Every March, we celebrate Community Manager Appreciation Day by recognizing the hard work of community builders around the world and the movements they’re creating.
Our industry’s holiday was originally conceived by Jeremiah Owyang, who shares, “I had seen that some of our hardest working business folks were struggling to manage the onslaught of communications, maintain the balance of internal and external stakeholders, and deal with the emotional toll of responding to customers days, nights and weekends.”
Owyang had hoped that the day would serve as a rallying cry for an industry whose roles and responsibilities were evolving and expanding every year. We’re thrilled to see his vision continue to shape the industry and to do our part as a sponsor of this year’s CMAD Awards to recognize the talented individuals who continue to contribute their skills to the field of community management.
The list we’ve put together includes the nominees for CMAD’s 2017 Community Manager of the Year, as well as a collection of community managers we’ve compiled over the years based on feedback from the CMX community.
Want to level up your skills so you can join this list? Check out our Training for all the foundational knowledge you need to build a career as a community manager.
2017 Community Manager of the Year Nominees
These community managers have been recognized for their excellence in community building and collaboration with nominations for this year’s CMAD Awards.
1. Suzi Nelson
Community Manager, DigitalMarketer.com
Image Source: LinkedIn
Suzi fosters DigitalMarketer’s community through assistance, support and encouragement. Through her leadership, the company has seen a 92.81% increase in community activity from her strategic approach to relationship building. As winner of the 2017 Community Manager of the Year, Suzi will be honoured on stage at CMX Summit for her excellence in community management, as well as receive an all-expenses paid trip to CMX Summit in LA (sponsored by CMX and Online Community Results)
2. Heather Arkwright
Community Manager, Higher Logic
Image Source: LinkedIn
Part of the community management team at Higher Logic, Heather provides strategies and recommendations for clients building vibrant communities. She also focuses on how to engage and empower members of communities that ultimately impacts businesses.
3. Jane Atkin
Community Manager, Lonely Planet
Image Source: LinkedIn
Jane creates online community strategies for Lonely Planet, and oversees the moderation policy and customer service procedures. She helps Lonely Planet foster passion in the community, in part by encouraging and empowering members to contribute high-quality submissions to the site.
4. Carol Benovic
Senior Content Manager, Kickstarter
Image Source: LinkedIn
Carol empowers campaign creators with advice and tools to help their projects to come to life. She helps internal teams track trends and better understand issues from Kickstarter’s campaign creators, and turns them into resources to better serve the growing community.
5. James Bowden
Community Manager, Nintendo UK
Image Source: LinkedIn
James is a passionate gamer who helps raise Nintendo’s awareness by visiting retail stores to drum up excitement about upcoming titles while improving sales. His goal is to grow community events while making sure groups have fun.
6. Simona Ciampi
Associate Director, Online Member Engagement, American Association for Clinical Chemistry
Image Source: LinkedIn
Simona works to bring people together with a purpose at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. She relies on people skills while tapping into social media outreach and other online engagement strategies to boost membership and retention.
7. Sarah Corley
Marketing Specialist, WSOL
Image Source: LinkedIn
Sarah is a marketing specialist working on inbound marketing and social media strategies to attract and engage audiences. Sarah has also helped clients plan and execute webinars for over 100 attendees for lead generation and re-engagement.
8. Joshua Dahdrai
Community Manager, Capcom
Image Source: LinkedIn
Joshua helps grow and manage online communities for gaming company Capcom. He scours forums, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube to see what the fanbase thinks about the latest titles. He also manages social media and organizes offline gamefest trips.
9. Sarah Hawk
Head of Community, FeverBee
Image Source: LinkedIn
Sarah uses social science principles to build successful communities, and has a passion for technology and helping people coming together in online communities. Her current focus is weaving UX principles into community platforms to attract and engage fans.
10. Holly Elizabeth Herbert
Community Manager, Blackbaud
Image Source: LinkedIn
Holly built her career around her passion for interacting with diverse audiences to build engaged communities with a measurable impact. She manages social personas to connect and engage with clients while advocating for the Blackbaud brand.
