The UNG Digital Marketing Concentration is guided by an outstanding group of advisors. Our advisors consist of UNG alums, but also industry leaders in the field of digital marketing.
Nicholas Ayres, Director of Social Marketing – Georgia Pacific
Boyd Christian, Managing Director – Strive Consulting
Experienced Office Lead/Account Executive/GM with a demonstrated history of creating and inspiring growth, working in a variety of corporate and consulting roles in marketing and information technology. Skilled in Operations Management, Strategy, Product Development, Agile, Analytics, Business Development, and Marketing Strategy. Strong community and social services professional with a MBA from Duke University – The Fuqua School of Business and BS in Org. Development from Vanderbilt University.
Emily Braza, Digital Content Analyst – The Home Depot
Emily Simmons is a Digital Content Analyst at The Home Depot, serving the HD Home division (home décor.) Her sole focus is the performance of the Textiles category, as it relates to all things digital content. Specifically, she is dedicated to Private Brands within textiles, currently including The Company Store, with more to come soon. She enjoys working with cross-functional partners, seeking online merchandising opportunities to improve the path-to-purchase for shoppers on HD.com.
Before starting at The Home Depot, Emily spent 2 1/2 years at News America Marketing (a division of News Corp) in B2B Sales. Her focus, then, was to partner with some of the largest brands in the world (CPG and Retail) to create successful, integrated media and incentive campaigns in-store, at-home, and online, to unlock shopper-based growth.
Emily attributes her success, and confidence launching herself into corporate America, to The University of North Georgia’s Mike Cottrell College of Business. MCCB, and the people who fostered her development in the program (who still continue to mentor her) have been a huge driving force along her career path. She looks forward to providing students the same experience she had, as she serves on the Digital Marketing Advisory Board.
Nick Kastner, Director of Brand and Digital Strategy – Forum Communications
Nick is the resident brand and digital guru for the full-service marketing firm Forum Communications – leading strategies for our clients that positively impact every area of their business. With a B.A. in marketing and M.B.A. in managerial leadership, Nick has spent the past 17 years working in both agency and corporate environments. Most recently, his experience has been focused in higher education, building a brand for one of Georgia’s fastest-growing business schools (where he still teaches). He has presented at a number of conferences and has been published in academic and non-academic journals on the topics of agile project management and digital marketing. At Forum, Nick’s focus is helping clients build consistent and meaningful brand messaging, understanding the digital space and leveraging both for the benefit of their organization. He works closely with everyone on the team to implement strategies that will help clients grow and directly with clients whose focus is primarily digital.
Tom Daly, Owner – Relevant Ventures
Bryan Hardman, Director of Marketing Technology – Herschend Family Entertainment
Herschend Family Entertainment owns and operates theme parks and attractions around the United States. In his role, Bryan oversees all procurement, development, support and enhancements for their marketing technology stack. He is also responsible for the associated vendor relationships and roadmap planning for the organization. He has over 25 years of experience in the attractions industry with a focus on digital since 2007.
Josh Martin, Senior Director of Digital and Social Media – Arby’s
As Arby’s senior director of digital and social media, Josh Martin is responsible for content across all of Arby’s digital and social media platforms. He has been the catalyst for launching Arby’s on numerous social media channels and was the author behind the infamous tweet to Pharrell during the 2014 Grammys. Prior to joining Arby’s, Josh was a social media strategist for Engauge, a full-service marketing agency, where he led strategy for several clients including Chick-fil-A, Food Lion and Hershey’s.
Aaron Mandelbaum, Founder and CEO – SMB Advisors
Aaron Mandelbaum, Founder & CEO SMB Advisors, and demand generation expert, empowers businesses to generate more qualified leads while decreasing the cost per lead. As an Inbound Marketing pioneer, the proprietary demand generation processes he has developed lead him to consistently rank amongst the top professional services marketers for key metrics such as lead generation, blog subscription growth, website performance, and marketing-generated pipeline.
Aaron previously led sales and marketing efforts at Harmony Healthcare International as the Vice President of Marketing & Sales. He applied his expertise in the practices of inbound marketing and sales strategy – including persona development, blogging, search engine optimization, content marketing, social media, lead management & sales process design – to fuel unprecedented growth. Aaron built and implemented a custom growth management process to align sales and marketing, in turn, maximizing the business impact of both. Initiatives included a website redesign resulting in 16 consecutive months of database growth; content strategy optimization that added more than 1,400 new blog subscribers and drove over 5,000 website downloads, inquiries & webinar registrations; improving website functionality to drive organic traffic to all-time highs and website bounce rate to all-time lows, thereby establishing the website as an independent and profitable acquisition tool for new business.
Aaron has appeared as an expert guest speaker on inbound marketing in Puerto Rico, Florida, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Nebraska. He graduated from Bentley University in 2002 with a Bachelor’s in Finance and has been certified by HubSpot as a HubSpot Software Specialist, an Inbound Marketing Specialist, a COS Specialist, and a Certified HubSpot Partner.
Colt Whittall, CXO, US Air Force
Colt Whittall serves as Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of the United States Air Force, the first such position in the Department of Defense and one of only a few in the Federal Government. This role was created to focus on improving the User Experience of Information Technology in the Air Force. Mr. Whittall’s responsibilities include advising senior leaders of the Air Force with respect to User Experience, defining the overall approach to transforming User Experience, guiding cross-organizational teams working to improve User Experience, developing capabilities to manage and continuously improve User Experience, guide development of User Experience skillsets, tools and resources to support the above initiatives, and advise Acquisitions with regard to User Experience.
Previously Mr. Whittall served as Vice President in the healthcare and federal practices at Isobar, a consulting firm focused on digital experience design and development. In this capacity Mr. Whittall advised senior executives of client organizations with respect to digital strategy, digital experience design, digital product design and management, and software development. He also served as a senior subject matter expert in several areas including digital strategy, change leadership, digital health and wellness, and integrating behavioral economics into experience design. Within Isobar he played a senior role in recruiting and professional development, creating new products and services, and business development.
Mr. Whittall is also an angel investor and member of Atlanta Technology Angels. He is an advisor to startups and university programs in User Experience and Digital Marketing. He is also an avid conservationist and leads the Milton Greenspace Advisory Committee in Milton, Georgia which has acquired hundreds of acres of land in the city for permanent conservation and walking paths. Mr. Whittall holds an MBA and an MS in Telecommunications (Colorado) and is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP).