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.

With over 20 years in digital marketing, business development, and executive leadership, Kerry is excited to bring her expertise to support the PMA’s mission. She has held strategic and executive roles with leading agencies, including iProspect, Digitas, GroupM, and Gen3, where Kerry built relationships with senior marketers and drove results through thought leadership, education, and networking. Kerry has also participated on local non-profit boards and is currently the President of the PTO for her daughter’s school.

Affiliate marketing is at a pivotal moment, intersecting with ecommerce, influencer marketing, martech innovations, and data-driven strategies. Kerry’s vision for the PMA includes: 1) expanding brand engagement by fostering relationships with brand advertisers and providing targeted, curated content and events; 2) enhancing the PMA’s industry influence to secure a greater share of media budgets for affiliate marketing; and 3) driving data innovation by leveraging affiliate customer data to inform other digital channels. She also aims to elevate the PMA’s educational impact by developing targeted master classes and workshops for brand-side marketers.

Kerry’s contributions to the affiliate marketing industry include serving as a panelist, keynote speaker, and emcee at events such as Affiliate Summit, AWIN Think Tank, and impact.com’s iPx. She was also a guest on Impact’s The Partnership Economy podcast, and spearheaded the 2023 state of the industry research paper, High Performance, High Demand [link: https://hubs.ly/Q02WfSfd0].

As the founder of RBMA: Revenue Based Marketing Advisors and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, Kerry works with executives to emphasize the importance of marketing for sustainable growth.

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.

Sarah joined Affiliate Marketing in 2005 at ShareASale as program manager. While at ShareASale, her career progressed from Director of Client Services, overseeing all Publisher, Agency, & Advertiser development, to Vice President, post Awin acquisition, where she was responsible for all operations & revenue for the platform.In 2020 she began her own independent consultancy working with several agencies on publisher development strategy and recruitment, which lead to her current role as Vice President, North America for global affiliate & partner marketing agency, Silverbean.Helping to make connections is at the core of what Sarah sets out to do both on a professional and personal level which has led to the creation of two passion projects in 2021. The first is regularly posting industry job round ups to help connect active job seekers with new and available career opportunities across the industry. And second, coordinating “Chicago Affiliate & Partner Marketers Giving Back”, an initiative to combine local networking with volunteer efforts.

Tom Saulsbury-Hunter is Managing Director, Agency Growth for CJ. A long-time leader in the partnerships and affiliate industry, Tom leads CJ’s agency growth strategies. He provides extensive strategic and management guidance across the affiliate channel and works to help affiliate leaders integrate their programs with all other marketing channels. A 12-year industry veteran, he joined CJ after starting his career in sales and fintech.

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.

Digital strategist, team leader, and account director—meet Piper Donnelly. Piper is a digital and affiliate marketer with 10 years’ experience, currently serving as Account Director at global affiliate marketing platform Awin. With some of the world’s most popular enterprise brands under her remit, Piper brings passion to all she does, emphasizing positivity as the key to success for both her clients and her team. She leads a team of Team Leaders, Account Managers, and Account Executives who manage those enterprise brands, their publishers, and ultimately their consumers. Piper is experienced in developing strategic guidance based on enterprise client goals, driving success to KPIs, and delivering affiliate marketing predictions and trends in addition to developing and leading a team. Outside of her professional pursuits, Piper enjoys life in Austin, Texas, with her beloved rescue dog, Ike, and fiancé.

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.

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.