stadelman, was educated in California at Stanford and USC, and now makes his home in Ashland, Oregon. He has been acting and directing professionally for nearly 20 years, including 6 seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and directing gigs up and down the West Coast from Los Angeles to Juneau. John has also written professionally (his adaptation of Lucy Boston’s The Children of Green Knowe for the BBC still plays in the U.K.!), has taught seniors with Elderhostel, and coached teens with OSF’s education outreach program. Acting, directing, writing, teaching — they all come in very handy when auditioning potential Narrators, and coaching them through BeeAudio’s ‘In the Cloud’ communications flow!
John keeps his feet on the ground with his Landscape Design business: Green Man Gardens.
Eric Turner – Chief Technology Officer
Eric Turner is responsible for developing the paperless document and cloud-based media distribution system that is one of the keys to BeeAudio’s successful business model. Eric helped create Web 1.0 as one of the cofounders of Starseed, which created WebRing, the Internet’s first online community and the forerunner of today’s social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. He has since founded MagicWave Networks, a computer and network technologies consulting and iPhone software development firm. With equal passion for acting, narrating, and digital-signal processing, BeeAudio offers Eric everything under one roof. BeeAudio is very technology dependent and so is fortunate to have someone of Eric’s breadth and depth leading the charge. On a daily basis, in between narrating books, Eric manages Bee Audio operations in the cloud and keeps the studio computers and terrestrial network humming. An avid mountain biker and outdoorsman, he has traveled a long way from where his career began as an Exxon-certified high-pressure pipe welder on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Editors
The narrators get the glory but it’s the editors who work their ProTools magic to produce the rich and intimate sound that cements the relationship with the listener. We have assembled a terrific and talented team of editors who, between them, have more than 50 years of experience with ProTools.
Christopher App’s interest in audio came as a curious twelve year old when he discovered how to build a microphone from a headphone, music stand, wire coat hanger and some duct tape. It may not have been the best microphone, but it inspired Christopher’s lifelong quest of chasing, creating, recording, and perfecting sounds. Those pursuits lead Christopher from his hometown of Denver, Colorado to the University of Montana where he studied Radio/Television Production and later graduated from the Ohio Center for Broadcasting in Colorado. Upon graduating, Christopher moved to Ashland, Oregon and began working for Blackstone Audio, editing and mastering countless audiobook titles. Relocating to Seattle, Washington, Christopher stays busy as an Audio/Visual Technician on the Microsoft Campus, is a guitarist for the band No Ghost and an Audiobook Engineer for Bee Audio. Christopher is a diehard fan of the Denver Broncos.
While still an undergraduate, Gary Keeney began editing audiobooks at Blackstone Audio, where he was responsible for the engineering on dozens of books, including two Audie® Award-winning titles. Eight years later, editing remains his passion and he is one of the most experienced users of ProTools software, with which he creates a warm and intimate sound that listeners love to hear. In his other life, Gary plays drums with Kolvane, a blues/American band that performs around 35 shows a year on the West Coast.
Michael Kitson‘s ear for audiobooks was first piqued by his parents’ nighttime reading of classics such as the Narnia Chronicles and the Little House series. Michael’s interest in audio engineering began when, as a teen, he started recording his own music with a cassette 4-track. He transitioned to digital audio recording and live sound while attending Southern Oregon University for music. Michael then worked for Blackstone Audio, engineering and editing dozens of audiobooks before relocating to Portland, Oregon where he is currently an active music performer, live sound technician and audiobook engineer.
Bryon Lambert has worked in audio/video production for nearly 20 years, beginning as an AV geek, delivering and setting up equipment to classrooms while attending The University of Illinois at Springfield. For two years Bryon worked in TV and video production before turning to a career as a professional in public broadcasting in Illinois and Oregon. Over the arc of his career, Bryon has recorded and edited both live music and spoken word. Upon his arrival to Oregon, Bryon wrote the curriculum for, and taught a semester of, Audio Productions at Southern Oregon University, where he put students through a tedious and, likely unnecessary, exercise in splicing reel-to-reel tape.
Greg Lawrence proudly hails from that other ‘land of the free’, Canada, making a home along with his beautiful wife just north of Toronto, Ontario. His passion for recorded sound began with a love of music, inspiring him to become a self-taught drummer and songwriter. The desire to merge passion and career led Greg to the Trebas Institute where he studied Audio Engineering Technology. Work life found Greg engineering and co-producing audio for therapy products, while growing his own company, On Purpose Productions. Recording voiceovers by day and listening to The Hobbit on audiobook by night brought about the happy discovery of a new passion. Greg recently fulfilled a long-time dream by designing and personally constructing a project recording studio from the ground up!
