Our People

As the President of Hallmark Business Connections, Patrick McCullough leads day-to-day business and operations and oversees the HBC leadership team.

Patrick also spends time in the marketplace evangelizing a simple belief: Hallmark Cards can do a lot for businesses! Whether you are building a relationship with a client or incentivizing a customer to come in and shop, no other direct marketing format or channel can deliver the kinds of results a Hallmark card can.

Patrick has spent his career working with companies to help evolve their marketing strategies and build better customer experiences. “I’ve been blessed to lead teams across many different organizations while supporting many different clients and industries, from SaaS solutions and e-commerce management, marketing and advertising strategy, to management consulting…  And each of these experiences helped frame my broad view of the business world that keeps me grounded and allows me to work with and contribute to Hallmark’s broad client base.”

Robbin Champaigne has been a part of Hallmark Business Connections through many of its evolutions. Serving as the Human Resources Director, Robbin loves that no two days are ever quite the same.

Building a strong culture of engagement is the overarching goal Robbin carries through all her duties. She is responsible for a wide array of behind-the-scenes logistics that ensure our team functions at its highest ability. These activities include executing strategies for hiring, employee retention, training, compensation, employee relations, professional development, and diversity & inclusion. Of course, there’s always time to sprinkle in some fun for the team, too.

Robbin’s priority as Human Resources Director is always to perform her duties with integrity. She believes the most important skill for supporting the team is being able to listen thoughtfully so she can understand, meet people where they are and best help each person succeed. Robbin hopes that through her work, team members feel empowered and fully engaged.

Robbin is a dedicated, caring connector outside of the office as well, and serves as the President of the Northland Law Enforcement K-9 Foundation. For Robbin, her passion for helping people build relationships goes hand-in-hand with the nonprofit’s mission to purchase and train dogs that support law enforcement agencies, officers and communities. Robbin also enjoys spending time with her husband and their two dogs, Hazel and Axel.

As Creative Director for Hallmark Business Connections, Daryl leads both the left-brain and right-brain aspects of creative development.  

Daryl is responsible for overall strategic creative direction for key client accounts as well as the products HBC develops and sells online. She and her team have equal accountability to meet the brand and strategy needs of clients, many of whom are very well-known brands with well-established identities, and do so while creating a Hallmark product — like greeting cards, stationery, calendars, and ornaments. Her team draws upon the same rich trends and immense proprietary assets used to make the Hallmark products you see in stores and on Hallmark.com. But her team’s charge is to create and curate Hallmark social expression in a way that uniquely helps support and enhance our clients’ relationship-building needs. 

“We get permission to play in some unique emotional moments between businesses and their customers and employees. Permission that allows us to use artful images and editorial to say things in a far warmer way than other forms of business communication.” 

She is also responsible for organizational structure, talent development, project management, capacity planning, and ongoing work process improvements to run a creative studio that supports the current business while also enabling growth. 

When she’s not leading creative for Hallmark Business Connections, Daryl can most often be found enjoying all the simple joys life holds with her Pre-K son.

As the Finance Director, Adam Specht oversees Hallmark Business Connections’ finance and accounting functions. Adam brings with him nearly 12 years of experience at Hallmark in a variety of finance roles.

Adam heads up a finance team that covers a wide breadth of financial duties including: forecasting, strategic planning, reporting, accounts payable and accounts receivable. In addition to overseeing monthly, quarterly and annual reports, Adam brings his financial expertise and insights to all kinds of business decisions at HBC.

If you’re looking for Adam outside of work, you’ll likely find him playing a round of golf or cheering on the Kansas State Wildcats or the Kansas City Royals with his wife, son and golden retriever.

Jada Sudbeck oversees and leads the Hallmark Business Connections Sales, Client Strategy, and Marketing organizations. She takes great pride in being an ambassador of the trusted Hallmark brand that represents sincere kindness and where creativity and high standards take center stage. All of which makes her a perfect fit for helping HBC and our clients grow and deepen relationships.

Jada has held multiple positions across the Sales and Client Strategy teams, which have given her deep industry knowledge of all of HBC’s key verticals including healthcare, insurance, financial services, retail, and employee recognition and engagement. Jada’s almost 20-year career has helped her develop significant skills in: sales and marketing strategy, account planning, revenue management, client services best practices, business development and overall team leadership and talent development.

After some time away from Hallmark working in fintech, HBC is lucky to have Jada once again on the team. She is excited to apply her software as a service (SaaS) expertise to support new HBC platforms including Connect and Care. Jada is particularly interested in investigating all the unique ways to enable personal connections leveraging HBC’s highly configurable technology.

Jada lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband and two sons. In her free time, she loves traveling with her family and having fun with her boys while fishing or visiting amusement parks. Jada is also a loyal fan of Nebraska Cornhusker football (she’s a patient person).

A 10-year veteran of remote work, Jada maintains consistent travel to Kansas City and around the country to support our client and go-to-market teams.

As the IT Director, Jaci Taylor leads our Product Development and Internal Business Systems teams, with a focus on management of our security posture. She has served in multiple positions during her time at Hallmark Business Connections and brings extensive expertise to her current role.

In a typical day, Jaci collaborates with her team of developers alongside outside vendors to support proprietary software and oversee business systems used to execute fulfillment and operations. Working across departments, Jaci’s focus is on enabling the business while mitigating security risks and implementing best practices. Managing policies and controls that safeguard our clients’ information is a responsibility of paramount importance to Jaci and her team.

Recently, Jaci collaborated with the members of the IT, Client Services and Creative teams to relaunch a series of our organization’s storefronts for increased efficiency and a streamlined client experience.

Jaci is part of our team in Minneapolis and like many Minnesotans, she makes the most of every season. She loves hitting the slopes to ski, spending time out on the lakes, making multiple trips to the annual state fair and traveling with her family. Jaci also enjoys working from home with her English Bulldog, Taffy, right by her side.

Kelly Whitehouse and his team own the end-to-end supply chain of Hallmark Business Connections products and solutions.

Kelly has been part of Hallmark for nearly four decades. His experiences encompass a variety of operations and manufacturing roles, including a previous term as interim General Manager of HBC’s production facility. He is excited to once again be part of the HBC team and support the organization through the continued growth of our order processing capacity.

From procurement of consumables all the way through to dropping cards into the mail stream, Kelly oversees printing, fulfillment and vendor relationships. More than just executing production, he also manages forecasting and capacity planning to strategize the most efficient use of time and resources. Kelly’s experience applying the LEAN methodology to analyze processes and optimize systems makes him the right person to determine the time and location for executing HBC’s production responsibilities.

In his role, Kelly prioritizes communication—not just clearly explaining expectations, but also thoughtfully listening to understand what people need. Kelly leads by balancing careful planning with informed risk-taking. He believes success and growth come from proactively considering data and then acting decisively when new opportunities arise.

Kelly loves to spend time rooting for his two favorite teams: the Kansas City Chiefs and the University of Kansas Jayhawks. When he’s not watching sports, he enjoys working with his wife on DIY house projects.