11. Michelle Holden
Community Manager, Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC)
Image Source: LinkedIn
Michelle creates content for the Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) ranging from marketing collateral to HIROC external publications. She continuously looks for new ideas to help focus communications and improve the subscriber experience.
12. Mathilde Junck
Community Specialist, YouTube/Google Ireland
Image Source: LinkedIn
Mathilde fosters and builds relationships with communities as a YouTube Community Specialist. She represents the voice of consumers while working with Google and their partners to improve their products and policies.
13. Kirsten Laaspere
Community Strategist, Akamai Technologies
Image Source: LinkedIn
As an Enterprise Community Manager for Akamai, Kirsten helped launch Jive cloud to over 6,000 employees with an 89% adoption rate in 3 months. She also partners with IT and Corporate Communications to streamline communications to better serve their online community.
14. Jenine Liszka
Enterprise Knowledge Manager, Billtrust
Image Source: LinkedIn
Jenine focuses on the implementation and management of knowledgebase systems for Billtrust. She helps execute best practices and strategies for clients to make informed decisions while receiving phenomenal customer service.
15. Steven Rodriguez
Startup Community Manager, Global Entrepreneurship Network
Image Source: LinkedIn
Steven helped build one of the largest communities of entrepreneurial leaders across 165 countries. He also led workshops on building startup communities and ecosystem initiatives at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in South Africa and Colombia.
16. Darcy Smith
Community Manager, League of Geeks
Image Source: Twitter
Darcy is a graduate of Game Design and Production, and applies his stage-comedy experience to lead the fiercely loyal League of Geeks community. He works to bring a voice to League of Geeks through humor to forge meaningful connections with users.
Community-Building Founders
These are founders who build communities around their products or whose products are communities themselves. These founders work day in and day out to build movements, and they’re showing others the way.
17. Alison Michalk
Founder and CEO, Quiip
Image Source: LinkedIn
As the CEO and founder of Quiip, Alison partners with leading organizations to foster online communities and realize social media success. Quiip’s community managers rely on social science and the art of online communications to create compelling content and conversation.
18. Amy Jo Kim
CEO, Shufflebrain
Image source: LinkedIn
Amy Jo works with entrepreneurs and startups to promote faster and smarter innovation, and was named one of the top 10 influential women in games by Fortune. She pioneered the idea of gaming in digital services, and has worked with brands like Rock Band, TheSims and indiegogo, among others.
19. Andrew Hyde
Startup Weekend Founder, Up Global
Image source: Andrewhy.de
Andrew was employee #1 at Techstars, and founded Startup Weekend after developing a passion for startups and creating things people use. Andrew’s first Startup Weekend brought together 70 entrepreneurs trying to create a startup in 54 hours. In 2016, the event spanned 135 countries and involved 210,000 entrepreneurs.
20. Bill Johnston
Chief Community Officer, Structure3C
Image source: LinkedIn
Bill develops large-scale online communities, including the design and launch of TechRepublic.com that grew to two million members. He also launched thriving communities for Autodesk and Dell that connect millions of customers.
21. Charlene Li
Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
Image source: LinkedIn
Charlene creates business strategies for leadership in emerging technologies, and helps leaders thrive in disruption. As an analyst since 1999, Charlene says she’s seen the business world and society undergo seismic changes, and looks to bring clarity through thought leadership.
22. Chris Heuer
CEO & Chief Product Officer, Alynd
Image source: LinkedIn
Chris focuses on social productivity as a proven mechanism for turning companies around. He concentrates on forming collaborative work cultures through Alynd’s solution, called Will Someone, which enables workers to solicit support help from their communities.
23. Derek Powazek
Co-founder & CEO, Fertile Medium
Image source: LinkedIn
Derek has worked on the web since 1999 and cofounded Fertile Medium to help clients create social products. He authored the book, “Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places” to explore why all successful websites have communities in some form or another.
24. Eric Elkins
CEO, WideFoc.us
Image Source: LinkedIn
As the CEO of social media strategy agency WideFoc.us, Eric uses ePR and social media strategies to create reinforced messaging and enriched brand experiences. His work also helps develop engaged online communities driven by user-generated content.
