Meet Our Team

Mary Mitchell, President

Mary Mitchell delivers one consistent message: Social, presentation and communications skills are the keys to personal and professional success. This she has done through: seven acclaimed books, published in seven languages; newspaper columns, such as her nationally syndicated newspaper column, "Ms. Demeanor", as well as her "Nice Matters" column for The Seattle Times; and online forums, through ivillage.com,

In addition to her publishing accomplishments, MMM is an experienced, professional on-camera and live radio personality.  She was co-host of "Nice Matters", a weekly commentary on manners broadcast by the Comcast network for two years, as well as three hour-long programs about business and social etiquette for major PBS affiliates.  She has appeared numerous times on the major network morning shows. Ms. Mitchell has also brought her message and skills to the public as a speaker and keynoter.

Since 1989, her company, The Mitchell Organization, has worked with hundreds of clients from coast to coast, through targeted communications, service, performance, and social training.

Working with select professionals, and backed by vast international and multimedia experience, Ms. Mitchell has developed customized programs to improve the internal and external human relations of many organizations. Her clients have realized greater productivity, smoother functioning and better bottom-line results.

Her work in customer and client services has met with particular acclaim from multinational organizations in the legal, accounting and medical professions, and the hospitality industry.  In every venue, she has been a passionate teacher and refreshing guide to achieving better relations, greater satisfaction and more success in personal and professional life.

Whether the issue is multicultural etiquette, corporate presentations, entertaining, public speaking, customer service, office politics or work-life balance, Ms. Mitchell garners raves reviews for her no-nonsense, human approach to navigating the shoals of 21st-century life.

Ms. Mitchell has made a recent move from Philadelphia, PA to Seattle, WA.  While the two cities are very different, she has found immeasurable kindness in this new community--  especially from her smallest friend and sometimes mentor, Zsa Zsa.

James K. Weber, M.D., Wellness Advisor

When it comes to peak emotional and physical fitness, health care communications and stress management, no one is better versed than Dr. James Weber. A distinguished surgeon for nearly three decades, Dr. Weber closed his practice in 2008, and is now a yoga instructor, a yoga therapist, and an Ayuvedic counselor. He continues to serve as an Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington.

Dr. Weber graduated from Yale University with a degree in English literature and received his medical degree from Columbia University. His surgery training was done at the University of Washington. He is board certified in general surgery, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. His yoga teacher training was through YogaWorks and his Ayurvedic training via Kerala Ayurveda.

He has been teaching high school, college and graduate students as well as resident doctors for his entire career. He has been honored for his teaching skills on three occasions. He is a poet, a gardener, and an avid fan of baseball, opera, classical music, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Dr. Weber's Webpage, www.prescriptionyoga.com, a work in progress, contains a great deal of useful information. Be sure to have a look.

Thea Long, Director of Training

If you think your habits, or those of your employees, are too entrenched to change, Thea Long can quickly convince you otherwise. When she was just 25, she created and streamlined an arts program for the men in New York and New Jersey's maximum security prisons.

Her methods were so effective at changing the behavior of hardened criminals that Mademoiselle Magazine picked her as one of its 10 most outstanding women of the year.

Since then she has developed training programs for cities and counties nationwide, helping everyone from long-term welfare recipients to "hard core" unemployables.

In recent years, Ms. Long's training has focused on business etiquette and interpersonal communication skills for the service and corporate communities. She has designed, and conducted, training programs internationally for Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, governmental agencies and school systems.

Her extensive theatrical background makes her an exceptionally gifted presenter. Participants rave about her humorous, yet informative, training programs.

She lives in New Jersey, where she and her husband own and operate Cartridge World of Cherry Hill.

Wayne G. Brisbane II, Marketing Consultant

Wayne is a Renaissance man in the making and a new addition to The Mitchell Organization. He recently received a BA in biology from Seattle Pacific University, where he also minored in business and chemistry. Wayne is currently pursuing an degree in medicine from Loma Linda University in California.

When he finds time to break away from studying, he is an avid sports fan and enjoys watching and playing golf, tennis, snowboarding, surfing, baseball, and football, though his skills as a spectator tend to surpass his participatory talents. Besides working for The Mitchell Organization, Wayne is active in his family business and in Spanish-speaking organizations in Southern California.

Wayne has lived in Chile and Guatemala and travelled extensively throughout Europe.

Letitia Baldrige, Advisor

Letitia Baldrige was aptly named the "arbiter of American manners" in a Time Magazine cover story. Author of 23 books on manners, entertaining, and design and three autobiographies, her most recent work, published in 2007, is entitled Taste: Acquiring What Money Can't Buy.

She was Social Secretary to the White House and chief of staff for the First Lady during the Kennedy Administration; subsequently she has served as advisor to a number of the more recent First Ladies. Prior to that, Letitia was social secretary to Ambassador David Bruce in Paris and special assistant to Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce in Rome. She was the first woman executive at Tiffany & Co., and she has served on several major corporate boards. Over forty years ago, in the vanguard of woman-owned businesses, she founded her own public relations and marketing company, Letitia Baldrige Enterprises, Inc. She continues to lecture around the world on management training.

Letitia , a graduate of Vassar with a B.A. in psychology, did her post-graduate work at L'Université de Genève and has received four honorary Doctorates in Humane Letters. She lives in the nation's capital with her polite husband, Robert Hollensteiner; they have two children and seven grandchildren, whose manners, not uncommonly, are a work in progress.