Visit Athens is the official destination marketing organization for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. We are Always Open to engaging the creative energy of Athens, activating curiosity, and inspiring experiences to advance our community’s quality of life and economic opportunity for all. Manage branding, media relations, digital media marketing and the production of all print, online and email publications and communications. Supervise a staff of full-time, part-time and intern positions. Develop and implement the Bureau’s marketing plan, budget and editorial calendar. • Oversee all owned media platforms including social media and blog. Increased Instagram comments by 48% and engagements by 20% in 2019. Attained over 2.6 million total impressions on social media in 2019.• Manage public and media relations efforts resulting in 200+ million impressions in the past fiscal year.• Craft email marketing campaigns with open and click rates tracking 50% higher than industry averages.• Serve as Project Manager for last five VisitAthensGA.com website relaunches, featuring progressively more features and dynamic Content Management Systems (CMS). The award-winning website is known as a leading travel website for its budget and market size; recognized for Best Practices out of hundreds of developer clients.• Develop Brand Standards and Tone Guide; as Brand Manager, ensure uniform implementation across all departments and third party vendors.• Launch Partner Extranet, conduct monthly training to local business and organization partners.• Develop marketing plans and campaigns from initial scope through execution and refinement.• Administrator for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system; ensure full and consistent use by all.Leader in regional tourism marketing, serving on the boards of Historic Heartland Regional Travel Association (President, Co-op Chair, Secretary) and Antebellum Trail (Secretary). Served on the CMS Web User Group for Simpleview.

Promoted the city of Athens and attract visitors through public relations and communications activities in a variety of media. Responsible for press releases and media relations, website development, digital marketing, social media, and the production of CVB publications. Launched and managed the Hospitality H.E.R.O.E.S. (Hospitality Employees Recognition of Excellent Service) program. Featured speaker for organizations interested in extending their marketing reach through social media.

Proposed and managed the implementation of regional cooperative branding and advertising campaigns.Developed professional development and educational opportunities for members.Conducted monthly board meetings and bimonthly membership meetings.Represented the region at media events, familiarization tours and trade shows.Board Member at Large (2011-2013), Vice President (2014-2015), President (2016-2017), Past-President and Co-Op Advertising Chair (2018-2019), Secretary (2019-present).

Developed a high-stakes, standardized writing test to measure writing in the discipline of social studies for a major Georgia school system. Worked with teachers and administrators to design and implement test format, standards, writing prompts, assessment and scoring procedures and protocol. Trained teachers to apply a standard scoring rubric to writing samples. Conducted baseline and live administrations and scoring.

Administered college admission and placement tests for applicants to all campuses of Dekalb College (now Georgia Perimeter College).