The Russell Mark Group specializes in the language of the marketplace, creating brand names, naming systems, and other corporate language for clients around the world. With offices in the San Francisco Bay area and Montpellier, France, we focus on international companies with complex, sophisticated offerings in technology, health care, consumer products, and financial services.

Susan Russell, the group’s founder, specializes in naming systems and verbal branding strategy. She has been quoted on branding and language issues in the Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, Wired Online, California Medicine, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is also the group’s primary writer and language architect.

Before founding the Russell Mark Group, she was an information designer with the international consultancy Fitch, Inc. She has also been director of publications at Princeton University and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Susan holds a Master of Arts in English with an emphasis in linguistics from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

Mark Hobt, who heads up the company’s European operations, is responsible for sales, marketing, and client education, serving as the initial contact point with new clients. He is also the group’s chief name generator and conducts preliminary legal screening on name candidates.

Before joining the company in 1997, he worked for a marketing consultancy specializing in school-to-work programs for General Motors. Previously he was a consultant to the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Mark holds a B.A. in English from Ohio State University and has done post-graduate work in theology, including study of Buddhism and Shinto practice in Japan. The son of French parents, he speaks French fluently and has traveled extensively in Europe.