Social Media and Community

Faculty

Conference Chair

Patrick Powers
Project Manager
mStoner

Find Patrick online:
Twitter: @patrickjpowers
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickjpowers
Website: http://patrickpowers.net

Patrick Powers is a project manager for mStoner where he works on a consulting team that develops comprehensive strategies, solutions and implementations for educational institutions.

Previously, he served as director of digital marketing and communications at Webster University. In 7+ years at Webster, he provided university leadership for the development and implementation of integrated marketing and communications strategies designed to attract students and enhance the university's reputation, specifically through the web and new media.

His background includes more than 12 years in the marketing and communications field with experience as a reporter, writer, editor, web developer and community manager. Areas of expertise include digital strategy, planning, implementation and measurement. He is a nationally recognized expert in the use of social media in higher education, quoted on the topic in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Washington Post, University Business and the St. Louis-Post Dispatch.

He has presented at national conferences including CASE Social Media and Community, AMA Symposium on Higher Education, Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), and College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Projects he led at Webster earned many industry awards, including two CASE Circle of Excellence awards for "Best Use of Social Media."

Powers holds a master's degree in business administration from Webster University, a master's degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield and a bachelor's degree in communications and political science from Saint Louis University.

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Faculty

Elizabeth Allen
Director of Online Communications and Alumni Relations
The American School in London

Find Elizabeth Online
Blog: http://adaptivateblog.com/
Twitter: @lizallen
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethallen

Elizabeth Allen is the director of online communications and alumni relations at the American School in London. She oversees the online engagement and communications strategies for the school's internal and external audiences, both in the U.K. and overseas. She coordinates efforts and works directly with classroom technology coordinators, faculty, parents, students and alumni.

Allen has served on the faculty at several national and international conferences, and was the first chair of the CASE Social Media and Community conference in April 2010. She has been recognized by CASE as a "Stellar Speaker" and "Faculty Star." Her writing has been published in CURRENTS magazine, and in a chapter she co-authored for Alumni Relations: A Newcomer's Guide to Success. She has also been featured or quoted in several blogs, and has a contributing role to the CASE Social Media Blog.

As an independent consultant, she worked directly with schools, universities and other organizations to improve their social media outreach, engagement and metrics. Previously, she directed communications strategy for the alumni association at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and managed communications at Think Global, an international independent school.

Allen holds a bachelor's degree from Scripps College.

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Susan Evans
Senior Strategist
mStoner

Find Susan online:
Blog: http://susantevans.com
Twitter: @susantevans
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/susantevans
Website: http://mstoner.com

Susan Evans is the senior strategist for mStoner where she leads a consulting team that develops comprehensive strategies, solutions and implementations for educational institutions.

Before mStoner, Evans was director of creative services at the College of William & Mary. As a member of the university’s senior strategic communication team, she directed a diverse team of 13 professionals and managed the creative vision, scope, brand and planning for marketing and communications, including the university’s online presence (web, video and social media) and major print publications. Also while at William & Mary, she spent 12 years on the management team of the CIO and nineyears in human resources.

She has presented at national conferences including HighEdWeb, edUi, eduWeb, EDUCAUSE and the American Marketing Association Symposium. Projects she led at William & Mary have earned many industry awards, including three Circle of Excellence Gold Medals from CASE. She has also served as a judge for the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards.

Evans holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish language and literatures from James Madison University.

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Keith Hannon
Associate Director, Social Media
Cornell University Alumni Affairs and Development

Find Keith Online
Twitter: @KeithHannon
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kchannon

Keith Hannon is the associate director of social media at Cornell University. He manages the Cornell alumni communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram; an aggregate population of nearly 60,000 alumni.

His past life as an aspiring video artist has helped engage alumni via both livestreaming and YouTube videos. Most recently he has been breaking new ground experimenting with prospect research on the development and refinement of a process for prospect identification on social networks and implementing a crowdfunding platform that aims to attract previously unengaged donors.

Before Cornell, Hannon worked for Nickelodeon television and Six Degrees Games. 