David Swensen‘s love for all things audio started with his first cassette recorder as a little kid. He and his big brother would record jokes and songs to share with each other. His interest in music and recording lead him to receive his Bachelor of Science in Music from the University of Oregon, after which he attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Tempe Arizona. After completing his work at the conservatory, David was hired on at The Boat recoding studio in Los Angeles where he was able to work with people such as Beck, Eddie Kramer, and David Byrne. His love for audio books came about when he and his wife Chelsea moved back to Southern Oregon and he started working for Blackstone Audio. He now edits audio books for Bee Audio and is a freelance composer/musician, as well as a producer/audio engineer.
Proofing/Research
However talented the narrator, mistakes are made. The total listening experience of one book can be ruined by a single mispronunciation or mumbled sentence, and so BeeAudio has assembled just the right team of exacting proofers who combine a love of literature and the spoken word with an attention to detail to help produce a perfect product.
At age 4, Andi Arndt was riding in the car with a little boy her age, and was overheard saying “That sign says Center Island! I used to think it was ‘iz-land’ but then I found out the ‘s’ was silent.” A passion for language and music, and attention to detail have led to all kinds of interesting work and play. Andi is grateful to have had opportunities to travel through and live in other countries, especially travel to China in 2002 and 2004, where she and husband Chris adopted their two daughters, and to Antwerp, Belgium, where the family accompanied a semester abroad group from James Madison University.
Susan Baird spent much of the past three decades in the company of 13-year-olds teaching literature, writing, poetry, U.S. history, human rights, competitive speech, and theatre. In retirement, she is pursuing new adventures as an Oregon Shakespeare Festival audio describer for visually impaired patrons and proofing audio books instead of student essays. Every March, Susan vicariously mushes a dog team in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race.
Travis Chaney is an inveterate logophile, has dabbled into various languages and is working on a master’s degree in Spanish. His love of words is evident in his participation as a tournament Scrabble player since 1996. Not only has he become a world-class player in the English language, but he is also now among the top 100 players in the world in the Spanish language, having participated in two world championships. His favorite contemporary nonfiction books are The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester and Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis. His favorite writers are Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. He has composed hundreds of poetic compositions which reflect his fascination with anagrams, his general love of language and the dynamic rhythmic elements of his favorite music, free jazz.
Judith Cope is a former documentation specialist at Hewlett-Packard, where she created award-winning user manuals. Judith Cope has over 25 years’ experience as a freelance editor. Her editing contains a perspective informed by a rich experiential and educational background. She holds a B.A. (History) from Wells College in Aurora, NY, a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Master’s in Holistic Psychology from the University for Humanistic Studies in San Diego. An avid rower, she competes in regattas and enjoys imparting her love of the sport to adult and teenage novices.
Cheryl Hughes as a grade-schooler read nearly every volume of the Childhood of Famous Americans series in the school library, and the encyclopedia articles on U.S. presidents. A self-acknowledged perfectionist by age five, she observes and does things with an awareness of symmetry and detail (even food preparation – because the eye eats first!) Cheryl pursued a career in physical therapy, disregarding an interest in words and literature, so initially her proofreading was limited to ergonomic evaluation reports and research proposals; she is still passionate about wellness and movement science. Yet she observes that even seemingly insignificant events along the way were preparatory to what she’s doing now. Cheryl has long watched movies and read with a dictionary or search engine at hand to look things up, and she is writing a book on the history of her childhood home, Burke Hollow, the land having been a grant to an ancestor in return for his Revolutionary War service. Cheryl finds it amusing that she came home from the first day of first grade and sat on the back porch with her mom, crying inconsolably because it seemed impossible that she would learn to READ!
Theresa Johnson spent 15 years working in the Corporate Communications department of EMI Christian Music Group after earning a degree in Recording Industry Management from Middle Tennessee State University. Now she focuses her time and talent on audio proofing while raising her two sons, ages 10 and 12, with her husband in Murfreesboro, TN. Theresa loves the outdoors—gardening, hiking, camping—and in earlier years was even seen rappelling off a rock face upside-down!
