Tonea Songer

TONEA LIKE TONE-YA: “I came here in 1992 to go to UCSB,” said Huntington Beach native Tonea Songer, who started as The Santa Barbara Independent‘s newest account executive this month, “and told my parents I was never coming home.” After a career in radio advertising, Songer spent the past five years selling Canadian shampoo products all over California but is happy to be settling into a job that doesn’t require her to be a “road warrior” three weeks out of the month. Now the New Orleans Saints fan can spend more time focusing on her passions. “I do enjoy politics, sports, and microbrewed beer,” said Songer, who loves Hollister Brewing Company in Goleta. “Their White Star is the best beer ever made from any brewer anywhere. It’s a nitrogen XPA [Extra Pale Ale], as if Guinness and Sierra Nevada had a baby.”