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Visionary Business & Brand Consultants

What We Do

We are a nimble business and marketing consultancy.

Founded 22 years ago, we have recently welcomed the merger of Ignition Branding, JMSH, Inc. and Emerald Consulting to form Onyx Holdings. These organizations have been collaborating for years and we’re excited to be operating under one brand. Ideas in minutes instead of weeks. Solutions in weeks instead of months. Activations begun in months instead of quarters. Results that endure.

Protecting brands and relationships is in our DNA. It comes from a collective of experienced professionals with extensive reach of trusted relationships. We’ve been operating remotely for 18 years—it just took a pandemic for others to hop on board a better way. We’re time-tested experts across a multitude of practices and industries with broad perspectives of business and marketing challenges. Seasoned by hundreds of solutions and thousands of client initiatives to increase shareholder value. We understand the art and science of just making success happen. We call it JMSH.

We have also complemented our team with two MWBE affiliate partners to bring perspective and great experience in diversity, equity and inclusion. Finally, we’ve added two affiliate partnerships in French West Vaughan and Streetsense/CBRE for access to publicity, placemaking, access to broader connections, plus access to significant funding sources.

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Our Consultants

All of our consultants have deep connections with a broad spectrum of friends plus a minimum of 25 years of business, branding and marketing experience. Each of our team members subscribe to our core values and our commitment to stewardship.

CORE VALUES:

Collaboration • Creativity • Integrity • Transparency • Common Sense • Stewardship

STEWARDSHIP: – Noun: The responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving.

For each of us, this means working to build, expand and nourish productive, long-term relationships with colleagues and clients, that we call friends.

1. A dedicated team organized around your desired outcomes

2. An experienced Lead Executive Counsel who understands how to provide great stewardship

3. Our brand promise is to evolve and protect your brand(s)

4. Our Process that fosters Informed Creativity (IC) throughout the relationship

5. Our approach to creating or evolving your brand – The Brand House

6. Our Idea File we retain and constantly evolve to benefit your business/brands

7. Our regular meetings at your pace to keep you informed

8. Our Internal engagement tracking and scope delivery management

9. Our guaranteed results related to return on your investment with us

10. Our guidance we are all held to in everything we do can be summed up with these words:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." ― Maya Angelou

Donna Mracek, Executive Counsel

A strong team leader with a career spanning 30 years and an array of impressive experiences encompassing work on over 265 brands, yes, that’s right, two hundred sixty five. Originally based in Washington D.C, Donna now lives and works in Silicon Valley, alongside her husband John, who also consults with Onyx clients. At the top of her business achievements (and as a result of her early fascination with the Internet), Donna co-founded one of the nation’s first digital marketing firms, eBrains, where she served as Chief Operating Brain for over 20 years. In 2016, eBrains was acquired by Streetsense, a Washington D.C. - Based Strategy and Design Collective that’s 50% owned by CRBE, the largest publicly traded real estate company in the world.

Jack Glasure, Executive Counsel

A veteran lifestyle branding consultant, Jack is engaged by clients to help ignite awareness. With 15 years of corporate marketing leadership at Chevron USA, followed by 25 years of award-winning PR work on the agency side, Jack is the consummate consultant. He strives to simplify a company’s dialogue to effectively reach niche markets, and taps a diverse team of market research analysts and activators. He maintains a solid grasp of pop culture, emerging trends and evolving digital platforms for brand messages. A talent scout and lifelong teacher, he’s known to scour classrooms and military bases in search of the brightest people to support a blue-chip client base. Recognized for leadership, quick ideation and persuasiveness, he’s been instrumental in developing high profile, recognizable campaigns to drive business for hundreds of B2B and B2C brands, from apps, boats, blue jeans, boots, wine, rum and restaurants to race cars, golf equipment, resorts, furniture, art, books, celebrities, real estate properties, private clubs, pro athletes, musicians, destinations and tourism attractions.

Genyne Edwards, Executive Counsel

MWBE Partner P3 Development Group, LLC.

As an attorney and consultant, Genyne specializes in building consensus and negotiating public-private partnerships and coalitions, convening community leaders, influential interest groups, public health advocates, government officials and policy makers. Her work as Deputy Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Tourism earned recognition as one of the most influential African Americans in the tourism industry.

