PMA 2021 Board of Directors Nominees

Jeannine Crooks, Awin

During my 20+ years in affiliate marketing, my dedicated focus has always been to grow our industry by supporting everyone involved, whether publisher, merchant, network or vendor. I’ve actually spent time working in each of those areas, giving me 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.

My involvement with the PMA began back in 2010 when I 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 I’ve been honored to serve on both the PMA Compliance Council and the PMA Publishers Council.

Currently I am the Partner Acquisition & Development Manager at Awin US, supporting both merchants and publishers for both the Awin and ShareASale affiliate networks. In my role I constantly help 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 my 33rd, including speaking over a dozen times.

My vision for the PMA is to raise the profile of the organization. While I understand 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. The current group of Board Members heading into their second year is stellar. I would be honored to join them in promoting and growing the PMA and affiliate marketing.

Sarah Johnson Dayes, Acceleration Partners

Sarah Johnson Dayes is Acceleration Partners’ Chief Client Officer. Sarah has been in leadership roles at AP since 2011 and in her current role since 2018. Sarah is responsible for the oversight of AP’s global client services team and the happiness of their clients. She has been especially instrumental in shepherding the success of key accounts including Uber, Airbnb, StubHub, and adidas. Sarah has been the driving force behind AP’s culture of encouraging innovation and creative problem-solving, balanced with effective scalable processes, with all client teams. She has been leading teams for over 20 years and is passionate about leading authentically and coaching others to do the same, while maintaining world-class performance standards. Sarah is an experienced digital marketer and manager, having launched and grown a successful innovative, high-growth, e-commerce fashion business from 2004 – 2011, prior to coming to Acceleration Partners.

Sarah has served on the PMA Board of Directors since 2019, is an active member of BOD conversations and serves on the Membership Committee. She is excited to continue to bring her passion for building great affiliate talent and organizational best practices to the PMA.

Dustin Howes, Coalition

Marketing Passionately spreading the good word about affiliate marketing since 2009. Training affiliate managers on performancemarketingmanager.com

Matthew Lord, Perform[cb]

As Chief Strategy Officer at Perform[cb] (formerly Clickbooth, Adperio and Ignite OPM) I see the convergence of the pandemic, the movement towards online privacy, and mobile’s continued screen time dominance as a huge opportunity for performance marketing to grow, both in ad spend and in advertiser preference. A 14-year veteran of performance marketing in many forms, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but want to be part of the conversation of how we take our unique industry to new heights.

My experience in performance marketing has been fluid and diverse, including traditional affiliate, mobile, and CPA. In my career, I’ve had the privilege to work on all sides of the business, from working with advertisers and affiliates, to compliance, product, and tech. Highlights include:

– Established an OPM division in 2015, now known as Perform[cb] Agency, serving clients like Texture, Blue Apron, and Robinhood
– Co-founded Plink, an Online-to-Offline spin-off startup bringing performance marketing to brick and mortar retail
– Direct account management with premier clients including Netflix, Discover Card, and Lyft
– Developed custom technology solutions for clients like Netflix (proprietary tracking and customer service technology) and ScoreBig (ticket ordering widget)
– Developed compliance and fraud tools, including PerformSHIELD which continues to evolve through machine learning, predictive analytics
– Experience in the M&A activity shaping the industry

As I’ve chatted with peers and clients across the industry in 2020, I’ve heard stories of highs and lows. Some are struggling. Some have had their best years ever. I fundamentally believe that performance marketing, with its unique ability to align advertiser goals with marketing spend, is poised for growth now and in the years to come. I plan to be an agent of that growth and would be honored to serve in that capacity on the PMA Board of Directors.

Greg Powell, Tactical Marketing Co

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 spoken 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 (9,4), a wife Tandra, and a French Bulldog named Walter. He plays drums, coaches youth sports, makes amazing quesadillas, and loves documentary films.

Lacie Thompson, LT Partners

Having spent well over a decade of her career in Affiliate + Partner Marketing, Lacie founded LT Partners in September 2018 with the vision of creating custom solutions within the channel ecosystem. With the foundation of team, technology, relationships and innovation, LT Partners is driven to use data to drive incremental results through partnerships. Lacie and her team have grown to managing 26 brand programs in just two years and have expanded to providing multi-channel services. Lacie believes multi-channel learnings can improve the affiliate channel and bring more transparency, quality and value to the affiliate industry broadly. Leveraging more aligned incentive models for partners has enabled Lacie and her team to motivate that growth with the best partners for each brand. Lacie is invested into automation within the affiliate channel as well, building tools to help both the account teams at LT Partners, as well as in-house managed teams. In August 2020, LT Partners became a WBENC member and Lacie is passionate about driving diversity within her company, as well as on the PMA Board.

Chris Tradgett, Publisher Discovery

I’ve 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, I 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, I re-joined buy.at founder Dr Steve Brown to develop the Linkdex SEO platform. We 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, I 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.

On a personal note, I have written extensively in our blogs, Feedfront magazine and as a contributor to other publications and blogs. I have also spoken and moderated sessions at A4U (PerformanceIn) and Affiliate Summits over recent years.

It’s important for those involved in an industry to be more fully involved in its evolution and I hope that my mix of experience could prove useful to one of the leading industry bodies. I am also in the position of being network agnostic so with a broader view.