25. Gina Bianchini
Founder & CEO, Mightybell
Image source: LinkedIn
Gina founded software platform Mightybell and most recently Mighty Networks to help people and companies create their own communities by focusing on networking. Users can meet each other around a shared interest on mobile to engage in and create loyal communities.
26. Janet Fouts
CEO, Tatu Digital Media
Image Source: LinkedIn
Janet works with companies to create workable strategies to make social media outreach successful. She counts her specialities as mindful social business, social media for the real world and influencer outreach, among others.
27. Jenna Woodul
Co-Founder, EVP, Chief Community Officer, LiveWorld Inc
Image source: LinkedIn
Jenna oversees Live World’s moderation, content programming and social strategy. The combination of her leadership and Live World’s proprietary technology has helped to scale the human management of user generated content.
28. Jerry Michalski
Founder, Relationship Economy eXpedition (REX)
Image source: LinkedIn
Jerry nurtures a keen interest in the interactions between society, business and technology as the founder of REX, the Relationship Economy eXpedition. The invitation-only membership group works as a think-and-do tank to help leaders navigate massive change, with members from Coca-Cola, Deloitte, the American Heart Association and others.
29. Jeff Slobotski
Founder, Router Ventures, Silicon Prairie News
Image source: LinkedIn
Jeff helps connect talented people and impactful projects with global resources through his seed fund venture firm. He also founded Silicon Prairie News to provide a supportive community for entrepreneurs to thrive.
30. Kate Kendall
Founder & CEO, Cloud Peeps
Image source: LinkedIn
Kate empowers freelancers and businesses with CloudPeeps to help people discover and hire quality, independent professionals. She’s also a loyal part of the Freelance Friday community, a coworking community and event series devoted to supporting freelancers.
31. Laura Jane Fitton
Founder, oneforty
Image source: LinkedIn
Laura was once dubbed the “Queen of Twitter” and founded OneForty.com after recognizing the value in the software built on Twitter’s API. She convinced Guy Kawasaki and tech executives of Twitter’s business value and potential long before the rest of the world seemed to catch on.
32. Rachel Happe
Principal & Co-Founder, The Community Roundtable
Image source: LinkedIn
As the co-founder of the Community Roundtable, Rachel supports business leaders as they develop their community and social strategies. She helps create practical strategies to grow her client’s communities with engaged members.
33. Ryan Hoover
Founder, Product Hunt
Image source: LinkedIn
Ryan founded Product Hunt for community users to share and discover new products. He understands the power of community recommendations, and created a comment and voting system to help find the best products.
34. Scott Gerber
Co-founder, YEC
scottdgerber.com
Image source: LinkedIn
Scott, CEO and co-founder of CommunityCo, builds and manages membership communities for elite professionals. Scott is also the co-founder of YEC, an invitation-only organization of successful, young entrepreneurs that provides community-based support and networking opportunities.
35. Scott Heiferman
Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup
Image source: LinkedIn
Scott helps grow and engage online communities by giving them a platform to organize offline event opportunities with Meetup. Meetup aims to help people be their best by giving them a way to get together and do things that matter to them.
36. Sean Ellis
Founder, Qualaroo & GrowthHackers
Image source: LinkedIn
GrowthHackers rapidly grew into the number one online community for growth hackers. CEO and founder Sean coined the term “growth hacker” in 2010, and used its principles to quickly grow and scale businesses like Dropbox.
37. Sue Feldman
President & Founder, Synthexis
Image source: LinkedIn
Sue focuses on clarity and precision messaging to help the search and content analytics industry. Her consulting firm also tracks trends in information, technology and marketing.
38. Thomas Knoll
Growth Operations, Revelry Labs
Image source: LinkedIn
Thomas has been building online communities for nearly 20 years, and helps executives and entrepreneurs build thriving teams and businesses. His work at Revelry Labs focuses on helping teams establish their key objectives for their business and professional growth within the organization to successfully scale.
