NEWSMAKERS

Advertising

Gerald Bagg, Renee Hill, Peter Smaha and Bruce Somers have formed Quigley-Simpson & Heppelwhite, a Los Angeles direct response advertising agency specializing in media placement and production. Bagg heads the company as president while Hill serves as executive vice president. Smaha and Somers are executive creative director and executive producer respectively. Bagg has been executive vice president at Williams Worldwide. Hill has worked with Warner Bros., Visa Marketing, Hoover Co. and the Los Angeles Times. Smaha was senior vice president for Saatchi & Saatchi/BSB Worlwide. Somers has produced and directed direct-response campaigns, including “Somersizing,” with his mother, actress Suzanne Somers.

Engineering

Psomas has announced the appointments of Blake Murillo as chief executive and Jacob Lipa as president of the Los Angeles-based engineering firm. They succeed Tim Psomas, who was both president and chief executive for nearly 30 years. Murillo has been with the company for 25 years, most recently with the firm’s information technology and geographic information systems consulting group. Lipa was formerly in charge of the company’s land development services.

Health

Maurine Cate is the new chief executive of Brotman Medical Center in Culver City where she has been chief operating officer and, since April, interim chief executive. Cate will oversee all operational aspects of the 434-bed hospital owned by Tenet California.

Hospitality

Michael L. Ouimet has recently joined the Wilshire Grand Hotel as director of sales and marketing where he will work on boosting the Los Angeles hotel’s visibility worldwide. He most recently was associate director of sales at the Anaheim Hilton.

Los Angeles-based Kor Hotel Group has hired Tom Santora as vice president of sales and marketing and Steven Andre as general manager of the Avalon Hotel. Santora will oversee strategic planning and marketing of all of the hotels in the Kor portfolio that includes the Avalon and Maison 140 in Beverly Hills, Viceroy in Santa Monica and the Estrella in Palm Springs. He most recently was director of sales and marketing for the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. Andre was a manager for the Kimpton Group in Chicago.

Law

Ken Lemberger, has become of counsel to the Los Angeles office of Kaye Scholer LLP. Lemberger will be involved with expanding the law firm’s entertainment practice both domestically and internationally. He has been co-president of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Kaye Scholer’s Los Angeles office’s specialties include mergers and acquisitions, capital markets transactions, entertainment, project finance, commercial finance and aircraft leasing.

Two new partners have joined the Los Angeles office of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in the intellectual property section. Coe Bloomberg and Lois M. Kwasigroch both are from the Los Angeles office of Lyon & Lyon, which has closed.

Marketing

David Lopez has been named district manager of Vector Marketing Corp.’s Pico Rivera operation. Brandon Venning is the new district manager of the Inglewood operation and Kristopher M. Dow district manager of the Whittier operation. Vector is the exclusive marketer of Cutco kitchen cutlery directly to consumers via sales representatives. Both men have served as branch managers for the company.

Real Estate

Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. has named Jan Slusher as director of leasing at the L.A. Mart. Slusher will be responsible for leasing permanent gift and home accessories showrooms at the downtown facility. Prior to joining Merchandise Mart, Slusher was vice president of sales for Enesco Group Inc. of Itasca, Ill.

James Levesque has been named director of acquisitions for health care development at Held Properties. Levesque will be responsible for acquisitions, development and joint ventures for the Los Angeles development company. He previously was an independent consultant to the hospital industry.

Macerich Co. has named Charlie Christiansen senior property manager of The Oaks shopping mall in Thousand Oaks. He had held the same position at Macerich’s Santa Monica Place, and has been succeeded as senior property manager by Richard Eichenbaum. Eichenbaum comes to Macerich from Mills Corp., where he was vice president for its Sawgrass Mills property in Florida. Joining Christiansen at The Oaks is Cristina Bremmer, who is the new marketing manager.

Peter London and Michael Jones have joined CRESA Partners in Los Angeles where they will be involved in acquiring and disposing of office and industrial space. Both previously were senior vice presidents at Staubach Co. CRESA specializes in tenant representation, project management and other services.

Technology

Software house Parasoft has named Mark Johnson senior vice president of sales, North America. Johnson is responsible for expanding the Monrovia-based company’s sales force and building key corporate accounts in the North American market. Johnson most recently was vice president of sales at Telelogic North America and Continuus Software.