Meet the Torma Team

Tracy Torma hails from the northeast Texas town of Avinger (population: 400). She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Tracy hung her diploma at the Longview Morning Journal and the Marshall News Messenger newspapers gaining experience as a reporter. She moved to the big city in 1977 and joined the Public Affairs team at Houston Lighting & Power Company. She served as editor of the company’s employee newsletter Transmissions and later as a public relations representative. In 1983, she shocked the Light Company with the news that she was launching her own company—Torma Communications. Starting her firm at the dawn of the desktop publishing craze, Tracy soon earned the reputation as the “Newsletter Queen” in business communications circles. She estimates having written for or published more than 75 newsletters or magazines during her 25-year consultancy career and still sees it as an effective communications tool today, whether in print or online.

Theresa Parker joined Torma Communications in 1998. She grew up in The Heights area of Houston and survived a Catholic-school education. After graduating from St. Pius X High School, Theresa enrolled at the University of Houston, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Early jobs included being a reporter and photographer for the Hartman Newspaper Group in Fort Bend County, serving as women’s sports information director in the University of Houston Athletic department and writing real estate marketing newsletters. She worked briefly in public relations at Houston Lighting & Power before joining the Corporate Communications team at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, where she served as senior editor for seven years. Theresa’s strengths are her conversational style of writing and projects that call for a creative flair, like this Web site. 

Susan Diemont-Conwell joined Torma Communications in 1998. Born and raised a cornhusker in Omaha, Nebraska, Susan first stepped foot in the Lone Star State at the age of 17, spending her senior year cursing life and writing scandalous articles for the school newspaper. Upon forgiving her family for a senior-year move, she attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned a degree in English. Before joining the Torma team, Susan served as a communications specialist in the Marketing department at Project Future, an economic development organization serving the city of South Bend, Indiana. Since she has the English degree, Susan keeps the Torma team shipshape, grammar-wise. She has a knack for taking exceptionally dry technical verbiage and turning it into understandable prose, wields a mean mouse when it comes to desktop publishing and design, and loves putting the “human” into human-interest stories.