Meet the Board of Directors

Jim Nichols is the Founder of Exclamation Marketing LLC, a marketing “stratecution” services company that works with companies in North America, EMEA, and APAC. A longtime veteran of the partnerships industry, he launched his first affiliate program in 1999. Throughout his career, Jim has held leadership positions for brands, agencies, media publishers, and affiliate tracking companies.

Before Exclamation Marketing, he was CMO of Partnerize, where he led all aspects of company marketing and demand generation globally, and successfully rebranded the company. Before Partnerize, he was VP of Marketing for mobile tracking and analytics companies Singular and Apsalar. Before Apsalar, he was VP of Marketing for Agency Solutions, SaaS Technology, International, and Corporate Marketing at CJ parent ValueClick, Inc., where he led the company’s rebranding to Conversant Media.

A frequent industry speaker, Jim is also a prolific contributor to many marketing, technology, and affiliate industry trade journals and communities. He holds a BA in US History from University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA in Marketing and Governance from University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Kelly Ground is a distinguished expert and consultant in affiliate and partnership marketing, boasting nearly 20 years of unparalleled experience. Her profound knowledge and innovative approach have consistently driven strategic growth for affiliate and partnership marketing programs. In her recent role as Chief Growth Officer at an acquisition marketing publisher, Kelly spearheaded initiatives that achieved over 100% user acquisition growth for leading brands. She earned recognition as one of the Top 50 Women Leaders of Tampa for 2024. Previously, as Senior Director of Strategy and Insights at Acceleration Partners, Kelly excelled in guiding global affiliate marketing programs for over 6.5 years, earning recognition as a Top 30 Partnership Marketing Changemaker in the US by Hello Partner in 2023.

Kelly’s extensive experience includes her tenure as a Senior Digital Marketing Manager at HSN, where she drove significant revenue generation through effective affiliate and display programs. Her professional journey also includes roles such as Marketing Manager for an employee benefits publisher and experience in the manufacturing and telecommunication industries. Currently, Kelly serves on the Board of Directors for the Performance Marketing Association as the Treasurer and holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science with a minor in journalism from Clemson University. Her diverse background and proven track record make her a formidable force in the affiliate marketing arena.

Katie is passionate about the PMA’s goals to promote the growth of the industry, help model standards and best-practices, and advocate on behalf of the businesses that comprise the performance marketing industry, and is honored to be part of this organization.

She is grateful to have learned from and collaborated with incredibly talented people in a variety of creative marketing, data management, and leadership roles, including past positions of Account Manager and Senior Manager of Customer Success and Operations at Sound Partner Marketing, as  FMTC’s Network Liaison/Integrations Manager, and currently as FinTech Affiliate Manager with KINESSO.

Katie has a strong track record of achieving sales and new customer growth goals, diversifying and scaling up partnerships, and helping companies find common ground. She works with all players in the industry to build long-term, transparent and profitable partnerships with advertisers, merchants and retailers, networks, publishers, agencies, and tech solution providers. She is a skilled relationship-builder and has a proven ability to facilitate consensus and work effectively with others.

During Jeannine’s 20+ years in affiliate marketing, her dedicated focus has always been to grow our industry by supporting everyone involved, whether publisher, merchant, network or vendor. She has actually spent time working in each of those areas, giving her the knowledge to see issues and opportunities from a variety of perspectives. That’s a key strength in representing all of the members of the PMA.

Her involvement with the PMA began back in 2010 when she testified before the Colorado House and Senate Finance Committees fighting the Amazon Tax under the guidance of their legal council. We were successful in changing the law so that affiliates did not establish nexus, thus saving the jobs of 5,000+ affiliates in Colorado. Since then she has been honored to serve on both the PMA Compliance Council and the PMA Publishers Council.

Currently she is the Partner Acquisition & Development Manager at Awin US, supporting both merchants and publishers for both the Awin and ShareASale affiliate networks. In her role she constantly helps individuals make the most of their affiliate marketing efforts, whether optimizing their sites or improving their affiliate programs, either one-on-one or via webinars, podcasts, or speaking at events such as Affiliate Summit. The next Affiliate Summit will be her 33rd, including speaking over a dozen times.

Her vision for the PMA is to raise the profile of the organization. While she understands that the wide variety of members means a wide list of needs and priorities, there are definitely numerous items we can agree on, such as Compliance, Transparency, and Ethics. These are the values which will keep our industry on the right track both internally and externally to a world which rarely understands what we do.

Sandrine Thompson is the Strategic Insights Director for CJ’s global marketing department and has been part of the CJ organization for over 18 years. In addition to leading the company’s thought leadership related to data and insights, she launched the company’s local content strategy in Europe. Today she works closely with CJ’s global content team to develop data projects, such as benchmarks, that empower affiliate marketers to develop strategic, data-driven marketing plans.

Jade is an experienced marketer trusted by best-in-class digital marketing agencies, start-ups and direct-to-consumer brands. With over 10 years in the space, Jade has a breadth of experience across direct response, paid media and specializes in affiliate & performance partnerships. She has helped to stand up the affiliate marketing service offering at three agencies and has trained multiple brands to manage their programs in-house. Jade is currently the Head of Affiliate & Performance Partnerships, US at Dentsu, whose network of integrated agencies include Carat, iProspect, Dentsu X, Merkle, MuteSix and Dentsu Creative (formerly known as 360i).