Christopher Just, Creative Counsel

With a practical knowledge of design and form, garnered through two decades of creative agency team leadership, Chris captures the essence of our big ideas and helps find the best methods of expression. Whether through design elements or persuasive language, he utilizes a target-first approach, rooted in research and emotional insight. An extremely competent executive, he inspires, motivates and teaches along the way, often offering a fresh perspective with single simple messages that work.

Daniel "Catfish" Russ, Creative Counsel

An accomplished writer, Catfish likes to radically collaborate on ideas with other stakeholders, then champion the content to bring the vision to life. Paired with Chris Just, they make a formidable conceptual team of Art Director and Writer to develop emotionally moving communications. Catfish has been honored with over 500 awards for his work in marketing communications, and through his career, he’s worked at some of the nation’s most prestigious agencies. He’s a Lecturing Professor at Indiana University and an expert on military strategies.

Mark Hendrix, Executive Counsel

An intense brand strategist and innovation leader, Mark has stewarded the course for scores of companies including Bank One Corporation, Barnett Banks of Florida (Bank, Riggs National, PNC, Fifth Third Bank and many non-financial related companies. Some of his more innovative work has included efforts to navigate the Riggs National Bank brand out of dire global waters and into an acquisition by PNC Bank that created significant shareholder value, the Virtual Wallet at PNC, and reimagining Fifth Third’s consumer segmentation and product offerings which generated hundreds of millions in incremental revenue. Mark is adept at business transformation and has directly led all aspects of the process. His leadership extends to other critical functions such as crisis management, merger and acquisition, due diligence and integration oversight. Mark also spent 10 years in the advertising agency business working on fast food, travel/tourism and financial services at the global firm Ogilvy and Mather and McKinney & Silver, a nationally recognized creative agency.

Patty Delk, Executive Counsel

MWBE Partner BLOOM

Patty works collaboratively with teams, clients and partners to deliver innovative, world class people, communications, and consumer experiences. She brings 25 years of strategic communications, client management, and branding experience to the firm , as well as a robust background in organizational development, change management and product development. Patty holds a BA in Public Relations from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is also a certified practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in addition to Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO) Instrument. She has led in various positions for Streetsense Consulting, a Global branding and placemaking consultancy with offices in D.C. Los Angeles, New York City, London and Madrid. There, she worked with major brands including Logitech, Marriott, Hilton, Girl Scouts and Vidal Sassoon, to mention a few. She also served as the Motorsports Marketing Director for licensed publications for NASCAR, online marketing with Yodle and Retail PR for Banana Republic.

Ralph Thompson, Executive Counsel

Formally trained as a CPA, Ralph brings over 45 years of successful business relationships to current leadership roles with Onyx Holdings and serves as Operating Partner with Affiliate Partner Streetsense Consulting. He served as a top financial leader for a NYSE regional financial institution and created the plan that doubled the stock value in a year. As COO of an ad agency, he created an environment for creativity to prosper and brought an almost bankrupt agency to 10 times its size in 4 years resulting in its sale to one of the top 5 global agency networks, As President of a $150 Million regional brand owned by one of the top 5 global agency networks, he turned a significant loss into a very profitable firm in 12 months by reimagining the company and winning the Florida Tourism brand which was retained for over 12 years due to the stewardship process. His early entry into the internet world in 1999 with the founding of eBrains, Inc together with his partners Donna Mracek and Catherine Seay yielded growth for 16 years and a sale to Streetsense consulting and its 50% owner CBRE, the largest publicly traded real estate company in the world. Ralph has provided strategic counsel, visioning, planning, merger & acquisition, branding and marketing services solutions to numerous marketing communication firm owners, over 265 hospitality brands, including 5 countries, 31 states, multiple economic development authorities, airport authorities, regions, counties, cities, hotels, resorts, restaurants, attractions and airlines. He has deep experience and success stories in just about any other industry category you can think of. His unique gift to tap both sides of the brain yields a 360 degree perspective with different solutions and nontraditional approaches to business, brand and life challenges. His Southern style serves the Onyx family with countless ideas for their realization of values beyond expectation.