People News — New faces and new positions

Kristie Giompoletti-Shamoun has joined KBSI FOX23 and MyNetworkTV affiliate WDKA My49 as general manager, effective last week. The stations broadcast and cablecast television programming in the Paducah-Cape Girardeau-Harrisburg market from their shared studios in Cape Girardeau.

Before coming to Cape Girardeau, Giompoletti-Shamoun was sales director at CBS affiliate KTHV in Little Rock, Arkansas, and was also sales manager and director of transactional sales at WMC, an NBC affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee.

She spent over a decade as an account executive at WREG CBS-3 in Memphis after starting her career at WABG in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Giompoletti-Shamoun is a native of Shaw, Mississippi, and a graduate of Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, and is also a 2019 graduate of the Executive Program at Leadership Memphis.

KBSI and WDKA were sold earlier this year by Sinclair Broadcasting to Standard Media Group based in Nashville, Tennessee. Standard Media owns two other television stations, WLNE-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, and KLKN in Lincoln, Nebraska, both ABC affiliates.

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Bryan Austin

Bryan Austin has been named the new principal at Jackson Junior High School and will replace Cory Crosnoe, who will retire before the start of the 2021-2022 school year.

Austin, who is currently an assistant principal at the school, was named principal at the Jackson School Board's meeting last week following interviews and input from school personnel.

Austin has been employed by the Jackson School District since 2009.

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Darah Jirkovsky

Darah Jirkovsky, who has been development manager at the SoutheastHEALTH Foundation since 2016, has been named executive director of the foundation. The announcement of her promotion was made last week by Southeast president and CEO Ken Bateman.

In her development manager role, Jirkovsky oversaw a variety of fundraising campaigns and foundation events, including those benefiting patient care programs and Southeast Hospice. She also worked on the hospital's annual gala benefiting cancer patients, the foundation's largest and most successful fundraiser. In addition, she has worked closely with donors and potential donors and has contributed to grant-writing projects.

Before joining Southeast, she worked for other not-for-profit organizations, including the American Lung Association and March of Dimes.

Jirkovsky is a graduate of the University of Kentucky in Lexington where she earned a degree in integrated strategic communications/public relations. She is active in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson chambers of commerce, the Southeast Council on Philanthropy and the Southeast Cancer Control Coalition.

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Dr. Rahul Thampi

Endocrinologist Rahul Thampi has joined Cape Diabetes and Endocrinology, a medical practice affiliated with Saint Francis Healthcare System.

Before coming to Cape Girardeau, Thampi was on staff at Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York, where he completed his fellowship in 2020.

He earned his medical degree in 2011 from Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church Medical College in Kerala, India, and completed both his internal medicine internship in 2016 and residency in 2018 at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey.

Cape Diabetes and Endocrinology is located at Entrance 7 of Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau.

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Jake Kohut

Jake Kohut has joined the Cape Girardeau office of Spencer Fane LLP as an of counsel attorney.

His focus at Spencer Fane is on commercial, fiduciary and health care issues, defending claims in both state and federal courts.

Before joining Spencer Fane, Kohut was an attorney with Armstrong Teasdale LLP in St. Louis. Prior to that, he was a litigator with Segal, McCambridge, Singer & Mahoney in St. Louis. He was also an assistant prosecuting attorney in Greene County, Missouri, for two years.

Kohut received his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he also earned his law degree in 2012. In law school, he was an associate editor of the Missouri Law Review and was a member of the Order of the Barristers.

Spencer Fane has nearly 20 offices in nine states. The firm's Cape Girardeau office is at 1650 N. Kingshighway.

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