Ann Friedman is a columnist for New York magazine’s website and for the Columbia Journalism Review. She also makes pie charts for The Hairpin and Los Angeles magazine. She was the executive editor of GOOD magazine until 2012, when she and her colleagues were fired en masse. Shortly thereafter, they produced a crowd-funded magazine called Tomorrow that was nominated for an Utne Independent Media Award. Her work has appeared in ELLE, Esquire, Newsweek, The Observer, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a writer, editor, and speaker for hire. 

Ma’ayan Plaut is the Manager of Social Strategy and Projects at her alma mater, Oberlin College, where she manages Oberlin’s social spaces and projects. She serves as a cheerleader, consultant, and strategist for anyone interested in exploring social media on campus.

Ma’ayan has presented at HighEdWeb, the Web Conference at Penn State, the CASE Social Media and Community conference, Confab Higher Ed, Academic Impressions, and is a frequent guest on the Higher Ed Live network.
In her free time, Ma’ayan writes a lot, tweets a lot, and thinks about food a lot.

Andrew Careaga is executive director of marketing and communications at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, Missouri. He writes, blogs and presents frequently on branding, public relations, social media marketing, crisis communications, change management and related subjects. Careaga also wrote about social media’s role in crisis communication for the book Social Works, published in February 2013 by EDUniverse Media.

Ron Bronson is the founder & director of #GGRGT. By day, he serves as Director of Web Strategy for the Kentucky community college system. Ron previously served as Policy Director & Co-Founder of Future Wyoming, an advocacy & tech education think tank.

He also launched three startups including Synonym, a boutique strategy firm & Omnivore, an athletic brand. Ron has been building successful online communities for over close to 20 years. He’s also logged over a decade of experience in IT & web roles at diverse institutions around the country. Ron is known as a fierce advocate of user experience, web governance expert & energetic speaker at conferences nationally & globally.

A native of New Jersey, he earned the Air Force Achievement Medal in 2000 for service in the Middle East.

Mara Zepeda is the co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, an online community building platform often described as a non-creepy Craigslist. It has become the go-to solution for young alumni engagement in higher education. Switchboard’s customers include Reed College, Oberlin College, Williams College and Portland State University.

Mara has spent her entire life working in organizations and higher education at places like Harvard University, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; as a reporter with National Public Radio; and as a board member of arts organizations, neighborhood associations, and her alma mater, Reed.

Rob Engelsman is a community manager at Huge in Brooklyn, NY, where he works on social strategy and execution. Previously he ran social media and other multimedia projects for his alma mater Ithaca College, where he received a degree in journalism with minors in politics and religious studies. An over-eager journalism student once described Rob as a “renaissance man of modern media” in a profile that was never published. The student was most likely bribed.

Sam Kapila is a designer and web design educator living in Austin, Texas, focusing on Responsive Web Design and Typography. She is also a co-host of the ATX Web Show & Non-Breaking Space podcasts.

Joel G Goodman is a jack-of-all-trades marketer, designer, and front-end developer, and the principal and owner of Bravery Media. He spent six years working in higher education web marketing at two institutions driving web marketing, branding and strategy aimed at increasing both student enrollment and alumni engagement.

Patrick Doyle is a consultant in strategic planning, communications, and business development based in Binghamton, New York. Over the past decade he has helped facilitate more than $60 million in economic development investment in Upstate New York. Patrick also manages national brands for the Pleasant Valley Wine Company, a family-owned business established in 1860 in Hammondsport, New York.

Nicole Sunstrum has over four years experience coordinating statewide public sector social media initiatives. Prior to assuming her current role, she was responsible for coordinating a unified presence and strategy for government entities. Her role included policy creation; consultation and training aimed at ensuring all accounts provided additional value to Michigan citizens.

Nicole is now focused on applying that same approach in order to innovate the way in which one of the world’s top universities strategically advances interactive communications.

Daniel Dudley is a digital strategist with LinkMedia360, a digital/directional marketing agency located in sunny Cleveland, Ohio. Daniel cut his “marketing” teeth in the NYC startup scene before moving to the agency world where he has worked on both traditional and digital engagements for companies ranging from local startups to Fortune 500.

Outside of the 9-to-5, Daniel is the Creative Director for a biomedical device start up, he helps organize a series of regional tech conference in northeast Ohio, he runs a boutique screen printing company, and laments his lack of free time. He also really likes pandas.

Jenny Mackintosh is a Web Producer for Boston University’s Interactive Design team, supporting the designers and developers who build BU’s websites. Before joining them in December 2013, she was BU’s Social Media & Community Outreach Coordinator, learning & telling Terriers’ stories through social networks. Her particular areas of interest include community management, storytelling and analytics. 

Erik Schwartz is a 2014 Code for America Fellow working with the city of Lexington, KY just down the road from Louisville. Before that, he’d been traveling the world with only a suitcase and a laptop as a developer and partner at the Chicago-based tech shop, Table XI. His goal as a developer is to be a skilled inventor and thoughtful teammate in the pursuit of socially-meaningful projects.

John Britton is a developer and community builder, active in both open source and open education. As Education Liaison at GitHub he’s working to improve computer science education by bringing the principles of open source into the classroom.

Alaina Wiens is the Web Content Strategist at the University of Michigan-Flint, where she works to ensure the university’s story is told effectively through the web and social channels. She helps departments across campus think strategically about their online communication, and is project manager for large-scale web projects within University Relations. Alaina is also the “driver” of #strategycar, a weekly Twitter chat designed to encourage strategic discussion and brainstorming for higher education professionals.

As Director of University Web Communications at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, Lacy’s office is responsible for the development of vanderbilt.edu, providing web and application development services, consulting on web strategy, and managing Vanderbilt’s social media presences. Thankfully she still gets to code quite a bit… she loves building tools and expanding functionality to help others do their jobs more efficiently.  Lacy is married to Justin, a software engineer also at Vandy, and is a new mom to Hayden, born Feb 21 (he’s destined to be a geek!) More at lacypaschal.com.

Emily Alexandra is leading the charge for #GGRGT Melbourne, Australia in 2015. She has over seven years experience coordinating digital and print communications in higher education. For the last five years, her team’s focus has been to develop the international communications for her alma mater, Deakin University using best practice operations that incorporate creativity, sustainability, community and best use of technology. Fittingly, Emily is also a co-disruptor of the Disruptive Business Network – a platform to inspire, debate and educate.