Simms Jenkins is the Founder and CEO of BrightWave, the leading email, eCRM and cross-channel agency. The agency made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for five consecutive years and was named the top email independent agency and “the best of the best” by The Relevancy Group.

Jenkins won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, Marketer of the Year from the American Marketing Association and the Email Marketer of the Year at the Tech Marketing Awards.  

Jenkins is the founder of EiQ: The intelligent email gathering, an annual conference focused on email performance and innovation, and the author of industry defining books “The New Inbox” and “The Truth About Email Marketing.” Prior to founding BrightWave, Simms ran CRM at Cox Interactive Media.

Random Notable Simms Fact: Simms was Student Body President in 8th grade, the Vice President in college and an intern at the White House, which ended his political aspirations.

Raj manages and inspires the teams that produce remarkable work every day at BrightWave. Prior to BrightWave, he co-founded Spunlogic in 1998, leading it to become one of the largest privately held digital agencies in Atlanta. It was acquired in 2008 by Halyard Capital to form Engauge. Publicis Groupe acquired Engauge in 2013 at which point the 275-employee company merged with Moxie, creating the largest digital agency in the Southeast.

In 2014, Raj was hired as CEO for the award-winning social ad tech company BLiNQ Media, providing new vision and rebuilding its technology teams. The American Marketing Association – Atlanta and Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association both recognized Raj as Marketer of the Year in 2018.

Random Notable Raj Fact: Raj traveled around the world twice on around-the-world tickets. More recently, he and his wife packed up two kids and two dogs to travel the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada in an RV for five months.

Brent is responsible for all client relationships and program successes. He has a track record of providing strategic counsel and white glove service for brands like Aflac, Chick-fil-A, Equifax, Synovus and countless more. Brent also serves as a head coach for BrightWave’s client-facing teams, making sure they have everything they need to overdeliver on a daily basis.

Before joining BrightWave as the second employee in 2005, Brent gained invaluable exposure to consumer marketing best practices through client-side positions at WebMD and Southern Progress, a unit of Time Warner.

Random Notable Brent Fact: Technically, Brent has been a professional musician. He was paid to sing in a church choir for 7 years.

Thomas is a seasoned email and eCRM expert, having worked on strategic customer marketing initiatives for the last 10 years. In his role at BrightWave, he focuses on developing relationships with some of the best brands in the world. Recent client successes include Allstate, Credit Karma, SoFi, Ferrari and UPS. He has held various roles at BrightWave over the past seven years, providing him with unique insight into what clients need to be most effective.

Random Notable Thomas Fact: Thomas appeared in several TV commercials from the ages of 3 to 18.

Mike leads the customer experience team at BrightWave, managing the strategy, creative and technology functions. He is passionate about helping companies acquire and grow customer relationships through data and insight-driven, multi-channel precision marketing.

Prior to BrightWave, Mike had a number of leadership roles including Director of Precision Marketing & Group Director of Data Strategy for Coca-Cola, Marketing Solutions Practice Lead for Slalom Consulting and Manager, CRM Marketing Operations Group for Accenture.

Mike has defined the vision and tactics for some of the best customer loyalty programs in the U.S., including Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, and IHG. He has also developed new precision marketing technology architecture for clients such as SunTrust, Home Depot, Hilton, Vanguard Investments, AT&T and Cox Communications.

Random Notable Mike Fact: Mike obtained his private pilot’s license and was accumulating flight hours at a good pace prior to becoming a Dad. These days, not so much.

Laura ensures the trains at BrightWave run smoothly, ensuring efficient and effective delivery of client work and constantly optimizing internal operations. She has held various roles at BrightWave which gives her unique insight into how to continually improve. Hailing from the consulting and digital marketing worlds, Laura’s attention to detail, leadership chops and positive attitude make her a true asset to our team. While serving as a consultant at Deloitte, she created and implemented change management strategies, oversaw training development and saw to overall project management responsibilities.

Laura has a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership from Vanderbilt University and has a Bachelor’s of Science in Management and Marketing from Berry College.

Random Notable Laura Fact: Laura has had one brush with fame: She was once a bagel model. It’s as awesome as it sounds.

Laura oversees BrightWave’s creative product, rallying and inspiring a team of copywriters and interactive designers to innovate in the inbox. She works with clients to brainstorm eye-catching, click-worthy solutions that will achieve their business goals—then lays out a vision and executes on it with BrightWave’s team of talented creative. Laura brings over a decade of experience creating delightful creative for large consumer audiences to the BrightWave team and has been called “one of the most important creative minds in the email industry.”

Random Notable Laura Fact: Laura has attended cooking school in Thailand, India and Vietnam.

Kelly is a strong collaborator, team builder and leader with the ability to put in place the right set of people, process and tools to achieve the collective goals of our team and client partners. Overseeing the Client Services team at BrightWave, Kelly is employing her excellent communication, strategic planning and team development experience to ensure we deliver excellence in all areas for our client partners.

Kelly comes to BrightWave with over 10 years of agency experience working first on the direct marketing efforts for The Home Depot and most recently leading the direct marketing and paid media efforts for Delta Air Lines.

Random Notable Kelly Fact: Kelly was invited and traveled to Shanghai, China to conduct a communications workshop geared towards loyalty programs.

Spencer Kollas is a recognized industry leader in subscriber engagement as well as email strategy and deliverability. For more than 16 years, Spencer has worked with the world’s foremost email marketers to help them connect with their customers and increase the return on investment of their email marketing initiatives. As VP of Strategy & Analytics, Spencer works directly with BrightWave’s clients to help them drive performance, innovation and uncover opportunities to increase business impact across digital marketing channels.

Prior to joining BrightWave, Spencer has worked at several email service providers including Cheetah Digital, StrongMail and Premiere Global Services. Additionally, he has worked for Turner Broadcasting at NASCAR.com. Spencer holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from Florida State University.

Random Notable Spencer Fact: He once drank every type of beer Guinness makes while looking over the city of Dublin.

Using her Swiss Army-like talents to form a quick-strike team, something truly unique in the agency landscape, Michelle greatly enhanced BrightWave’s offerings with the addition of a multi-function, on-demand Rapid Project Delivery team. She also leads end-to-end email development and QA efforts at BrightWave.

Prior to BrightWave, Michelle managed the accurate delivery of 1,300 emails annually for a multimillion dollar e-commerce email program.

Random Notable Michelle Fact: Michelle’s not just a BrightWave MVP. Her high school soccer jersey was retired and still hangs in the school cafeteria to this day.

As BrightWave’s Senior Director of Talent Management, Quinn’s focus is set on talent development and coaching as well as employee engagement and satisfaction. He has helped BrightWave to be recognized as one of Atlanta’s best places to work and was recently named a recipient of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s HR Hero Award. He’s even created a BrightWave fun team responsible for throwing BrightWave parties and celebrations.

Quinn began his career at Porsche’s NA headquarters and most recently spent several years at 22squared, inc., an independent advertising agency.

Random Notable Quinn Fact: Quinn is originally from New Orleans and comes from a family of restaurateurs and chefs. He loves to cook but the 24/7 lifestyle required of owning a restaurant is not so appealing to him.