About North Star

Olin Robie

Founder, President, Project Manager

When I discovered that Northeastern University offered a business major in “Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development”, it was an epiphany. Here was a path to my career dream, right in front of me, there for the taking, and I jumped right in. I have spent most of the last 30 years in the small business arena, and all of that time in marketing and technology roles. I’ve been in business for myself about half that time and worked in various marketing companies the rest of the time.

I took a brief sidetrack in the 1980s to work at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and there I was introduced to the Internet before it was called the Internet. NASA scientists and engineers were using it to collaborate with their peers around the world. The public hadn’t heard about it yet, but I knew that I had just witnessed a game changer. After my stint at NASA I went back into the small business marketing and technology world and waited for the Internet to “go public”.

Fast forward to 2001 and Sedona, Arizona, when I launched ‘North Star Direct Marketing’ to work with local companies with a focus on tourism and destination marketing. Looking back, I wish I had named the company North Star Internet Marketing back then because that’s all we have done in the last 10 years – marketing products and services on the Internet.

But I haven’t done this alone…please meet my incredible team.

Lynn Robie

CPA, Accountant, Life Partner, and Operations Manager

Lynn is a highly skilled CPA and accountant and during the years here in Sedona when we had a number of Public Outreach (that’s government-speak for PR and marketing) contracts with the Arizona Department of Transportation, she was the operations manager for that side of the company. She pretty much ran the whole thing, and it was a big thing to run. She is now my best business advisor and keeps our finances straight. I couldn’t work as hard as I do or do it as well without Lynn’s support. And I still can’t balance a checkbook, so I am very lucky to have her as my wife and partner.

Suzan Drury

Artist, Website Designer, Website Developer

I met Suzan about 8 years ago and soon realized that she has a a very rare skill set. She is a talented designer that can also build technically excellent websites. I haven’t met anyone else that can do that. She has designed and developed every website on our portfolio page, she understands and can work with Dreamweaver and WordPress with equal aplomb, and some of her Photoshop work is breathtaking. She is worth her weight in gold as my “one stop shop” for everything that has to do with website design and development.