About Us

Claire Parr - The Navigator Company

Claire (West) Parr, daughter of radio industry giant, Jim West, was raised in Dallas, TX. She spent her early years in her father's recording studio working on jingles and production packages for United Stations, ABC/Cap Cities and other broadcasting conglomerates. She started her own live sound company at 17 and became one of the few successful female live-sound engineers in the country-working with Crossroads Audio, Showco and others. She returned to her radio roots to take over the Vice-Presidency of the Jim West Company in 1985 where she was responsible for overseeing the operations of such successful syndicated radio formats as famed big-band "Music Of Your Life" production of music for United Stations/Dick Clark's syndicated Countdown shows and worked overseeing sales and marketing for the company's representation of McVay Media.

Claire worked directly with the largest and most successful broadcasting companies to oversee format changes, consultant deals, custom jingle and production music. She continued to produce the theme music and jingle packages for Dick Clark's United Stations - working on such shows as Country Gold Saturday Night, Entertainment Express and other weekly countdown shows. She also helped Owen Leach of Broadcast Architecture create an Arbitron research system to assist programmers in the study of Arbitron ratings information.

In 1987, Claire was asked to join Burns Media Consultants in Los Angeles as Director of Sales and Marketing. In her capacity as head of sales, she negotiated group research and consulting deals with major radio group owners Genesis, ABC/Cap Cities, Infinity Broadcasting and Keymarket Communications (amongst others). She worked with Burns Media president George Burns on auditorium music testing, perceptual One-to-One research and call-out studies for stations like KROQ/Los Angeles, and participated in the highly successful switch of WPIX/New York into the now much celebrated WQCD -or -CD101- as it is known in the NAC/Jazz world. In addition, she also worked with Burns Media to assist in the famous creation of WJFK/Washington DC- one of the first syndicated morning show spots for Howard Stern.

In the fall of 1988, Claire took her programming knowledge and relationships and segued into the record industry as Director of Urban, Jazz and Adult Music for Enigma Records. Under the tutelage of Sam Kaiser, former head of Atlantic Record promotion and MTV programming, she oversaw the promotion and marketing of their successful jazz imprint -Intima Records-yielding success with familiar contemporary jazz names, Richard Elliot, Fattburger, and Maynard Ferguson. Learn More

Bobbii Hach-Jacobs - BSG Entertainment

Bobbii Hach-Jacobs began her career in the entertainment industry early. When most of her friends were just having fun in high school, Bobbii was busy putting together her own student driven talk show to increase drug and alcohol awareness in local high schools, finding willing celebrity guests to participate and raising money for local charities.

She didn't stop there. Her path to a larger involvement in the entertainment world continued during her attendance at the University of Iowa, Iowa City - where she met now legendary actions sports powerhouse Bob Walker at the AT&T Campus Dimensions's training program and teamed up with him to become one of AT&T's top producing Campus Representatives in the country. Bobbii and Bob would later be chosen to join an elite group of AT&T's campus reps to fly in and help train future college representatives.

Her community service interest continued in college with her tireless work for MAKE A WISH FOUNDATION. Her refusal to take anything less than a yes from New Kids on the Block when she was fielding a request from two young girls with Leukemia to meet the boys, wound up catching the attention of both the band and the record label, Columbia Records. Columbia was so impressed with her tenacity and passion to make these young girls' dream come true -they pursued her to offer an internship with the label to help promote their music on the college and local level.

After college, in 1991 and her work during that time with Columbia - Bobbii's desire to continue her pursuit toward a full time career in the music industry resulted in a move to Los Angeles. She hit another home run immediately by landing a highly coveted job with powerhouse music industry trade magazine, Hitmakers. She was hired by legendary music giant Bob Greenburg, to promote music to commercial radio stations across the country. - and within weeks her call list had grown from a few "starter" radio stations to a staggering 150 stations across the country. Her infectious personality and energy quickly made her one of Hitmakers most successful promoters and most influential staffers. She worked during that time to develop mega-hit artists like Mariah Carey, Wilson Philips, All for One, Vanilla Ice, Lenny Kravitz, UB40, Tina Turner and dozens more. Learn More

Michelle Van Ess - Ambient Light Productions

Michelle Van Ess knows what it is like to work hard to achieve success.  A single mother at age 19, Michelle worked full-time while attending college to make ends meet.   At 21, her and her daughter Eden, then two, moved from their small town of Rice Lake, WI to be closer to her family in the Pacific Northwest.  She was hired as temporary Christmas help at Fred Meyer, a multi-department retailer, which turned into a long and successful career. At Fred Meyer, she held several positions, including Buyer - Accessories, Vice President of Planning, Sales and Financial Support, where she managed a team of 47 people and was responsible for divisional budgets, balance accounts, coop allowances and support services including replenishment, pricing, and system support. She was then promoted to Vice President - Director of Product Development and Imports. reporting to her were the Director of Imports, Product Trend Coordinators, Senior Art Director and the Directors of Non-Food Development. She was responsible for building and expanding brands throughout the Kroger enterprise of stores, such as HD Design and Everyday Living.

