About Us

Buris Chalmers Communications grew from collaboration, creativity and a little necessity.

Partners Angeline Schwab and Bill Graham, both NC mountain natives, met while working at Folkmoot, the Official International Folk Festival of North Carolina, and launched their firm when the pandemic paused Folkmoot’s programs in 2020.

Angie brings expertise in community and economic development, regional branding, nonprofit management, organizational development and communications. Bill is an award-winning writer and designer with more than three decades of experience creating brands, publications, journalism and business communications.

Writer Shelby Perusi, web and graphic designer Kylie Frazier, and graphic designer Amy Pryor add expertise in storytelling, digital media, website development, SEO, advertising and design.

Together, the team blends strategy, creativity and technical skill to help organizations communicate clearly and effectively.

Our Team

Angeline Schwab

Partner & President

Angie’s background includes economic development programming, building community processes, regional branding, organizational development nonprofit management and communications.

Angeline Schwab

Partner & President

Angeline Schwab was raised in the North Carolina mountains and spent summers running wild with packs of cousins, dogs, and raccoons on Bald Head Island along the Carolina coast.

Angie’s professional background includes economic development programming, building community processes, regional branding, organizational development, nonprofit management and communications in all its forms.

She’s inspired by working with mission-driven people and organizations and sees work as an opportunity to make the community a better place.

Angie has managed a variety of festivals in Oregon, California and North Carolina. She's led production teams for local, regional, national and international performing groups. She's facilitated industry cluster development initiatives and communications services for governmental organizations. Serving as "Conductor" of work groups and weaving together results that reflect each participant's creative input is her joy and specialty.

Angie served as the Executive Director of Folkmoot USA (2015-2020) headquartered in the Historic Hazelwood School in Waynesville. She and her team transformed the organization from a single, annual two-week festival to a year-round arts and cultural organization that produced three annual festivals and 40+ special events, including concerts, dinners, and workshops.

When covid shut down Folkmoot programs, Buris Chalmers was born. Goes to show, that necessity is the mother of invention!

Angie credits her industrious nature to her Grandmother, Buris Crowell. She was a family convenor, a physics teacher, a gardener, a seamstress, owner/manager of two businesses and so much more. Buris also made sure her granddaughter went to college and Angie continues to feel grateful!

Angie’s key qualities: reliability, ideation, resourcefulness, strategic, futuristic, persistent and collaborative

Email:Angie@BurisChalmers.org

Bill Graham

Partner & Vice President

Bill helps create distinctive brand identities, specialty publications and business communications of all kinds, and as a writer he has been published across the southeast.

Bill Graham

Partner & Vice President

A North Carolina mountain native, Bill Graham has worked as a writer and designer for more than three decades, and has won awards in both fields.

When he owned Corner Idea Company between 2001 and 2011, he and his staff helped create distinctive brand identities, specialty publications and business communications of all kinds, and as a writer he has been published in daily newspapers across the southeast and in other local and regional papers and magazines.

In 2008 he developed and launched an online magazine of news and information covering the southwestern mountains of North Carolina. In 2009, the Southern Highland Reader – eventually the Tuckaseegee Reader – was chosen as one of 25 hyper-local news sites nationwide to participate in the American University Institute for Interactive Journalism’s Networked Journalism Project.

In 2019 he joined the staff of Folkmoot, the North Carolina International Folk Festival, to help with program development and marketing. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic forced Folkmoot into a hiatus, however, and Graham and the organization’s Executive Director, Angie Schwab, left to form Buris Chalmers Creative.

Bill traces his journalism lineage to a great uncle, Ralph, who earned distinction for his ambidextrous use of multiple teletype machines, and to his great-great grandfather Napoleon Bonaparte Graham, who fought on both sides in the Civil War, and then employed his well-earned objectivity as editor of the newspaper in Ducktown, Tennessee.

Bill’s love for people, place and and the stories they create he attributes to his grandfather Chalmers White.

Bill’s key qualities: Thoughtfulness, ideation, objectivity, contextualization, empathy, adaptability

Email:bill@burischalmers.org

Shelby Perusi

Social Media Coordinator

Shelby is a journalist and writer with a passion for crafting compelling stories. With over 10 years of experience in journalism, she is a talented wordsmith.

Shelby Perusi

Social Media Coordinator

Shelby Perusi is a journalist and writer with a passion for crafting compelling stories. With over 10 years of experience in journalism, she has mastered the art of weaving words together to create powerful narratives.

She earned not one, but two writing degrees from Western Carolina University (Go Cats!) Armed with this knowledge, she set out on a journey to bring stories to life through the power of words.

Email:shelby@burischalmers.org

Kylie Frazier

Digital Coordinator

Kylie is a web and graphic designer with more than 12 years of experience creating user-friendly, visually engaging digital experiences.

Kylie Frazier

Digital Coordinator

Kylie Frazier is a web and graphic designer with more than 12 years of experience creating user-friendly, visually engaging digital experiences. As Graphics and Web Design Director at The Mountaineer in Waynesville, North Carolina and with a few start-up ventures, she specializes in mobile-first website creation, site management, SEO, and online advertising.

Email:kylie@burischalmers.org

Amy Pryor

Designer

Amy's 20 years of graphic design experience include work in a newsroom, a small agency, as an independent contractor, and as a magazine Art Director and Production Manager.

Amy Pryor

Designer

Amy Pryor has more than 20 years of graphic design experience including in the newsroom, in small agency work, as an independent contractor, and as the Art Director and Production Manager at a regional arts magazine. She specializes in layout and design, photo editing, and copy editing. Amy also serves on the Communications Committee at Haywood Street Congregation in Asheville. She lives in Waynesville.

Email:amy@burischalmers.org