START-UP SPOTLIGHT: Silver Linings Playbook: The Rolling 20s
GeistM, the leading performance marketing platform transforming how brands acquire customers, has created a 'borderless' approach to recruitment and staffing. This has enabled the Gramercy Labs company ,to expand far beyond its headquarters in NYC, to build offices internationally and domestically. Most recently, GeistM worked with Louisiana urban and economic groups to tap the strong and growing talent pool in New Orleans.
The newest addition to GeistM is Lisa LaCour, the company's new Head of Communications, who will leverage her vast experience in digital and entertainment media and marketing to spearhead internal and external communications for GeistM and Gramercy Labs' other portfolio companies.
LaCour recently returned to New Orleans after leaving her small two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn at the start of the lockdown with her husband and two young children, and moving first to upstate New York.
"I found myself out of work and not knowing what my next move was," says LaCour. "I'm the type of person who needs a plan and I didn't have one. When the idea came up to move back to my hometown of New Orleans, I decided to go for it."
New Orleans has always been close to LaCour's heart, and although the thought of moving back was always in the back of her mind, she never thought it would be a reality. "What would I do there was always the question," she says. "Now, it's a non-issue."
Hiring LaCour is part of GeistM and Gramercy Labs' plans to grow their footprint in New Orleans. "GeistM is a rocketship and is innovating in the digital space at a speed I haven't seen in a while," she says. "During the pandemic, the company made the choice to be borderless which provides someone like me an opportunity to join an innovative high growth company that's within my wheelhouse of digital advertising while living in New Orleans. It's a win-win personally and professionally. I can do what I love, in the city I love."
New Orleans continues to be one of the fastest-growing digital media and technology hubs in the country. Gramercy Labs knows this first hand, which is why its CEO and New Orleans-native, Kevin Fortuna, chose it as the home base for the company's next phase of growth. The company selected New Orleans among more than a dozen competing locations, based on stringent criteria that included quality of talent, cost of living and economic support from local governments.
New Orleans also provides a rich culture similar to what you would expect from cities like New York and San Francisco, with a well-known music scene that is considered the birthplace for jazz music, a slower, less expensive, pace and food that's unparalleled. This makes adding New Orleans to its portfolio the "Big Easy" for GeistM and Gramercy Labs.
