About Buris Chalmers Creative
Angeline Schwab and Bill Graham met in 2019 while working together at the Official International Folk Festival of North Carolina, Folkmoot. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck Folkmoot programs were paused, and they started their own business. The name, Buris Chalmers, came from Angeline’s Grandmother Buris Crowell and Bill’s Grandfather Chalmers White. Both looked up to their grandparents as great role models and felt that they could honor them in the naming of their new cooperative.
“Angie’s professional background includes building community processes for regional branding, organizational development, nonprofit management and communications in all its forms. ”
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 building community processes for 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 activities for large 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
“Bill 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 …”
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.
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.
Bill Studenc, who began working in journalism and communications at The Mountaineer newspaper in Waynesville, North Carolina, in 1983, retired in January 2021 as chief communications officer at Western Carolina University after a career spanning more than 32 years. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism and history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and his master’s degree in public affairs at WCU. He has been editor of The News Record of Madison County and a contributor to the Asheville Citizen-Times, Out ‘n’ About, Smoky Mountain Living magazine and the Black Mountain News, all in North Carolina. He writes a regular column for The Mountaineer and provides writing and editing services to clients including WCU, Florida Gulf Coast University, Ohio University, Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center and Buris Chalmers Creative.
Shelby Perusi is a legal assistant 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.
Shelby loves to cook delicious meals in the kitchen for her husband, Matt while being serenaded by her ever-grumpy cat Gilbert and her senior Chihuahua Peanut.