Eager to expand her retail career to a nationwide company and get back in the heart of merchandising and move back to her home state, in 2004 she took a position as Buyer at Kohl's Department Stores in Menomonee Falls, WI. Always interested in film and production, Michelle took classes at UW-Milwaukee film school to further enhance her hobby and passion.

After a two year stint in Wisconsin, Michelle, her husband Bill and their son Alec, sent their daughter Eden off to college and ventured to Denver, CO to take a Buying position at Sports Authority. Michelle is utilizing her extensive experience building brands to broaden the scope of Live In The Vineyard by developing webisodes, managing the social networking sites, filming the events and expanding retail products, including a line of spices and sauces with Executive Chef, Lisa Stalvey. Contact Michelle at michelle@liveinthevineyard.com

Lisa Stalvey - Executive Chef

Lisa Stalvey has been cooking for over thirty years. She began her career at the Good Earth Restaurant while studying acting. As luck would have it, she “fell” into an apprenticeship with Wolfgang Puck at the original Ma Maison restaurant in West Hollywood. After a successful one year engagement, she took an apprenticeship with L’Orangerie. Following that, she worked at several famous restaurants including: Pastel, Les Anges with Patrick Jamon, La Toque with Ken Frank and then as the chef of Beau Rivage. Following her many successes, she had an opportunity to work with Wolfgang Puck again, and went back to work as a line cook at the Sunset Spago restaurant. After two and one-half years, she became the head chef. After Spago, she worked at Rebecca’s, the West Beach café, DC3 and consulted on the opening of five restaurants.

After a hectic working schedule, Lisa took the next two years to do some research, reflect on her past experiences and consult for Tacone, which is now a chain of quick limited service restaurants. Upon returning to the dining scene, Lisa helped open Granita in Malibu, Shatzi on Main in Venice, traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland and was the guest chef for Amma Lu restaurant and went to Moulin de Mougin, France to work with Roger Verge. When she returned home, Lisa opened Bambu in Malibu and for two years in a row she received awards for being one of the Top 100 Chef’s in America . The awards were for culinary excellence approaching the new millennium.

Four years later, Lisa got out of the restaurant kitchen again and became a consultant for Newman’s Own. She wrote two cook books and created two new sauces for the Company; The Steak Sauce and The Parisianne salad dressing. She continues to consult with Tacone, Basic Bites, a new fast casual restaurant in Beverly Hills, and has created a line of spices that will be distributed to super markets.

As a food consultant, working on menu development, quality, taste, plate presentations, recipes and costs, Lisa is a valuable addition to the Global Grill Café management team. She worked at Passages in Malibu, CA an exclusive drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for over 3 years. She is currently developing TV shows, restaurants, cookbooks, culinary products & tools.

Bill Van Ess - Ambient Light Photo

Bill Van Ess developed his passion for music, retail and photography all when he turned 16. On Bill's 16th birthday he received his first camera, a Canon AE-1 Program, and a handful or records including Ghost in the Machine by The Police. Bill spent many hours in high school shooting and listening to music. A few months after his birthday he got his first job a Tuxedo shop in Longwood, FL, thus beginning his career in retail. In college he pursued a degree in Computer Science but in the graduated with BA in Finance from Seattle University. While going to school he continued to dream of shooting photos for a living. During school Bill worked for Robinson's Department Stores and Fred Meyer, Inc.

Bill continued to study computers and photography while working in retail. After college he could not seem to get rid of the retail bug. He went into Operations at Fred Meyer and eventually transferred to the corporate office in Portland, OR. At Fred Meyer Bill was a Planner Analyst, Asst. Buyer and a Buyer in Home Electronics. At Fred Meyer he was able to use his retail, financial and computer skills to expand and build his business. His passion for photography continued while shooting photos in the Pacific Northwest. He even dabbled in building small web sites for a few friends.

Bill & Michelle moved to Colorado in 2006, where Bill joined eBags.com as a Merchandise Manager. And later was promoted to Sr. Merchandise Manager which he holds today. After moving to Colorado, Bill and Michelle finally started Ambient Light Photo, LLC. so they could professionally shoot photos and build web sites in between their day jobs. Ambient Light has pushed Bill to work on his Event Photography, Marketing and Design skills.

Bill has taken on many roles including Photography, Technology, Production and Design within Live In The Vineyard. Bill is married to Michelle and has two children, Eden and Alec, two dogs, Gus and Ellie, a cat and a bearded dragon. to contact Bill email bill@liveinthevineyard.com