Speakers 2014

[See the speakers for this year’s conference.]

Meet the speakers presenting at Y’all Connect 2014.

Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site, and List25, an extremely popular entertainment site with more than 725,000 subscribers and 90 million video views. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Yahoo Small Business, Wired, Mashable and other media outlets. Syed has worked with some of the largest brands in the industry, including Warner Bros., Webs and Mercer.

His latest site is OptinMonster, a lead-generation WordPress plugin that creates attention-grabbing opt-in forms that convert.


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Jen Barnett

Jen Barnett

Jen Barnett is a social entrepreneur and marketer in Alabama with a recent startup in local and organic food. She’s an experienced Web marketer, content strategist and growth hacker with an MBA in marketing and innovation from Emory University. Her industries have included travel, grocery, QSR (quick-service restaurant), health care, retail, banking, public utilities, cable television and women’s lifestyle brands.

Barnett won the Gee Emerging Retailer of the Year from the Alabama Retail Association in 2013 and the Occupy Avondale contest from Rev Birmingham and Avondale Brewing Company in 2012. She was a featured speaker at TEDx Birmingham in 2014 and at the Alabama Social Media Association in 2013.


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Whitney Breaux

Whitney Breaux

Whitney Breaux is an accomplished communications, marketing and sales strategist with significant experience in political communication, public relations and social media. Her strengths include customer relationship management, networking and integrated communication/marketing campaigns. The ultimate multitasker, Whitney was recognized by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report as a rising business leader and a Top 40 Under 40 recipient in 2010 at age 22.

At Eli Lilly and Company, she works as an IT partner responsible for digital capability strategies. Whitney was founder and executive director of the Baton Rouge Social Media Association and a consultant for the startup of the Alabama Social Media Association.


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Ramon De Leon

Ramon De Leon

Ramon De Leon, internationally known as #RamonWOW, is a social media visionary. As the marketing mastermind behind six Domino’s franchises in Chicago, he increased their sales by nearly 50 percent to build a $7 million-per-year franchise business. He pioneered online ordering and took Web sales from non-existent in 1997 to nearly 70 percent of orders in 2013. De Leon’s fanatical focus on the customer experience is referred to as #RamonWOW.

De Leon serves as Senior Social Media Strategist for digital marketing agency Rise Interactive. The Chicago Social Media Marketing Group named him “Chicago Social Media Person of the Year” in 2011.


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Kary Delaria

Kary Delaria

With 13 years of experience in public relations, media relations and marketing communication, Kary Delaria works with clients to develop digital and social communications strategy, specializing in social media community management, monitoring and analysis. She helps organizations identify benchmarks, goals and opportunities for maximizing their online presence; develop tactics to support sales and marketing objectives; and create systems to measure and monitor success.

Delaria serves as Social Media Manager for Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.


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Jason Falls

Jason Falls

Jason Falls is one of the leading thinkers in the digital marketing, social media, public relations and communications industries. He is also a noted public speaker and social media keynote speaker.

Falls has the unique perspective of having lead a national advertising agency’s interactive and social media efforts, worked with Fortune 100 brands as a social media strategist and served as an independent consultant in the social media industry. He currently leads digital strategy for CafePress, a Top 100 e-commerce retailer. In his previous roles as a consultant and agency-side advisor, he worked with major, regional and niche brands including Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, Humana, SHPS, Mighty Dog, Louisville Slugger and the National Center for Family Literacy.

He is the founder and former CEO of Social Media Explorer, consistently rated among the most read blogs on the subject matter in the world.


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Kim Garst

Kim Garst

Kim Garst is the co-founder and CEO of Boom! Social, a corporate branding and social media consulting firm that services more than 32,000 subscribers and 100-plus clients. She is extremely passionate about sharing how “you can do” social media.

Forbes named Kim as one of the Top 50 Social Media Influencers in 2012. A dynamic speaker and trainer, she also provides social media keynotes and in-depth courses to entrepreneurs and corporations. Her impressive track record and talent for teaching has earned her a coveted spot on the Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013. She was also named the No. 11 Social Media Blogger by Kred.com, and voted one of the top Leading Moms in Business in 2012.


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Alison Groves

Alison Groves

Alison Groves joined Nashville-based software company Zapier in May as Customer Champion.

Prior to that, she served 12 years as the User Evangelist and Community Manager for two large brands: Raven Internet Marketing Tools and singer Lee Ann Womack. For Raven, she comprised the entire support team, then expanded and managed that team, spent a year working on the product team, traveled the world talking to users and evangelized for the user inside and out. For Lee Ann Womack, she managed fan relations (community management before it became a well-known job title).

Also, Alison has spent the past 5 years managing social media and Internet marketing for South African Youth for Education Stability, located in Cape Town. The nonprofit organization pairs youth who are aging out of state care with mentors who spend a year with them and helps them transition into adulthood.


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Ike Pigott

Ike Pigott

Ike Pigott is a veteran communicator based in Birmingham who got out of television news and back into life. Now working for Alabama Power, he specializes in corporate communications, but has interests that are all over the place.

Ike worked for 16 years in broadcast news, winning several awards (including an Emmy) for his writing and reporting. While in television, he started his crisis communication training consultancy, Positive Position.

He later worked for the American Red Cross, where he created the first disaster news blogs and the Red Cross Twitter account. As the Director of Communications and Government Relations for a five-state region, he served as an in-house crisis counsel for chapters and units.

At Alabama Power, he is involved in crisis planning and the integration of social media tools across the enterprise.

He gave the opening keynote at Y’all Connect 2013.


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Jenny Schmitt

Jenny Schmitt

Jenny Schmitt is the First Employee and Senior Spark at CloudSpark, an award-winning strategic communications company that specializes in helping companies answers the key questions of “What now?” and “What next?” With experience, expertise, inspiration — and a spark or two — the company provides answers that help business stand out and achieve results.

A veteran marketing and public relations professional and popular speaker, Jenny is a frequent media contributor and has been quoted in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, BrandWeek, Ragan’s and Nielsen’s Small Business among others. An author as well, she regularly contributes to the online world through blogs relating to social media, marketing and communications. Jenny earned her master’s and bachelor’s of business degrees from the George Washington University in Washington.

She spoke at Y’all Connect 2013.

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[See the speakers for this year’s conference.]

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