Sam Kusek Email & Phone Number

Portland, Or, Us

Remote

Portland, Oregon Area

- Designed and created a Super Sentai/Power Rangers inspired storytelling game: Henshin! - Worked directly with comics creators to generate artwork for product release. - Organized and facilitated a promotional podcast to help educate players about how the game works.

Portland, Oregon, United States

- Owns merchandise development, taking concepts from ideation through to execution.- Works collaboratively with cross functional teams (editorial, production design, operations, retail sales, marketing) to define and develop product Go To Market strategies. - Provide in-depth reporting and analysis, to influence and back up future production decisions. - Clients include:- BOOM! Studios, comics publisher of New York Times best-selling books like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, BRZRKR, Irredeemable and more.- James Tynion IV, Eisner award winning comic writer (Batman, Something is Killing the Children, Department of Truth) .

Portland, Oregon Area

Portland, Oregon Area

- Currently manages a team of 8 across 5 key accounts.- Serves as the primary point of contact for clients-- translating their needs into actionable next steps. - Responsible for the planning, organization, and motivation of a project team across multiple large-scale, ongoing projects. - Implemented a cross departmental Contractor higher process, to help support rapid response to new business requests.- Track processes and facilitate weekly meetings with project team to discuss and implement efficiencies. - Achieved AWS Business Professional, Scrum Master & Product Owner Certifications.

Los Angeles

- Generated over 50 unique retailer covers during my time, helping to increase overall sales by 30%- Created the production & print process for exclusive variant covers, including: Translation of key artistic & marketing requests into requirements, management of approval process for licensor and retailer from initial concept to final layout & artwork and Providing marketing support, during release, through social media and press outreach.- Managed BOOM!’s retailer rewards program through administration of quarterly returns sheets and maintain credit amounts, maintenance of a monthly advertisement featured in single issues and coordination of talent and promotional material for signing events.- Managed relationships with key retail partners (Hastings, Books-a-Million, Newbury Comics, Things From Another World). - Coordinated sales opportunities with licensors (Cartoon Network, Saban, WWE).

Somerville, Ma

- Maintained the store’s list of monthly events calendar.- Worked with owners to schedule and facilitate event-specific site modifications.- Implemented and manage the online ticketing system, BrownPaperTickets, in the main website infrastructure.

Somerville, Ma

- Managed multiple web-based projects, from UX & design through development-- including full site designs, application development, and data visualizations. - Worked closely with internal stakeholders to translate requirements into project plans and specifications, using Microsoft Project, FogBugz, and Jira.- Responsible for organizing and tracking open issues, project tasks, and milestones using Microsoft Project. - Provided regular status updates on the timeline and budget of projects to internal stakeholders and clients.

Greater Boston Area

ComedyCazi is a monthly comedic stage show held in Davis Square's premiere comic shop, Comicazi that I co-created, produce and manage. - Responsible for scheduling rehearsals and performances- Acted as the primary point of contact for the improvisers, production team and performance space- Created and distributed our marketing materials (posters, postcards, fliers, press releases)- Participated in the show, as the host, introducing the games and story segments

Westborough, Ma

- Managed internal resources and monitored timelines, keeping projects on time and under budget. - Produced page content for client sites within multiple content management systems, including Sitecore, Kentico, and Wordpress. - Maintained marketing efforts for EditMe, Wakefly’s internal intranet solution.

• Created promotional teacher & student video interviews for Youtube and Vimeo with our video producer. • Analyzed e-mail advertisement revenue, outreach and overall effectiveness for each academic term. • Worked with sales team to manage & execute a large-scale military outreach project. • Built and maintained Twitter follows & followers using CoTweet, resulting in 6,000+ followers. • Produced the Music Business & Production Handbook documents using pre-existing course content.

• Created extensive full-length (400-600 words) and short-length (200-300 word) reviews for Manga (Japanese comics) on a weekly basis.• Conducted a panel discussions on cooking, cultural superheroes, post modern art theory and industry internships at Anime Boston 2009, 2010 and 2011 as well as New York Comic Con & Anime Fest and San Jose's Fanime, as a member of the press.

• Built and maintained social identities for Naruto Shippuden Campaign and acted as resident Anime expert, providing in-depth analysis on consumer targets and the overall anime marketplace.• Interacted with core fans in social networks, message boards, video upload sites, micro-blogging sites. • Managed database of client contests and was responsible for distributing contest information.