39. Venessa Paech
Co-Founder, Swarm Conference
Image source: Twitter
Venessa founded Australia’s only online community management conference to gather ideas, inspiration and best practices. She also released a new Code of Ethics for professional social media and community managers in Australia, in collaboration with the Australian Community Managers industry group and digital media researchers.
40. Danya Shults
Founder, Arq
Image source: Twitter
Danya is the founder of Arq, a brand and community that helps people connect with Jewish culture in a modern and inclusive way. Previously, Danya worked for Spark Capital, which partners with entrepreneurs looking to build disruptive, world-changing companies. Danya simplified the community building process by identifying what companies had to offer and found the right way to get the word out, and bring them on board.
Startup Community Builders
Building an early-stage startup’s community is hard work. The entire ecosystem, from founders to developers to VCs, must be built and engaged on a regular basis. These are the premier builders in this space.
41. Anja Kundra
VP of Operations, Partender
Image source: LinkedIn
Anja founded Partender to help owners and managers reduce the time it takes to do bar inventory from 24 hours to 15 minutes or less. She consequently helped clients save up to $10,000 a month, and grew her customers’ bottom lines by 6% in less than 3 months.
42. Erik Torenberg
Angel Investor & Founding Team, Product Hunt
Image source: LinkedIn
Erik was employee #1 at Product Hunt, and currently serves as an angel investor with investments in Omni, Ferment Lab, and many more. He also hosts a podcast with Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover where they talk to guests in the startup community, like Arianna Huffington and Donald Rumsfeld.
43. Lucy Brady
Network Construction, Oscar Health
Image source: LinkedIn
Lucy focuses on Network Construction at Oscar Health to help users navigate simple health insurance and smart healthcare. The company builds end-to-end solutions to make it easy to book appointments, see lab results and is even starting their own clinic in Brooklyn.
44. Morgan Brady
Program Director, YEC
Image source: LinkedIn
Morgan helps develop programs that elevate and support entrepreneurs with the resources and social capital needed to succeed. Her work at Forbes Councils is lead by the team behind YEC and is building an invitation-only community to help entrepreneurs succeed.
45. Ryan Paugh
Cofounder & COO, YEC
Image source: LinkedIn
Ryan co-founded YEC and quickly built a community of many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs aged 40 and younger. He focuses on building epic communities and has been called a “cult legend in online community building world” by Mashable.
46. Ash McGregor Dey
Social Media & Community Relations Strategist, Self-Employed
Image source: LinkedIn
Ash specializes in social media and community management and is “obsessed with building and scaling content and creating passionate communities.” Her skills span across online marketing, social media, brand management and digital content creation, and she also co-founded Austin and Bay area fashion and tech networking groups.
47. Katie McCauley
Image source: LinkedIn
Katie is a connector, empath, and has a curiosity for others that never runs out. She loves using all three of these in her work as the CMX Series Coordinator. Previously, Katie spent over two years as the Community Manager for Noonday Collection, a fair trade direct sales jewelry company and passionate community of women. She is a firm believer that we need each other, and finds joy in being a resource to other community builders.
Mentors and Leaders
These are community builders who’ve been at it for years, who are constantly building next-level communities and trying new strategies, and who inspire us on a daily basis. They’ve got experience under their belts, and they often share that experience with others both on and offline. We’re proud to call many of these community builders members of our community.
48. Allison Leahy
Director of Community, Fitbit
Image source: LinkedIn
Allison leads the engaged community at Fitbit and builds community and social support programs. She counts expanding Fitbit’s community support in 8 languages and delivering user support to over 35 global social pages in 7 languages and 5 platforms, as major milestones.
49. David Spinks
Founder & CEO, CMX
Image source: LinkedIn
David created CMX to serve as the hub for the community profession. He helps develop communities, conferences and professional training for community professionals to help shape a more connected and collaborative world.
50. Amy Muller
VP of Customer Care & Community, Automatic
Amy views customer support and communities as strategic values with exponential long-term benefits to businesses. Her work at Automatic takes a cross-functional approach to training, development and team collaboration.
