PMA 2020 Board of Directors Nominees

Christen Evans,
Apogee

Christen Evans is an affiliate manager for Apogee, an award-winning agency that focuses on recruitment, education and activation. She received the Affiliate Marketing Advocate Pinnacle Award from Affiliate Summit in 2017.

She is responsible for the suite of merchants at Apogee in the Food/Drink and Gourmet niches. In recent years, she has attended and spoken at industry conferences such as Everything Food and International Food Bloggers, as well as Plaid St and ShareASale/Awin ThinkTank. The education and activation of these new partners she engages with and recruits from these shows has greatly increased the overall sales for her clients and others at Apogee.

Christen strongly believes in more education for everyone in the industry, including affiliates, networks, managers and vendors.

David Hardy,
Rakuten Marketing

As VP, Strategic Services at Rakuten Marketing I lead a team of 11 Subject Matter Experts, I support our Sales and Client Service teams in strategic revenue driving initiatives. I work directly with advertisers, publishers and technology partners to continue to support Rakuten Marketing’s growth and reputation as an innovative company that is driving the industry towards greater transparency and better performance all around.

I would be thrilled to join the PMA and utilize my experience to drive the industry towards better adoption of measurement of marketing spend to ensure advertisers grow faster, publishers are fairly rewarded for their contribution and consumers have better ad experiences.

I’ve been working in performance marketing for 10 years and across 3 continents. My experience has comprised going through 2 startup acquisitions, Efficient Frontier to Adobe, and then DC Storm to Rakuten Marketing. I began my career running Paid Search campaigns for some of Europe’s largest advertisers whilst at Efficient Frontier and Adobe, before moving into an agency management role overseeing the use of Adobe’s SAAS campaign optimization technology throughout the Middle East and Russia.

I moved from managing performance marketing campaigns at Adobe, to measuring them at DC Storm. DC Storm provided an MTA solution for advertisers such as Sky, House of Fraser, Selfridges plus many more and I led client strategy before DC Storm were acquired by Rakuten Marketing. At this point I moved to the US to support rolling out MTA technology across Rakuten Marketing’s US client base.

Jacob Huang,
Slickdeals, LLC

As Slickdeals’ Director of Business Development I have over 11+ years in the space. I have built and managed strong relationships with partners and consistently find ways to optimize in this changing space. My career highlights include:

• Manage Tier 1 merchant partnerships on behalf of Slickdeals, eg, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Verizon among others through an intimate understanding of partner’s goals. Most partners exceed an annual growth rate of over 45%.
• The wealth of data from 1+ billion annual consumer visits to Slickdeals led to data-driven recommendations for multiple initiatives. In 2018, YOY a partner’s sales driven by Slickdeals in the Men’s Clothing & Accessories category grew by 329%; and Bed & Bath grew by 375%. Incremental growth happened in vertical categories such as Men’s Outerwear, by a healthy 39% which I led and was a large party of.
• Built strong relationships with agencies, networks, brands, partners, and publishers.

For 2020 and beyond, there are many things that challenge the industry that needs more discussions for:

• A Publisher/Advertiser’s Acceptable Standard Guideline (extension stand-down rules, ad-block, Apple ITP and Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protections, shift to cookieless tracking, GDPR, CCPA, etc). 
• Additional hosted publisher panels to discuss best practices and ways to solve for advertiser specific issues.
• Championing attribution modeling among publishers and advertisers
• Utilizing data for personalization (AI driven feeds)
• Omni-channel marketing, mobile growth, content publishing, influencer marketing, and other topics that the PMA can be more involved in.
• PMA lead events/discussions to bring on additional brands/manufacturers (CPG, Restaurants, etc) into the performance market space.
• Discussions on Marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, Rakuten, etc).
• Getting more PMA mixers/events to raise awareness
• Reaching out to top publishers to get more involvement from each publisher in the PMA.

Alex Markov,
Refersion

Alex has helped eCommerce brands succeed in performance marketing for over 14 years, founding Refersion in 2013. He’s extremely active in the startup community; currently leading a Shopify merchant meetup and serves as an advisor for the New York Startup Weekend. As CEO of Refersion, Alex sees merchant’s challenges firsthand working with brands and retailers to help drive online sales and find creative solutions. Having dedicated his career to mastering the intricacies of performance marketing, Alex would be a valuable addition and unique voice to the PMA board.

