Team

Pres­i­dent: Mike D. Merrill

Mike D. Mer­rill is Chief Bacon Maker and Mar­ket­ing Strate­gist for his own firm, Bacon Mar­ket­ing. He con­sults in the areas of social media and word of mouth mar­ket­ing, solu­tions mar­ket­ing, prod­uct mar­ket­ing and sales 2.0. Mike has worked at NetApp, Dell, Intel and two venture-backed soft­ware star­tups. He speaks reg­u­larly in the Dal­las com­mu­nity and will be speak­ing at the DFWAMA, MIT Forum, and the Kel­logg Career Sym­po­sium this spring as well as help­ing to orga­nize the first Ignite Dal­las event in March. Mike pur­sued his MBA at the Ross School of Busi­ness at Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan. You can catch up with Mike on his blog at http://www.mikemerrill.com or fol­low him on twit­ter @mikedmerrill.

VP of Pro­mo­tions: Colin Alsheimer

VP of Part­ners: Jes­sica Nunez

Jes­sica Nuñez is the founder of Nuñez PR Group, a Dallas-basedPR and mar­ket­ing firm known for its cre­ative cam­paigns that gen­er­ate suc­cess­ful results. From tra­di­tional media rela­tions to e-PR, Nuñez PR Group helps com­pa­nies of all sizes con­nect with media and con­sumers and improve their brand visibility.

VP of Events: Cyn­thia Smoot

Cyn­thia Smoot stum­bled into the world of social media when she started her per­sonal blog, Oh So Cyn­thia 3 years ago and fell in love with the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate and engage with the world.  After 15 years in print adver­tis­ing and event spon­sor­ship sales, Cynthia’s per­sonal pas­sion for social media led her to join Gang­way Adver­tis­ing where she is now the Chief Mar­ket­ing Strate­gist; devel­op­ing cre­ative mar­ket­ing strate­gies to achieve results. Cyn­thia is also a con­tribut­ing edi­tor and online Blog­ger for many web­sites and print medi­ums on the sub­ject of Moth­er­hood and Social Media Marketing.

VP of Cre­ative: Elysa Rice

Elysa Rice is a self-proclaimed blonde com­puter nerd. Her back­ground in graphic and web design led to her cur­rent posi­tion as Mar­ket­ing Coor­di­na­tor for Ellipse Group. Ellipse is the largest provider of web­site design and devel­op­ment in the apart­ment industry. Elysa is also very involved in the online Gen Y com­mu­nity. You can find her blog­ging about twenty-something life in her pink cor­ner of the web - Gen­Pink.

VP of Mem­ber­ship: Cameron Gawley

Cameron Gaw­ley is the Co-Founder of Boomerang Data and CEO of Buz­zShift Dig­i­tal Agency.  He grad­u­ated from Uni­ver­sity of North Texas with a BA in Journalism/Advertising and has worked in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy over 13 years.  Cameron bridges the gap between Tech­nol­ogy and Online Mar­ket­ing Strat­egy.  He started Boomerang Data in 2006 as Online Data Backup and Out­sourced IT Ser­vice com­pany tar­get­ing some of the Top Agencies/Design firms and Non-Profits. Cameron serves as IT Direc­tor for the National Breast Can­cer Foun­da­tion in Frisco and enjoys boat­ing and trav­el­ing on his days off. Catch him tweet­ing it up @cgawley

Mem­ber at Large: Mary Anne Schweers

Mary Anne Schweers has occu­pied numer­ous mar­ket­ing and strat­egy roles through­out her career. Presently Mary Anne is the Man­ag­ing Part­ner for QSR Ana­lyt­ics, a mar­ket strat­egy and com­pet­i­tive intel­li­gence firm. Mary Anne also serves on the Board of Direc­tors for the Project Merid­ian Foun­da­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC. When not work­ing with clients, Mary Anne can be found work­ing in her vine­yard in Austin, Texas.

VP of Brand­ing: Alyssa Gardina

Alyssa Gar­dina is the Mar­ket­ing Asso­ciate at The Women’s Museum: An Insti­tute for the Future, a national women’s his­tory museum. She grad­u­ated from Ithaca Col­lege with a B.S. in Inte­grated Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and a minor in Amer­i­can His­tory. She main­tains a blog which dis­cusses social media trends and con­tro­ver­sies, par­tic­u­larly those affect­ing non-profits. Alyssa dri­ves a pur­ple Vespa and is still expe­ri­enc­ing cul­ture shock as a Jer­sey Girl in Texas.

VP of Edu­ca­tion: Kat Farmer

Kat Farmer is the Mar­ket­ing Man­ager for Sticviews.  She grad­u­ated from South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­sity with a B.A. in Adver­tis­ing, and is cur­rently at SMU pur­su­ing a M.A. in Adver­tis­ing.  Kat also started a per­sonal blog dur­ing under­grad and is con­tin­u­ing to blog about faith, life and social media here.