51. Caty Kobe
Head of Scalable Support, Square
Image source: LinkedIn
As a “fearless customer advocate,” Caty focuses on the human elements of business, including online community and customer education. She’s been working on building and supporting online communities since 2008, and trains community managers on social science techniques that drive online engagement.
52. Chelsea Rustrum
Sharing Economy Consultant, Sharers.co
http://rustrum.com/start-here/
Image source: LinkedIn
Chelsea advises early- to mid-stage startups on building their communities and increasing visibility. She consults with startups on their marketing strategies and helps set up community building strategies focused around user acquisition and retention.
53. Cindy Au
Former VP of Community, Kickstarter
Image source: LinkedIn
Cindy joined Kickstarter as employee #9 and helped build the early community team at the crowdfunding platform. She now serves as the VP of Community, where she builds scalable outreach strategies across content, local events, live streams and partnerships.
54. Danyelle Ludwig
Internal Comms & Events Lead, Lyft
Image source: LinkedIn
Danyelle is a communications guru helping plan and produce events, promotions and creative materials for Lyft. She also creates story pitches and fundraising campaigns, and has her hand in events throughout San Francisco.
55. David DeWald
Community Manager, Carbon Black
thehistorian.org
Image source: LinkedIn
David has been building web community spaces since 1996 and focuses on building and managing online communities. He brings his strategic experience in community development to Carbon Black to help users looking for endpoint security platforms to defend from modern-day attacks.
56. David Rust
Director, Operations Strategy, Lyft
Image source: LinkedIn
David was employee #25 at Lyft and helped the company build its marketing playbook to launch across the U.S. He also lead Lyft through a partnership with General Motors and Hertz to deploy Lyft’s first vehicle rental program.
57. Dawn Lacallade
VP Account Services, LiveWorld
Image source: LinkedIn
Dawn helps healthcare companies transform their position in the marketplace with innovative marketing programs. She creates campaigns to help build and engage compassionate communities and conversational experiences.
58. Elana Leoni
Founder, Leoni Consulting Group
Image source: LinkedIn
Elana has over 10 years of experience building and leading online marketing strategies. She consults startups, educational institutions and nonprofits through results-oriented social media.
59. Emery Lees
Senior Consultant, ROI Communication
Image source: LinkedIn
Emery is fascinated by the intersection between community and technology. She develops social media and collaborative programs to help organizations develop their communities and reach their full potential.
60. Erica McGillivray
Sliverofice.com
Image source: LinkedIn
Erica is a community manager, events manager, author and currently works as the Director of Events for CMX, focusing on CMX Summit and other offline community gatherings. Previously, Erica wrangled an online marketing and SEO-focused community of 600,000 at Moz. She’s also a founder of GeekGirlCon, an all-volunteer nonprofit.
61. Erica Kuhl
VP of Community, Salesforce
Image source: LinkedIn
Erica oversees the Success Community at Salesforce with over 2.5 million members, and 53,000 new members added monthly. She also created and managed Salesforce advocacy programs with 230 MVPs and 430 global user groups.
62. Holly (Goldin) Firestone
Director, Community, Salesforce
Image source: LinkedIn
Holly helps manage the Salesforce MVP and user group programs. She also creates content for her groups, including posts that further engage the community by honoring the MVPs and trailblazers for their exceptional contributions.
63. Jenn Pedde
Global Manager, Alumni & Community, Oliver Wyman
Image source: LinkedIn
As the Global Manager for Alumni and Community for Oliver Wyman, Jenn got her start building communities between expats and locals with social media tools while living in South Korea. She brought that knowledge and love of education as a community building consultant, and eventually oversaw Oprah Winfrey’s online community for engagement and customer service.
64. Jeska Dzwigalski
Social Media & Community Consultant, theBoardlist
Image source: LinkedIn
Jeska works at the intersection of customer engagement, social media, marketing, support and community development. As a social media consultant, she specializes in building and engaging online communities, social strategy and a wide range of marketing knowledge including serving startups and women in technology.
65. Joe Cothrel
Chief Community Officer, Lithium
Image source: LinkedIn
Joe says it best when he writes he’s “responsible for thought leadership, research and innovations that drive the next generation of successful enterprise customer communities.” His work at Lithium has helped over 300 companies on four continents create successful programs with his advice.