Jim Nichols,
Partnerize

I am CMO for Partnerize and have been in partnerships and affiliate since 1999. Yes, really. I’ve seen this industry move from a tiny budgetary afterthought to arguably the most promising channel for growth in marketing, and am anxious to help contribute to its furtherance. I want to see partnership and partner marketing leaders/practitioners at the center of marketing planning and recognized for their outstanding skillsets. In addition to the duties outlined for this role, I’d like to help deliver a more tangible voice from the PMA. I write and ghostwrite over 100 articles a year for marketing trades, and would love to see the great work of this org be more publicly recognized and understood in trades etc. I’d be delighted to contribute writing for that. I’d also love to see the PMA deliver a PLATFORM for 2020 that helps partner marketers evangelize for the space externally AND get the recognition they deserve in their internal organizations. I’d also love to see the PMA expand internationally, first to EMEA and then to APAC, and would be happy to help in that regard.

Greg Powell,
Tactical Marketing

Greg has been a part of the affiliate marketing world since 2003. Starting as a publisher, then moving into the affiliate management side, Greg has either held or been associated with every facet of the performance marketing landscape. Powell founded Tactical Marketing Co. in 2016 and has focused on aligning brands with content publishers, editors and influencers. Tactical Marketing Co. is a ‘niche’ OPM that services 26 merchant accounts spread across a wide range of verticals. Greg has developed systems for Affiliate Managers to maximize their recruiting efforts, built Publisher Development teams and systems, and been a member of the PMA for the past 4 years. Greg has spoked on ‘Affiliate Marketing’ at multiple conferences in the US, Canada, UK, Spain, Cyprus and the Bahamas. Greg graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in Marketing.

Outside of Affiliate Marketing, Powell has a wonderful family with 2 boys (8,3), a wife Tandra and French Bulldog named Walter. He plays drums, coaches youth sports, mades amazing quesadillas and loves documentary films.

Alan Rapoport,
FMTC

I am excited to be a candidate for the PMA Board of Directors! For the past 2 1/2 years I have been the Datafeed Client and Network Relationship Manager at FMTC, but I have been in the industry for almost 15 years. For those unfamiliar with FMTC, our main product is an offer feed that we aggregate from affiliate networks, test and clean the deals, and provide that curated feed to subscribers. FMTC puts me in a unique position of being a neutral party in the industry as we are not a network, publisher, merchant or an OPM; but we work with all of those (and several other technologies and tools in the industry). Before FMTC I worked as a publisher at the deals and coupons site DealTaker.com, which my brother and I started in 2004. I am also an active member in the affiliate marketing community having attended over 60 conferences, meet-ups, networking events, etc over the years.

If elected I would represent the PMA well and would be excited to serve on a committee to further advance the PMA as a respected authority in our industry.

I think that my experience, contacts, knowledge of the industry and position at FMTC would bring a unique perspective to the PMA Board of Directors. I appreciate your consideration!

Maura Smith,
Pepperjam

Maura brings a dozen years’ experience and performance marketing insight to Pepperjam. As CMO, she oversees the development and execution of marketing and customer strategies. She is committed to empowering and educating marketers on how they can leverage the affiliate channel to both control—and fund—their media spend.

Maura received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Delaware in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing and holds an MBA from the University of Scranton.

An active participant on the speaking circuit, Maura has shared key insights and trends at conferences and events, including: Affiliate Huddle, Affiliate Management Days, Affiliate Summit, Intersect Retail, Magento’s Imagine and many others.

As a current PMA Board of Directors member, Maura chaired the PMA’s Industry Survey Council, which produced the first of its kind industry-wide survey in July 2019.The survey gathered data from eight of the leading affiliate/performance networks and platforms to assess the overall size of the US performance marketing industry and delivered a whitepaper to highlight the findings. If elected to an additional PMA BOD term, Maura would support future PMA-commissioned surveys and research, lending insight into performance and trends within the affiliate marketing industry. Additionally, Maura would support other councils’ initiatives, furthering the advancement and progression of the affiliate industry.