Verbally Effective Podcast

After a fifteen-year corporate career with various Fortune 500 companies, Summer Owens decided to use her life's challenges to help other overcome theirs. She is the founder and CEO of S.O. What! LLC and author of Life After Birth: A Memoir of Survival and Success as a Teenage Mother. She wears many other hats in addition to being named the President of the University of Memphis National Alumni bo...

Standing 6'8, John Best aka "Brother John" serves as the General Manager for the Department of Broadcast Services (88.5FM & C19-TV) of Shelby County Schools. In a short matter of time, John has transformed these media entities into a powerhouse for students to create content for radio, TV, photography, podcasts, graphic arts and digital media. Originally from New Jersey, John moved to Memphis at t...

Orange Mound native Virginia Awkward has been a certified trainer for nearly one year, but her love for health and fitness started as a Memphis-area athlete at Craigmont High School. She is deeply rooted in the community with her father being a retired fireman and mother running Ernestine and Hazel's for many years. Virginia has a B.S in Psychology from Christian Brothers University and has been i...

Growing up as a kid in Raleigh Phillip DeWayne did not have aspirations of becoming a chef. Playing the symbols in the band and eventually landing a role as the basketball manager for the Raleigh-Egypt Pharaohs encompassed his world during those days. Upon graduation, he attended the University of Memphis for a short while but later began working at the Peabody as a dishwasher. This is where his l...

Born to sharecroppers in Batesville, MS, my radio colleague Bobby O'Jay walks us through his 47 years in the radio industry. After seeing his cousin Melvin Jones come home in a fancy ride in 1965 after sharing he was on the radio, Bobby immediately began practicing his radio voice. His first chance was presented in 1972 at the age of 18 when he received a phone call for his first gig in Montgomery...