66. Julie Hamel
Sr. Manager, Community & Social, Alteryx
Image source: LinkedIn
Julie oversees the strategic and tactical operations of the Alteryx Community and its social channels. She has nearly a decade of experience working with Fortune 500 companies building vibrant online communities.
67. Lauren Cucinotta
Director of Marketing + Community, Maven Clinic
http://laurencucinotta.com/
Image source: LinkedIn
Lauren builds communities around big ideas at Maven Clinic, the first telemedicine company focused on women. She runs the Brand Ambassador community and program to empower the community, and runs user acquisition partnerships.
68. Linda Carlson
Director of Community Relations, Trion Worlds, Inc.
Image source: LinkedIn
Linda specializes in community management and building at Trion Worlds. She’s a veteran of the online gaming industry, and has a passion for the support and evolution of communities where players bring game worlds to life.
69. Maria Ogneva
Head of Community, LinkedIn
Social Silk
Image source: LinkedIn
Maria believes in making work and play better with technology, and helps employees and customers work better together. She focuses on building communities that generate buzz and build advocacy.
70. Mark Yolton
Head of Digital & Interactive, Salesforce
Image source: LinkedIn
Mark was an early adapter of the internet as a tool for building communities. He counts himself lucky to work at “the center of the storm” in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he helped transform and optimize global brands from Peoplesoft to Oracle.
71. Phoebe Shin Venkat
Global Lead, Help & Engagement Communities, Facebook
Image source: LinkedIn
As the Global Lead of Help and Engagement Communities at Facebook, Phoebe has over 10 years of experience in community management and enterprise collaboration. She provides mentorship to a team of community moderators around the world to ultimately empower the Facebook community.
72. Rebecca Newton
Head of Trust & Community, SuperAwesome
Image source: LinkedIn
Rebecca heads the online community and safety at SuperAwesome. She specializes in child safety, regulatory compliance, and public policy, among other issues in technology and online communities.
73. Regina Walton
Marketing Manager & Event Producer, SFTech4Good
Image source: LinkedIn
Regina manages and scales the Salesforce Developer Community with over 3 million members and 180 worldwide groups. She also focuses on nurturing the Salesforce Developer Champions program with over 800 members to build an empowered community.
74. Samer Rabadi
Online Community Engagement Manager, Edutopia
Image source: LinkedIn
Samer leads online community engagement at George Lucas’ Educational Foundation, Edutopia. The foundation shares evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies for educators to improve K-12 education.
75. Sanya Weathers
Director of Community, Undead Labs
Image source: LinkedIn
Sanya has 16 years of experience in community building for the MMO industry. She specializes in developing full-fledged community programs with limited or nonexistent budgets, and possesses a wide range of expertise, from community tool design to incentives and communication.
76. Sherrie Rohde
Community Manager, Magento
Image source: LinkedIn
Sherrie connects people and resources at Magento. As a developer for a merchant, she was an active Magento community member and forum moderator before becoming the Community Manager. She’s obsessed with innovation and specializes in online and offline community building, management and strategy.
77. Carrie Jones
Founding Partner & COO, CMX Media
Image source: LinkedIn
As the Founding Partner and COO of CMX, Carrie is passionate about helping community professionals build confidence and gain power in their roles. She manages CMX’s operations and builds strategy to ensure that the CMX team can strengthen the community industry.
78. Sue John
Project Manager, The Social Element
http://sueontheweb.com/
Image source: Twitter
Sue brings over 17 years of online community management experience to The Social Element. She provides frontline, high-quality deployment and management for the operational aspects of client service. Sue looks for new ways to create efficient processes to improve the service delivery.
79. Susan Tenby
Director of Social Media, Community & Strategic Partnerships, Caravan Studios
Image source: LinkedIn
Susan focuses on building supportive communities for app developers and nonprofits to create tech solutions for real-world problems. She runs the social media channels at Caravan Studios, and identifies and engages influencers and curates relevant content.