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Michael Stoner
President
mStoner

Find Michael online:
Blog: http://www.mStonerblog.com
Twitter: @mStonerblog
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mStoner
Website: http://www.mStoner.com

During 30 years as a communicator and consultant, Michael Stoner, the president of mStoner, has served more than 250 education institutions, nonprofits and businesses on four continents. He is recognized as an authority on how institutions can use the Internet and the web to communicate effectively with their constituents and how they can engage effectively using social media. A pioneer in ecommunications, he published his first email newsletter in the early 1990s and completed his first university website project in 1995.

Along with Rob Cima and Voltaire Miran, Stoner launched mStoner in 2001. Now the best recognized and most-experienced communications firm at integrating brand, web and social media for schools, colleges and universities, mStoner's assignments also include print design and broader marketing initiatives. Clients include Ball State University, Brown University, College of Charleston, College of William & Mary, George School, Kellogg School of Management, Mount Holyoke College, Northfield Mount Hermon School, Oakton Community College, Princeton University, the University of Missouri, Yale Law School and many others.

Stoner has spoken at hundreds of professional conferences and has authored book chapters for CASE and Open University Press books and many professional articles. He earned a CASE Crystal Apple in 2003.

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Speakers

Georgy Cohen
Director of Online Content
Suffolk University

Find Georgy Online
Website: http://www.georgycohen.com/
Twitter: @radiofreegeorgy
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/georgy

Georgy Cohen is the director of online content at Suffolk University. She oversees web and social media content efforts university-wide. She is also principal of Crosstown Digital Communications LLC, a firm committed to helping educational institutions more effectively tell their stories online.

Cohen is also co-founder of Meet Content, a blog and resource founded in March 2011 that aims to empower higher education to create and sustain web content that works. Previously, she was manager of web content and strategy at Tufts University, where she oversaw a range of content initiatives involving the university website, online news, social media and multimedia.

She is a frequent speaker, writer and consultant on topics relating to web content and digital communications, in higher education as well as other fields. In 2011, she received Best of Conference honors at the HighEdWeb conference for her presentation on reinventing online news in higher ed.
Cohen's background is in journalism, including a three-year stint working in the fast-paced online newsroom of The Boston Globe.

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Jeffrey Kirchick
Regional Sales Manager
Zinch

Find Jeffrey online:
Twitter: @jeffreykirchick
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkirchick
Website: http://www.zinch.com

Jeffrey Kirchick is regional sales manager at Zinch, the leading online platform that creates best-fit matches for millions of high school students and 850+ colleges and universities. Zinch is also the leading online platform for college scholarship opportunities, with over $2 billion in tow. In his role at Zinch, he introduces the Zinch platform to colleges and universities so that they can learn about the most cost-effective means to find best-fit matches and inquiries from high school students in their college search.

Prior to Zinch, Kirchick was director of university outreach at SCVNGR, a Google-funded geo-social networking and gaming platform in Boston, Mass. In his role at SCVNGR, he worked with the company's 350+ university clients to develop location-based games and mobile strategies with SCVNGR's platform.

Kirchick has spoken regularly on the geo-location/geo-social spaces, how they will evolve and what applications they might have for higher education. Most recently, he spoke on the subject at the FutureM Conference in Boston. He contributes frequently to shows and blogs that feature content about social media, particularly in higher education.

He graduated from Princeton University in June 2010 with a bachelor's degree in English and certificates in Creative Writing and French.

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Seth Odell
Director of Interactive Marketing
Southern New Hampshire University

Find Seth Online
Website: http://www.sethodell.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sethodell
LinkedIn: https://twitter.com/sethodell

Seth Odell is the director of interactive marketing at Southern New Hampshire University, the country's fastest growing university. He oversees social media marketing and video production for the College of Online & Continuing Education. Most recently, he conceived of and art directed the university's 2012 national advertising campaign, "SNHU: Your Life. Your Degree."

Prior to joining SNHU, he spent five years in marketing and media relations at UCLA, helping to establish the institution's brand across a variety of social media channels.

