Astonish Experts
Paula, a former Broadway Press Agent, has more than twenty years of experience managing an eclectic menu of accounts from Microsoft, GE Home Appliances, American Airlines, Renaissance Cruise Lines, Sunbeam Grills, NASCAR events, ABC’s The Bachelor and Wife Swap, celebrities such as The Duchess of York, Tony Robbins, Al Roker, and the Cannes Film Festival.
Paula is a five-time best-selling author and lifestyle journalist. She currently writes for Forbes and has contributed to The New York Times, Robb Report, InStyle magazine and many others. She holds an M.F. A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from New York University. Prior to founding Astonish media Group, she was a Broadway press agent, host of Paula Travels on Sirius XM Radio, a Vice President with Rubenstein Associates, and also worked at Weber-Shandwick.
John Conway is an attorney with more than twenty years experience with media, entertainment, and intellectual property law. John has worked with General Electric, Time Warner, Subway Restaurants, Pernod Ricard, Sanofi-Synthelabo, Pfizer, American Airlines, Barnes & Noble, A&E Networks, ABC/Disney, Sony, Paramount, NBC, PBS, HBO, Fox, and numerous others.
John focuses on crisis communications, strategic development, branding, protection, and commercialization of corporate intellectual property assets both for domestic and international markets. He has been involved in the design or redesign and execution for such brands as PLAVIX®, AMBIEN®, SEAGRAMS®, and SUBWAY®. He is a graduate of Southern Methodist University; University College, Oxford; Yale School of Management; and the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Stacy Callahan brings more than 20 years of public relations experience, including media placement, event management, strategic planning and creative development. She spent 11 years at Sony Pictures Entertainment, ultimately as director of East Coast Field Operations, where she was responsible for all East Coast publicity and promotional campaigns for major films.
Stacy is a general PR strategist and has represented clients in the entertainment, food and beverage, healthcare, health and wellness, lifestyle, education, marketing, education, and non-profit sectors with many successful national placements: New York Times, WSJ, Fox Business News, USA Today, Fast Company, Forbes, Popular Science, Washington Post, and Cosmopolitan. Stacy is also a freelance writer with the New York Daily News.
J.P. Hoornstra has written about sports and travel for many newspapers and national periodicals. He is the author of "The 50 Greatest Dodger Games of All-Time," and was credited as a musician on the same LP as two of the original Doors.
Over the years, J.P. has interviewed a range of subjects in entertainment, sports, medicine, architecture, psychology, business, and politics.
Currently living and working in Los Angeles, J.P. covers the Los Angeles Dodgers and Major League Baseball for the Southern California News Group. He curates AllPuck.com and edits content for other Astonish properties, including Conway Confidential.
Halle started her career in publicity as an Astonish intern and was quickly promoted to an Assistant Associate Publicist. She now serves as an Associate Publicist with Astonish where she is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of account management, including client media reports, agendas, strategy, and pitching.
Her media placements have included results in NPR, USA Today, the New York Post, and Buzzfeed. Already a superstar with Astonish, Halle will be with us for ten years, or likely never leave. Why would she want to? Oh, and she is an applauded graduate of the University of Connecticut.
Prior to joining Astonish Media Group in 2007, Dana Swinney worked as a media relations expert for nearly 10 years. Dana has sharpened her skills working with the top media outlets on both the east and west coast, and every market in-between. Dana's relationships with the media are steadfast and continue to thrive. Dana has diverse clients and broad expertise including food, culinary arts, home and consumer goods, healthcare, law offices and authors.
Dana is a highly skilled practitioner; her clients regularly appear in Forbes, The Huffington Post, LA Times, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Prevention, US News and World Report, and on national radio, such as Bloomberg Radio and NPR, to name just a few. She is also an expert in digital media and boasts a national roster of social media influencers whose areas of expertise span a range of topics, including: fashion, home and DIY experts, beauty, mom bloggers and many more.
A best-selling author and Emmy-award winning television producer for nearly 20 years, Paula Rizzo has produced health, wellness, and lifestyle segments with a range of top experts, including JJ Virgin, Jillian Michaels, and Deepak Chopra. Most recently she served as the senior health producer for Fox News Channel in New York City for more than a decade. Today, she works with experts, authors, and entrepreneurs on how to position themselves for media (traditional as well as blogs and podcasts), build their lists, and engage customers and fans for their brands, books and businesses.
Paula’s also the co-creator of Lights Camera Expert - an online course geared towards helping entrepreneurs, authors and experts get media attention.
Paula’s the founder of the productivity site ListProducer.com and best-selling author of Listful Thinking: Using Lists to be More Productive, Highly Successful and Less Stressed, which has been translated into 12 languages and has been featured on many media outlets including Fox News, Fox Business, Prevention, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Brides and made it on Oprah.com’s list of “Self Help Books That Actually Help.” For more go to PaulaRizzo.co.
