After many wonderful years as Insight Architect, Carol is transitioning into a new career phase as an author.

With Graff Group, Carol listened to customers’ insights to design and build meaningful stories for her clients. She was always eager to deliver the truth. She weaved facts with the possibilities and delivered fully-actionable recommendations for clients’ next steps. Developing comprehensive, easy-to-read and strategy-focused findings, Carol supplied executives with an understanding of participants’ heartfelt perceptions. In addition to her architect responsibilities, Carol moderated too numerous to count focus groups with corporate executives, business owners and consumers. Carol continues to be comfortable with starting the conversation, listening with genuine interest, and speaking her truth. Her warmth and humor sealed many a deal.

Carol is shifting gears away from the Graff Group and using her writing, marketing, sales and PR skills in a new direction. Always a writer, she’s completed her first nonfiction manuscript, Six Kids and a Ping-Pong Table. It’s a coming-of-age memoir of her struggles to live a “normal” adolescence in a growing-up home filled with chaos, addiction and abuse. Her “secret sauce” was prayer and playing hours and hours of Ping-Pong with her four inherited step-siblings and younger brother. It’s not a “gloom and doom” story (well maybe in a few places), but giggles and grins are sure to break out across readers’ faces. There’s loads of scheming, dreaming and hope lurking within the tale she weaves. Discover more at her website: www.carolgraff.com

When she’s not listening, writing or strategizing, you’ll most frequently find Carol with her nose in a book, traversing the nearest nature path, or outlining chapters for her next new book. A transplanted California gal, sun, sea and beach equal her perfect spot for total relaxation.

Ever the “make it happen” executive, Dave is excited to be stepping into NEW opportunities.

As president of the Graff Group, Dave was responsible for delivering market intelligence to clients, helping them better understand their customer audiences. With his successful expertise in senior-level sales and marketing experiences, Dave employed in-depth interviews and win/loss analyses to fill in market research gaps and create actionable insights. Dave was solely focused on helping clients retain more customers, win more business and grow market share.

Prior to co-founding the Graff Group in 1993, Dave held senior-level sales and marketing management positions at Eli Lilly, Stryker, Mallinckrodt, and Abbott Laboratories. Dave earned his bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Western Michigan University.

Never letting his imagination rest, Dave had the idea to design/build Playboards for toddlers. He built his first prototype in 2017 and a year later founded Playtime Tech where he currently serves as Founder and Board Chairman. This non-profit charity provides Playboards at no cost to Children’s Hospitals, Ronald McDonald Houses, and other nonprofit organizations across the US. His audiences are toddlers and special needs kids (www.playtimetech.org). Dave’s goal is to make kids smile no matter their health situation.

Always an athlete, Dave picked up pickleball quickly after years on the tennis court. He recently became a PPR-certified pickleball instructor focusing on players new to the game and seniors. He also intends to introduce the game to kids/teens in neighborhoods all around the Twin Cities.

One of Dave’s newest opportunities is serving as Carol’s agent to secure a publishing contract for her recently completed memoir, Six Kids and a Ping-Pong Table.