Chris has over 18 years experience in affiliate marketing, originally as one of the founding team at the buy.at affiliate network. The network grew to become one of the largest in the UK market, managing some of the key largest merchant programs, additionally expanding into the US market from 2006. The buy.at network was acquired by AOL, then resold two years later to Awin. After 7 years network side, he spent a year client side, setting up and managing the affiliate program for the UK based Easyspace webhosting provider, working via the CJ affiliate network.

In 2011, he re-joined buy.at founder Dr Steve Brown to develop the Linkdex SEO platform. They created the publisher discovery platform using the Linkdex technologies to analyze affiliate network tracking and provide a competitor affiliate analysis platform, which was used by clients worldwide, including Apple, Sonos, CJ Affiliate, Tradedoubler, Partnerize and DGM Australia. In 2016, with Linkdex being acquired by Scribble, Chris spun the Publisher Discovery platform as a separate company, retaining many of the key clients and growing the business further.

In later 2018, Publisher Discovery was acquired by Cloudfind, who were already providing AI technologies in the affiliate sector. The new combined company now operates under the Publisher Discovery trademark, with completely rebuilt technology driven by AI and machine learning. Partners and clients now include CJ Affiliate, TUNE, Everflow, Affiliate Future and FMTC.

Chris has written extensively in Feedfront magazine as well as other publications and blogs. He has also spoken and moderated sessions at A4U (PerformanceIn) and Affiliate Summits over recent years.

With 16 years of experience in affiliate and partnership marketing, Erin Kristyniak understands well what it takes to bring her clients, partners, and agencies the success they seek in the channel. Kristyniak began her affiliate/partnerships career managing brands for Pepperjam, later overseeing a team managing accounts moving on to oversee and manage agency relationships on both the Partnerize platform and on Pepperjam’s Ascend™ platform with a heavy focus on relationship building, upselling, and new sales.

Erin recently acted as the VP of Community for Mavely, the everyday influencer platform where she focused on creator growth while supporting the holistic business needs of a rapidly growing business. Partnerize is thrilled to have her recently return to a partnership role focusing on relationship building and new opportunities for Partnerize that will truly impact the channel.

As Partnerize’s VP of Global Partnerships, Erin prioritizes the needs of her partners by providing thought leadership, and strategic oversight. She also oversees a dedicated team of five made up of Partnership Directors and Managers who support partners with data-driven performance insights, thought leadership, growth opportunities and support to navigate the ever evolving channel,

A thought leader in her own right, Kristyniak is still a student of the partnership channel and prioritizes staying abreast of industry fluctuations, and educates her team and partners by documenting and sharing pertinent industry information and championing Partnerize’s contribution to bettering the channel.

Christen Evans has built her affiliate marketing career on the tenets of fostering relationships, educating partners and advocating for the industry. She received the Affiliate Marketing Advocate Pinnacle Award from Affiliate Summit in 2017 and serves on the Board of Executive Directors for the Performance Marketing Association.

Named one of PerformanceIN’s Top 50 in 2021, Christen is an active and engaged leader in performance marketing. Her history as an affiliate, at an agency and working with brands in-house has allowed her to develop a unique perspective on how to approach a diverse affiliate strategy with an eye for growth. When not spouting off about FTC disclosures, attribution or activation strategy, Christen can be found spending time with her husband, kid and cats. She’s a huge fan of sparkles, bourbon and is really good at high-fives.

Lee-Ann started in Affiliate Marketing in the early 2000’s and has dedicated her career to building successful affiliate programs across multiple industries. The industry has come a long way since then and she now runs a successful niche affiliate marketing agency, hosts The Affiliate Marketing Podcast and publishes content that helps others to learn, scale and grow their affiliate programs.

As an industry, we’ve developed guidelines, we’ve implemented strategy, we’ve realised that affiliate marketing is in fact also a digital skill.

Lee-Ann plays an active role in promoting the PMA initiatives in the EMEA market and helps with the development of skills and new best practices for the industry as a whole.

There is plenty of talent in digital marketing but only a few make a conscious decision to specialise in affiliate marketing. We need to be building insight and knowledge around why Affiliate & Performance marketing is a great career choice.

We need to be helping educate brands and businesses and CMO’s about the benefits of a joined up approach and we need to be helping the next generation of digital marketers choose Affiliate as a career of choice by showcasing the exponential skill sets required to do this job well.

Lee-Ann is passionate about all of this. She wants to see our industry continue to evolve and grow and would like to play her part in giving back for the 20 year history of growth she has experienced being in this marketplace via our community support, via strong leadership and the sharing of knowledge and expertise.

Ceres Cueva is the SVP, Global Publisher Partnerships at Rakuten Advertising. Her role focuses on the advancement of the company’s global strategic partnerships while increasing publisher and client collaboration. With over 15 years of expertise in affiliate and marketing partnerships, she has led award winning teams focused on global strategies and synergies across supply and demand relationships.