Our Team
We pride ourselves on the trust developed with our clients through our discretion, integrity and keen judgment. Our team members are most notably distinguished by their professionalism, broad and deep experience, commitment to clients, and strong work ethic.
Erica Mannion
Alicia Nieva-Woodgate
Sean Callanan
Erica founded Sapphire in January of 2002. With over 17 years of experience working in/with the financial community, she brings a wide range of experiences in working with private and public companies at various stages of their life cycles, ranging in market capitalizations from $40 million to $20 billion. Erica has successfully executed numerous tailored IR programs with a broad range of IR goals. She has extensive experience working with IPO candidate companies and newly public technology companies; creating initial IR programs and establishing Best Practices and infrastructure. She has further distinguished herself by providing her clients with extremely comprehensive investor marketing programs, demonstrating a track record of expanding her client companies’ visibility within the institutional investment community. The majority of her investor relations experience is in technology (sectors: software, security, telecommunications, wireless, semiconductor, semiconductor equipment, and gaming) and clean technology.
Erica began her investor relations career at Morgen-Walke Associates. Prior to investor relations, Erica worked for several years in investment banking, including the technology group of S.G. Cowen & Company, San Francisco, and Kidder Peabody & Company, New York. Her investment banking experience includes equity, debt and financial advisory work.
Erica earned an MBA with a concentration in Finance and Organizational Behavior from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a B.A. with a major in finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Erica earned a Series 7 license from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD).
Alicia Nieva-Woodgate
Managing Director
Alicia Nieva-Woodgate has a substantial track record as a communications professional, and provides Sapphire's clients with financial media relations services. She brings deep technology knowledge and experience to the team, and is an award winning business writer.
Alicia was director of corporate communications for Opsware Inc., where she managed all aspects of the company's international public relations, media relations, analyst relations, and customer reference programs. She joined Opsware from Mediabolic where she was acting director of corporate communications. Prior to Mediabolic, she served four years as a strategic communications consultant, and a freelance writer, working for publications as diverse as Teen Magazine and Sports Illustrated for Women. Before that she was a director for Phase Two Strategies' B2B services where she headed up the PeopleSoft and Intraspect accounts. She joined the agency from Buzz divine, a divine interVentures Company, where she was part of the media relations team and oversaw International PR. Prior to joining Buzz divine, Nieva-Woodgate worked at Morgen-Walke Associates (MWA), where she headed up the Technology Press Group for MWA's San Francisco office. She joined from The Financial Relations Board where she worked on clients of varying industries, but found her niche with technology. She was transferred to the company's San Francisco office to establish and develop a media relations department.
Alicia's PR career began at Crosby Securities (USA) Inc. as manager of media relations and marketing for North America. Before working in PR she spent six years at various Wall Street firms, including Drexel, Burnham & Lambert; Kidder, Peabody & Co. and Banco de Investimento Garantia, now part of CSFB.
Nieva-Woodgate majored in History at Fordham University.
Sean supports the execution of investor relations programs for Sapphire's clients. He is responsible for monitoring daily industry news and client stock performance, earnings announcement related tasks, drafting press releases, screening client and competitor research, and maintaining investor distribution lists and other client related databases. Sean’s responsibilities also include organizing logistics, preparing schedules and other details for clients' investor marketing trips and conferences, maintaining clients' IR websites, managing outside IR vendors and miscellaneous research.
Sean received degrees in Finance and Accounting from the University of Maryland.