Eighteen years in marketing and communications.
All of it in Birmingham. I’ve built a company and sold my stake in it, run communications inside a national healthcare organization, and spent years helping nonprofits and businesses figure out how to say what they do.
The Agency
In 2017, I founded Electromagnetic Marketing, a content marketing agency for technical and manufacturing clients. I worked alone for nine months and quickly learned that I’m good at client relationships and strategy and less good at running operations, so I recruited someone to run the business, which freed me to focus on clients and building a team.
We grew to ten people across design, SEO, social, email, and digital advertising, passed $1.2 million in revenue by year five, took on outside investment, and acquired a video production company. I sold the last of my equity in 2023, after six and a half years.
What I’m proudest of isn’t the revenue. It’s that I hired people early in their careers and they got better while they were with us.
In-House
At the end of 2025, I went in-house as a communications director at a national correctional healthcare provider, recruited by the CEO to help move the organization toward a mission-driven, values-aligned culture. Four months later, I was promoted to lead internal and external communications.
I built the company’s first employee retention analytics, so leadership could compare retention across roles and locations for the first time. I conceived a four-day leadership summit, wrote the proposal that secured its budget, and built the agenda, curriculum, and speaker program. I developed a narrative strategy around stories from patient-facing staff, showing the company’s values through what people do. I also wrote the organization’s language and style guide.
It was the hardest communications work I’ve done. Talking honestly about care delivered to a stigmatized patient population under government contract means the easy version of the story doesn’t hold up, and an accurate, compassionate one takes real attention and empathy.
Now
I've consulted independently since 2023, helping organizations figure out what they are, build their marketing functions, and plan websites before anyone bids.
Throughlines
Organizations come to me saying they can’t explain what they do. That’s true, but it’s rarely the whole problem. Usually the parts are clear. The whole isn’t.
When a fifty-year-old nonprofit can’t explain how its three programs connect, the answer isn’t a better tagline — it’s noticing that each program removes a different barrier to the same thing. When a housing nonprofit can’t explain why it needs donations while charging rent, the answer comes out of the operating model, not the copy. I found that one by building a spreadsheet.
The work is understanding how an organization functions well enough to say what it is in a way people can follow.
Education and Service
B.S., Psychology — Jacksonville State University
Marketing and Communications Chair, Board of Trustees — Sumatanga Camp and Conference Center
Marketing and Development Committee — The Bell Center
Advisory Council — The Threshold Center
Past President — American Marketing Association, Birmingham
If any of this sounds like your organization, I’d like to hear about it: jamie@jamieparris.com.