Looking Ahead and Strengthening our Foundation: Bellmont Partners Promotes Six Team Members

It’s been just over six months since Bell­mont Part­ners shift­ed to a ful­ly remote oper­a­tion, and every day that goes by it’s becom­ing more clear how impor­tant our team has been to our agency’s sur­vival and suc­cess dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each of us has played a crit­i­cal, dis­tinct role, from pro­vid­ing fast-turn, inno­v­a­tive sup­port for our clients to help­ing to instill a sense of mea­sured opti­mism in every­thing we do. To help main­tain that pos­i­tive out­look, we’ve embraced look­ing at this quick­ly chang­ing cli­mate as an oppor­tu­ni­ty rather than a challenge.

In the spir­it of tak­ing the coun­sel we give our clients, ear­ly on we made the inten­tion­al choice to use this cri­sis as a chance to reimag­ine where we want to go as an agency, who we are today and who we want to be. As part of that process, we’ve proac­tive­ly made some moves to strength­en our com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing senior-lev­el coun­sel and build an even stur­dier foun­da­tion – to solid­i­fy what we are today and what we want to be when this is all behind us.

So I’m thrilled to announce that – two months after bring­ing on Mau­reen Cahill, one of Minnesota’s top PR prac­ti­tion­ers – we have pro­mot­ed six peo­ple to new roles:

• With near­ly six years as part of the Bell­mont Part­ners team under her belt, Megan Derkey has been pro­mot­ed to account direc­tor. She leads our Tech­nol­o­gy Prac­tice Group and plays an impor­tant role both set­ting strat­e­gy and imple­ment­ing PR pro­grams for a num­ber of clients. We’re con­stant­ly delight­ed and amazed at the immense amount of sharp tal­ent she brings to all of her work.
• Sara Gras­mon was tech­ni­cal­ly our first employ­ee back in 2010, and now she’s an account super­vi­sor. After work­ing with us after she grad­u­at­ed from col­lege, she fol­lowed her pas­sion for base­ball, work­ing in mar­ket­ing at sev­er­al minor league and major league teams, includ­ing the Kansas City Roy­als dur­ing their 2015 World Series Cham­pi­onship run. Today she’s an MVP in our Food & Agri­cul­ture and Tourism & Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Prac­tice Groups.
• Michelle Grif­fith, the senior account exec­u­tive for­mer­ly known as Michelle Cook (please join us in con­grat­u­lat­ing her on her recent nup­tials!), is now an account super­vi­sor. She has deep exper­tise in the tech­nol­o­gy and health and well­ness indus­tries, for both B2B and B2C brands. She brings a strate­gic lens to com­plex projects, ask­ing tough ques­tions and always keep­ing a client’s “Why?” in mind.
• Bri­ana Grue­newald start­ed at Bell­mont Part­ners in 2014 as an assis­tant account exec­u­tive, and today she’s an account super­vi­sor and graph­ic design lead. Because design has become such an inte­gral part of com­mu­ni­ca­tions work in recent years, we’ve tapped her to help grow and expand that area of exper­tise as a prac­tice group for our orga­ni­za­tion. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Bri’s a com­mu­ni­ca­tions uni­corn – some­one with a pas­sion for poignant sto­ry­telling, par­tic­u­lar­ly for many of our non­prof­it clients, who also has a keen eye for design, which is tru­ly a rare find.
• For­mer news­pa­per edi­tor Johan­na Hol­ub is now an account super­vi­sor and our data and insights lead. She spear­heads client rela­tion­ships in our Health, Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy Prac­tice Groups, and dri­ves the agency’s impor­tant focus on data and mea­sure­ment. Curi­ous, strate­gic, cre­ative and metic­u­lous, she’s the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor we didn’t know we need­ed until she joined our staff.
• Our most recent addi­tion, Julie Goulette, has been pro­mot­ed to account coor­di­na­tor. After join­ing Bell­mont Part­ners in 2019 to help with all things admin around the office, Julie quick­ly become a vital part of client teams across the agency as well. We’re excit­ed she’s now tak­ing on a deep­er role with spe­cif­ic client accounts and tack­ling even more PR-cen­tric assignments.

We’re grate­ful to these folks and our entire team, and to all of our clients and part­ners for your con­tin­ued con­fi­dence and trust. I’m cer­tain these moves will pro­vide even stronger, more strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions coun­sel and imple­men­ta­tion as we con­tin­ue to nav­i­gate our way through this uncer­tain­ty to a stronger, more com­pas­sion­ate world on the oth­er side of the pandemic.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on these well-deserved promotions!