In addition to his work at SNHU and UCLA, Odell founded Higher Ed Live, the industry's first live weekly web show network. The network delivers three free live and interactive webinars each week focused on digital development in the higher education industry.

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Mike Petroff
Digital Content Strategist
Harvard University

Find Mike Online
Website: http://mikepetroff.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikepetroff
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepetroff

Mike Petroff is a digital content strategist at Harvard University. He supports the strategy, creation and curation of content for harvard.edu and associated sites and plays a primary role in managing the vision for and delivery of the university's web and social media presence.

Previous to Harvard University, Petroff was the web and enrollment technology manager at Emerson College. He led web marketing and online recruitment efforts for undergraduate and graduate admission. While at Emerson, he chaired the Social Media Group, working with about 20 other staff members from a broad range of campus departments to share ideas and implement marketing initiatives. In four short months, they implemented the college's Facebook Page, Twitter account, Flickr account and YouTube EDU channel, all running sustainably with positive growth and audience engagement. Emerson College's social media presence was ranked as a top school nationally by both StudentAdvisor.com and USA Today College.

Petroff has also been active in connecting the higher education community through events and web communities. Some of the projects he created include eduTweetups, FollowEDU.com, and eduTweetup Boston 2011. He was also a writer for the award-winning .eduGuru higher education and internet marketing blog.

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Cheryl Slover-Linett
Consultant
Huron Education Constituent Research

Find Cheryl online:
Website: http://www.huronconsultinggroup.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/cheryl-slover-linett/5/42b/628

Cheryl founded Slover Linett Strategies in 1997 and, with Huron Consulting Group's purchase of Slover Linett in 2012, now serves as a consultant at Huron. She has built long-term relationships with renowned institutions such as Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard and the University of Chicago, and has become a trusted conduit to minds and hearts of audiences for these and other leading organizations. She has designed and led hundreds of strategic audience and market research studies and evaluations.

Cheryl speaks frequently at nonprofit conferences and has presented research findings to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the American Marketing Association, and the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). Prior to forming Slover Linett, Cheryl held marketing positions at United Airlines in Chicago, at a Madrid-based subsidiary of Heineken, and at Broad Inc. in Los Angeles.

Cheryl earned an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School, where she was also an international management fellow at the Center for International Business and Education Research (CIBER). She earned her B.A. in economics from Yale University.

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Chris Syme
Principal
CKSyme.org

Find Chris Online
Blog: http://cksyme.org
Twitter: @cksyme
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissyme

Chris Syme has more than 25 years' experience in the communications industry and is currently principal of CKSyme.org—an agency specializing in real-time communication strategies including crisis and reputation, social media and digital marketing. She is the current chairman of the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) New Media/Technology committee, and is a former communications associate at Montana State University Athletics and Eastern Washington University Athletics.

Syme helped engineer a successful reputation recovery effort at Montana State that was showcased in Athletic Management Magazine. She is a featured contributor to Social Media Today, Montana Business, BlogHighEd, Alltop, and writes a popular blog on her website (www.cksyme.org) as well. CKSyme.org has partnered in research with numerous organizations including CASE and CoSIDA. She is a frequent conference presenter on the national stage. In April 2012 she released her first book, Listen, Engage, Respond - Crisis Communications in Real-Time. Her second book, Crisis Management 2.0, is due to be released in 2013.

She has a master's degree in athletic administration and did her graduate research in crisis management.

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Keynote Speaker

John Hill
Higher Education Evangelist
LinkedIn

Find John online:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/msuaajohn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/linkedinjohn

John Hill traded one passion for another. He left Michigan State University to become the higher education evangelist at LinkedIn. He believes "changing the world" can be more than hyperbole. Building relationships and connecting people with opportunity are at his core. He relies heavily on online networks like LinkedIn to facilitate each. He also works with academic entities to identify how Web 2.0 can help their organizations aggregate audience, target market, communicate and develop funding sources. He is young, smart and global at heart, MSU by passion and driven by nature.

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CASE Crystal Apple award winner for excellence in teaching.