Thanks to our new sponsor: Cook Solutions Group
Nearly two years ago, we began kerryeggers.com with hopes of filling a void left by the demise of the newspaper industry as well as providing an important informational source for our subscribers.
Many of you have let us know that you appreciate the material we have provided. That you’d like to see us keep it coming. That you’d like to see even more.
Now we have additional resources that will help us accomplish such things. Please welcome Cook Solutions Group of Portland as the website’s title sponsor.
Cook Solutions Group is an Oregon company founded in 2002 by Beaverton native Brian Cook as Cook Security Group, focusing on physical and electronic security systems. In 2006, the business expanded to including selling and servicing ATMs in a larger, multi-dimensional footprint, eventually expanding to 11 western states. In 2019, the company launched Piko, an innovative video surveillance platform. In 2021, the company was renamed Cook Solutions Group, dedicated to problem-solving customer service in the technology space. From financial institutions to sports stadiums to data centers to coffee shops, CSG helps proprietors keep tabs on transactions, track movement and collect customer data.
CSG, which currently employs 420 workers, has been ranked by Oregon Business among the top 50 companies to work for in Oregon every year since 2007, ranking as high as No. 8 in 2010. It was named as one of the top workplaces in Oregon by The Oregonian nine times from 2009-19. Inc 5000 has ranked CSG among the fastest growing private companies in the U.S. in each of last three years. The company works with more than 3,800 customers in 22,200 locations, with more than 105 million transactions monitored last year.
The CSG culture is based on a threefold set of values: 1) Treat employees well, 2) take excellent care of its customers and 3) give back to the community. Each employee gets 16 hours of paid service time to give back to their community in a way they feel it is the most benefit. In Portland, “Tools for Schools.” People fill up backpacks of school supplies and take it to a school.
The latter piece is where our website fits in.
Meet William “Frosty” Comer — an athlete, sports fan and chairman of the board at CSG.
Frosty Comer
Comer and I met through a mutual friend, Bud Ossey, who passed away last year at age 101. Ossey influenced Comer — a member of Tualatin Country Club, an Oregon State grad and past president of “Our Beaver Nation” — to subscribe to our website. Frosty found he enjoyed it.
“I used to be an avid reader of the sports pages of the Oregon Journal and Oregonian,” Comer says. “But we don’t have anything like that in our newspapers — or anywhere in our news sources — today. I saw (kerryeggers.com) as something our community doesn’t have but desperately needs.
“Our company is about giving back to the community, so I regard our sponsorship of the website as a community service. I want to see it continued. I want to see it expanded.”
That’s going to happen, Frosty, thanks in no small part to you and CSG.
Sports cuts to the bloodlines of the firm’s senior managers — most of them graduates of Beaverton High. Among the former Beavers:
• Brian Cook was a two-year letterman as a midfielder for the Beavers soccer team in the late 1980s. He maintains an interest in football and basketball but, alas, has never been able to beat Comer in foosball.
• Molly Angelo, chief financial officer (and Comer’s daughter), was a standout left wing on the Beaverton soccer teams in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Angelo was twice named All-Metro League and was the league’s Player of the Year as a senior, when she was first-team All-State and runner-up to Tiffany Milbrett in the state’s Player of the Year balloting. Angelo was also a varsity softball player for two years, pitching and playing second base. She later served five years as treasurer of the Washington Timbers Youth Soccer Club.
• Randy Neu, chief marketing officer, played some soccer and basketball and calls himself a “rat ball junkie.” Neu worked with the Trail Blazers as corporate sales manager in sponsorships for 10 years. Randy and brother Carter Neu are co-founders of CSG’s annual Slingball tournament in Pacific City, for 16 years a fund-raiser for multiple sclerosis. (This year’s tourney is scheduled for June 24-26). Neu owns two season tickets for the Trail Blazers and four season tickets for Ducks football.
• John Brase, chief operations officer, played cornerback for Beaverton’s football team and had a brief stint working with the Blazers in the ticket sales department. Brase, too, owns a pair of season tickets for Ducks football.
• Craig Cook, vice president of operations (and Brian’s younger brother), played two years as a midfielder and defender for Beaverton’s varsity soccer team.
What’s more, as a company, CSG owns four season tickets at the club level for Trail Blazer games at Moda Center and eights seats for Timbers games at Providence Park. This is an organization that fits in well as a sponsor for kerryeggers.com.
You’ll hear from time to time about CSG on the website, and you’ll see its logo displayed on our home page and on the emails you receive with each post. But mostly, CSG wants us to do what we’ve been doing for two years — provide readable material, mostly about sports, for our subscribers. And our plans to introduce podcasts and videocasts to the site will now come to fruition.
Because of CSG, we intend to keep things free to our subscribers. I hope you will welcome them to the “family” we have here at kerryeggers.com.
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