About US
Hey, hey, We’re the monkeys
Jeniffer Thompson
Head Monkey
Jeniffer Thompson, co-founder and President of Monkey C Media, is a speaker and educator who is passionate about helping others understand and leverage the power of the Internet. With more than 20 years experience in publishing and marketing, she brings a unique perspective to her roles as Internet Marketing Strategist, Creative Director and Publishing Consultant for Monkey C Media. Visit Jeniffer’s website, and check her out in all the usual places.
Chad Thompson
Photo, Video, Audio Monkey
Lilli Kendle
Copy Monkey
Lilli joined our team to help expand our author services offerings. She writes our copy and offers website copywriting and content writing to our clients. She’s also a freelance content editor and ghostwriter. She has a tiny dog named Lucy, and loves spending time outdoors when she’s not writing or strategizing in some way.
Julio Pompa
Design Monkey
Julio has been a member of the MCM team for more than 10 years. His book cover designs are brilliant—he approaches every project with heart and soul. He is also an incredible artist in his own right, having been featured in galleries around the world. Julio is also the Dean of Platt University, a graphic design school in San Diego. We are honored to have him.
Nancy Hunter
SEO Strategist Monkey
Nancy is a digital media director, editor and writer with more than 15 years of experience managing editorial and social content strategies for a variety of platforms. She loves researching the best words to tell the best stories and will optimize your content to get the most visibility. Her areas of specific editorial expertise include local, arts & entertainment and lifestyle.
Ella Gregory
Project Monkey
Ella is the latest addition to our team. She’s behind the scenes providing author services like keeping assets organized and in place, and sending out weekly updates so you know exactly what to expect from our team. Plus, She stays on top of what’s hot and trending in the world of pop culture and social media. She loves photography and spending time with her kitty Bones. He’s an honorary monkey too.
Aleta Reese
Design Monkey
Gustavo Moro
Code Monkey
Monkeys can run circles around other people with ease. They are curious and clever people who catch on quickly to most anything. Monkey people generally can accomplish any given task. They appreciate difficult or challenging work as it stimulates them and makes them think.
How we got our name
My husband, Chad Thompson, and I founded Monkey C Media in 2004, the year of the monkey—which is a coincidence, because we did not name our company based on the Chinese Zodiac Calendar. The truth is: We just like monkeys. Boring? Maybe, but this story gets better, or maybe just more convoluted, you decide.
As it turns out, the year of the monkey is a great year to start a business, and businesses started in that year are likely to be successful and productive. For fun, I’ll include the horoscope for the year of the monkey:
Monkeys can run circles around other people with ease. They are curious and clever people who catch on quickly to most anything. Monkey people generally can accomplish any given task. They appreciate difficult or challenging work as it stimulates them and makes them think.
I think that pretty much sums up our author services team!
The truth is we never meant to start this business, we just woke up one day with a company and looked at each other in disbelief. It started in 2003. I was an ex-marketer working as a freelance writer and Chad was a photographer. I took side jobs here and there to make ends meet. While helping with the marketing of a local yoga studio, someone asked if I had experience with publishing—I did. I had worked as the Marketing Director of a small San Diego publishing company many years earlier. Long-story-short, pretty soon I, we, were getting referrals and helping people find vendors to bring their book dreams to life. Consistently I found frustrating results from local website companies and designers, so we figured out how to do things ourselves and now here we are offering complete author services.
Chad and I, working from our in-house office in South Park, realized we had this odd business we never dreamed we’d have, and so we needed a name, a logo, a website, and business cards, not to mention a license to do business—good golly, we had to pay taxes. And so, in 2004, Monkey C Media was born.
We originally named our company MonkeyC Design Group. The C was a copyright symbol, but when I went to register the name with the city of San Diego I found out that you can’t register a symbol as part of your DBA (doing business as), so it became a C on our business license. Eventually we changed Design Group to Media (since we offer photography and video) and I liked the alliteration. We dropped the copyright symbol and became Monkey C Media.
Sometimes I’m still surprised by MCM. We now have an incredibly talented team providing author services and helping bring our clients’ dreams to life. Chad offers our authors amazing headshots, product photography and video at a price they can afford. I still write when I have time, and we get to meet amazing, talented, and passionate people from all over the world.
We are very blessed.
Do what you love and everything will fall into place.
—Jeniffer Thompson, Co-Founder
Let's Build Something Beautiful.
Reach out and say hi. We can't wait to hear about you and your book. Let's schedule a strategy session to see where you are in your journey and develop a plan to help you create and achieve your goals.
Give us a call at 619.955.8286 or use the form below.