80. Tim Falls
VP of Community, Keen IO
Image source: LinkedIn
Tim has worked with communities since 2010, where he started by launching SendGrid’s marketing strategy and establishing their community outreach program. Tim now collaborates on building community-oriented strategies in the realm of startups, technology and for-profit businesses. His real passion lies in developing projects that create positive impacts on society and environment.
81. Toby Metcalf
Community and Online Projects Manager, PTC
Image source: LinkedIn
Toby oversees content, social media promotion and the aesthetics of customer experience for PTC. The platform helps users unlock the value of the Internet of Things by providing solutions that transform how products are created and serviced.
82. Evan Hamilton
Community Consultant
Image source: LinkedIn
Evan founded Community Manager Breakfast to give leaders the opportunity to learn from each other. He helps businesses build communities by identifying the value in engaging their audience and supercharging engagement.
83. Patrick O’Keefe
Founder, iFroggy Network
Image source: LinkedIn
Patrick has been growing and scaling online communities for over 17 years, and his methods have been used by companies like FedEX and Cisco. He’s built his career as a community veteran around fostering meaningful online conversations.
84. Brian Oblinger
VP Community & Support, Alteryx
Image source: LinkedIn
Brian oversees the strategy, execution and measurement of community and customer support for Alteryx. His community building expertise was honed at companies like eBay and Sony PlayStation, where he created unique and engaging social communities and experiences.
85. Ellen Petry Leanse
Advisor, Work in Progress
Image source: LinkedIn
Ellen focuses on people-oriented strategies to help tech products and companies realize success. She works as a consultant and counts Facebook, Apple and Google as happy clients, and currently invests in and advises startups across areas like product vision and team building.
86. Etienne Wenger-Trayner
Independent Management Consulting, Wenger-Trayner
Image source: LinkedIn
Etienne is known for his work on communities of practice with a focus on social learning theories and systems. He works to understand the connection between knowledge, community, learning and identity, with the idea that human knowledge is a social act.
87. F. Randall Farmer
Social Media Product Strategy Consultant, Rosenfeld Media
Image source: LinkedIn
- Randall is an American game developer and the co-creator of one of the first graphic online games, Habitat, that debuted in 1985. He has over 30 years of experience designing and building multi-user community software.
88. Ligaya Tichy
Angel Investor, 38 Angels + By/Association
http://www.ligayatichy.com/index.html
Image source: LinkedIn
Ligaya looks to galvanize change through collaboration and invests in early-stage companies with projects that impact people’s lives for the better. She was employee #10 at Yelp and launched markets during a rapid growth stage. She also led Airbnb’s marketing efforts.
89. Martin Reed
Community Builder & Consultant, CommunitySpark
Image source: Twitter
Martin was an early adopter of the internet and building web pages. He built Just Chat, the UK’s most popular online community with 600 simultaneous chat rooms. He also created the community building blog Community Spark, to share tips and advice for managing successful online communities so companies can get an edge over the competition.
90. Ray Eisenberg
Community Development Consultant, RME Consulting
http://voiceofcommunity.typepad.com/
Image source: LinkedIn
Ray specializes in online and in-person communities of practice and international communities. He currently develops and implements the community strategy for World Bank Group that helps eradicate extreme poverty.
91. Sarah Judd Welch
CEO, Loyal
Image source: LinkedIn
Sarah is a community designer and strategist serving as the CEO and head of Community Design for Loyal that helps leverage communities online. She partners with companies to create deeper customer relationships and improve retention to impact bottom lines.
92. Scott Moore
Online Community Manager, Digital Promise Global
Image source: Twitter
Scott brings 20 years of experience initiating and maintaining online communities, and currently works with Digital Promise to accelerate innovation in education. He’s also worked with Answers.com as the Director of Community Development, overseeing approximately 100,000 monthly contributors and 50 million site visitors.
93. Sean O’Driscoll
Chief Strategy & Insights Officer, Cision
Image source: LinkedIn
Sean brought his experience from PwC and Microsoft to Cision as their Chief Strategy and Insights Officer. He works to build a vision for creating the next-generation communication platform to help clients innovate.