Noelle Keyser is a self-confessed book addict, and owns more books than items of clothing. Growing up in a small town in the northeast, there wasn’t much to do beyond reading, and Noelle developed a love for it. This expanded into a love for history in high school, where her Latin teacher gave fascinating lessons on the history of Rome. This led to a BA in history from the University of Maine, and a life-long love of learning. The skills she attained with reading and writing has led to a variety of professional pursuits, including working for non-profits writing grants and reports, doing internet research for a well-known search engine, and book research. In addition to Latin, Noelle has also studied French, and is attempting to tackle Korean for her next language: annyeong haseyo!
Gary Kliewer is a content coyote, priding himself on tracking down almost anything on the Internet, though he still worships research librarians, too. He meandered from degrees in comparative literature and environmental studies to a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His professional experience ranges from public information and publications for UCSC, media relations at Los Alamos National Laboratory, publications editor at Southern Oregon University, and production management for leading textbook and trade book publishers—all of which led to six years as publisher at White Cloud Press. Along the way he published his historical novel, The Island Gardens of Takau. Currently he is eating his way around all the exotic cuisines available in Los Angeles.
Melissa L. Michaels fell instantaneously in love with words and coffee at age four, when her mother taught her how to read using a set of index cards and Folgers Coffee cans. Her java palate has since evolved, and she spent the subsequent years savoring books in every available form. After earning her bachelor’s in English, Melissa entered the publications field, beginning at UC Berkeley and later joining Southern Oregon University, where she served as director of publications and director of communications as well as managing editor of the Southern Oregonian magazine. Twelve years later, she and her husband, Michael, cofounded Michaels & Michaels Creative, which provides web development, writing, editing, proofreading, and design services to clients from the Rogue Valley to as far away as Bunbury, Australia. Melissa writes and edits more than a dozen blogs. In their little spare time, she and Michael work on documentaries, music compositions, artworks, and books in progress. Melissa’s passion for language is equaled only by her love of typography. One of her favorite activities is audiocooking—listening to audiobooks while bricolaging a new recipe featuring vegetables from her patio garden.
Vanessa Nowitzky (a.k.a. VeeBee) has been climbing trees to read books since she was five years old. Now she is an aerial artist who enjoys the variety of information she reviews as a proofer. An avant-garde composer, she has created three musicals and innovated a technique called singdancing. She is a 100% raw foodist and just wrote a recipe book called, “Nuts Over Nuts!”
Amy Patton is a long-time lover of books, writing, and the environment. A Geo in the Rockies class stole her from a planned English Major and resulted in Geology and Environmental Management degrees instead. Good vocabulary and grammar proved helpful in the scientific world and Amy’s attention to detail has aided in the writing and editing of reports, press releases, policy documents, and scientific papers throughout her career. Amy has studied French, Spanish and Urdu and thinks Italian might be next.
Shannon Pestockwent to film school, then decided that life was simply too glamorous. She’s a librarian by day, a novelist and screenwriter by all the times that aren’t day (and sometimes also by day). A lifelong lover of books, Shannon finds working in a library a terrible temptation, since she found out they’re not actually paying her to sit at her desk and read. She took French in college and promptly forgot most of it, except for, perhaps, “I like to eat sandwiches.” She is currently teaching herself Latin, because she is just that cool.
Sophie Sauzeau is French but has been living in the U.S. for three years. She graduated with a master’s in American/French literatures and translation. Working as a researcher for BeeAudio satisfies her inner nerd; she is indeed a book lover and enjoys learning about language as much as she is fond of tracking down errors and typos. Since she wants to develop a career revolving around literature and languages, she is also an associate editor at a newspaper, has been an intern at several publishing companies, and volunteers at her local library. In her free time, she loves to read, watch a variety of TV shows, and spend time around big goofy dogs. She also likes to play pool, explore the Pacific Northwest, and embark on missions to find Portland’s best hot chocolate.
Robert Winkler enjoys the idea of stories and often practices his storytelling ability on his five children and wife, who either clap with glee, or look for an exit. He finds the time to attend SOU to study Computer Science, Forensics, and also edits abstracts for Linguistics Abstracts Online. Most of his free time (< 1%) is spent reading, be it the instructions to a board game, the dialogue of a video game, or hieroglyphic-like 3rd grade math directions. He makes sure to always have a book close at hand, but has been known to get desperate and read shampoo labels.