Grab lunch from your favorite local restaurant (or your kitchen) and join us on Friday from 12 – 12:30 PM on Facebook LIVE for a stimulating conversation with SLO Chamber President/CEO, Jim Dantona and SLO Tribune Senior Editor, Joe Tarica and Director of Sales, Ray Riordan.
About this week’s guests:
Joe Tarica began his career at The Tribune in 1991 as an intern while he was a student at Cal Poly. After graduating with a double major in journalism and English, Tarica was hired full-time as a copy editor in 1993. In his 25 years with The Tribune, he has won numerous awards ranging from Scripps Howard’s company wide annual award for best headline writing, three California News Publishers Association awards for column writing and more than twenty-five Society for News Design awards as the presentation editor overseeing the production of the newspaper. He’s worked in various newsroom roles, including as copy editor, designer and writer of the Joetopia column. A 30-year resident of San Luis Obispo County, Tarica currently lives in Atascadero with his wife, Stephanie, and their two teenage children.
Ray Riordan found his calling in the sales industry soon after college when rising to becoming General Manager of a Miller Brewing Company distributorship. A few years later, opportunity knocked and Ray joined his brother Dennis and his twin sister Diane, the Dean of Student Affairs at the UCLA School of Nursing, to develop and launch a magazine specifically for the registered nursing profession. NurseWeek magazine and its companion website, Nurse.com, grew to be the largest nursing publication in the US, with Ray as the Publisher. In 2015, Ray was hired by the Tribune as their Key Account Manager and most recently was promoted to the Tribune’s Director of Sales. Outside of work, Ray is an ambassador for both the San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay Chambers of Commerce, a graduate of Leadership SLO Class 28, and is a former board member and communications director for 40Prado.