Simms Jenkins is CEO of BrightWave, North America’s leading email marketing agency. The award-winning firm specializes in elevating email marketing programs that drive revenue, cut costs and build relationships. Jenkins has led BrightWave in establishing a world-class client list including Affiliated Computer Service (A Xerox Company), Aflac, Chick-fil-A, Cox Business, Google, Phillips66, Porsche and Southern Company. The agency has been ranked among the fastest growing private companies by Inc. Magazine the past three years.

Jenkins was awarded the prestigious AMY Marketer of the Year from the American Marketing Association for being the top agency marketer and the Email Marketer of the Year at the Tech Marketing Awards held by the Technology Association of Georgia. Jenkins is regarded as one of the leading experts in the email marketing industry and is regularly cited by the media as such and called upon by the financial community to provide market insight and consulting.

Jenkins is the author of two definitive and highly regarded books on email marketing; The New Inbox (published in April 2013 by ClickZ/Incisive Media) and The Truth About Email Marketing published by Pearson’s Financial Times Press in 2008). Jenkins is currently the Email Marketing Best Practices Columnist for ClickZ, the largest resource of interactive marketing news and commentary in the world, online or off. His industry articles have been called one of the top information sources for email marketers.

He has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Bloomberg TV, Wired Magazine and scores of other leading publications and media outlets. Jenkins is a regular speaker at major digital industry and general business conferences and was named one of the World’s Top 50 Email Influencers.

Additionally, Jenkins is the creator of EmailStatCenter.com and SocialStatCenter.com, the leading authorities on email and social media metrics. Prior to founding BrightWave, Jenkins headed the CRM group at Cox Interactive Media.

Jenkins serves on several civic and professional boards, including Atlanta Families, Zoo Atlanta’s Marketing Board and Fernbank Museum’s Corporate Leadership Council. He has served as a mentor at Flashpoint, a Georgia Tech based startup accelerator program. Jenkins is a graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio and resides in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood with his wife and three children.

Follow Simms on Twitter, Facebook and his book websites at NewInboxBook.com and SimmsJenkins.com.

Random Notable Simms Fact: Simms was Student Body President in 8^th 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 stellar work every day at BrightWave, the leading email marketing agency that elevates eCRM and cross-channel programs through industry-leading innovation, relationship orchestration and pioneering inbox experiences. As a self-proclaimed technology geek and an industry thought leader, he’s all about leveraging innovative solutions to create an efficient, collaborative and imaginative work environment.

Raj brings over 18 years of entrepreneurial agency experience to the BrightWave team. 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. That agency was acquired with its 275 employees in 2013 by Publicis Groupe and then merged internally with Moxie, creating the largest digital agency in the Southeast. In 2014, Raj was hired as a CEO for the award-winning social Ad Tech company BLiNQ Media, providing new vision and rebuilding its technology teams. He’s also an investor in a number of technology startups, as well as a mentor to fellow entrepreneurs. Through his unique agency endeavors, Raj has become known for his hands-on approach, calm manner and work-hard, play-hard mentality.

Additionally, Raj participates as a board member and advisor for a number of non-profit groups, including Everybody Wins! Atlanta and the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership (ABLP).

Born in Uganda, Raj moved to London at age nine. He earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and Geography from Kingston University (London) and an Executive MBA at Georgia State University.

Random Notable Raj Fact: He travelled around the world twice on round the world tickets. More recently, he and his wife packed up two kids and two dogs to travel the Pacific North West and Western Canada in an RV for 5 months. 

Brent is responsible for all client relationships and program success. He has a track record of providing strategic counsel and white glove service for brands like Aflac, Chick-fil-A, Equifax, LinkedIn and countless more. Brent also serves as head coach for our internal team, making sure they have everything they need to over-deliver 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.

A hands-on leader and outstanding communicator, Brent often finds himself in the roles of cheerleader and peacekeeper, though not always in that order. Quite possibly his most important role is Chief Keg Officer at BrightWave’s in-house lounge, The Siren, where he always ensures that a local and a seasonal beer are on tap and ready for any impromptu client meetings. He is a graduate of Washington & Lee.

Follow Brent on Twitter.

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

Rich Wilson leads BrightWave’s Strategy, Creative and Technology groups and is inspired by the idea that brands can become more meaningful to customers by synchronizing messaging strategy with a detailed view of the customer journey. He and his teams combine the power of big ideas with the emerging capabilities of data and technology.

Ultimately responsible for the work product emerging from BrightWave, Rich understands that email and other audience-granted media will benefit most from a data-focused environment. He leads his teams through an iterative process of utilizing data, exploiting the full breadth of available technologies and integrating personalization into creative deliverables. BrightWave calls this process Progressive Relevance. By treating campaigns like software releases, Rich and his teams are able to guide brands towards one-to-one communications methodically while proving the value of data-driven email in a highly visible way.

Rich started his career in 1997 as a copywriter, was as an Associate Creative Director for IQ Interactive and a Creative Director for JWT Specialized Communications. Before joining BrightWave, he was the Principal and Founder of Big Scary Cranium, an award-winning behavioral marketing and marketing automation agency recognized as “Agency of The Year” by both IBM Silverpop and Marketing Profs.

Random Notable Rich Fact: Rich was a radio DJ with blue hair in college. Nobody misses that.

Laura enables the client services team to deliver their absolute best work, exceeding expectations on a daily basis. That includes the day-to-day management of the campaign management team, collaborating with our stellar Account Managers and contributing to business development efforts.

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 at serving as a consultant at Deloitte, she created and implemented change management strategies, oversaw training development and did overall project management.

She has a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership from Vanderbilt University and has a Bachelor’s of Science in Management & 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. 

Thomas is a seasoned email and eCRM expert, having worked on strategic customer marketing initiatives for the last 8+ years. In his role at BrightWave, he focuses on developing relationships with some of the best brands in the world. Recent client successes include Aflac, Google, LinkedIn, Mattress Firm, Mizuno, NAPA and UPS.

During his career, Thomas has conducted extensive customer marketing research and successfully developed and managed hundreds of B2C and B2B campaigns. From project kick-off through campaign analysis and reporting, he’s overseen email programs for clients such as Aflac, CBeyond, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, RaceTrac Petroleum, O’Charley’s Inc. and Steelcase Furniture.

Before joining BrightWave, Thomas specialized in CRM and email related strategic and tactical marketing efforts at rDialogue, an Atlanta-based loyalty and customer marketing consulting firm. Barnhart is a native of Atlanta and graduate of University of North Carolina Wilmington.

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

Laura oversees our creative product, rallying and inspiring a team of copywriters and interactive designers to innovate in the inbox. She works with our clients to brainstorm eye-catching, click-worthy solutions that will achieve their business goals—then lays out a vision and executes on it with our team of talented creative.

Laura brings over a decade of experience creating delightful creative for large consumer audiences to the BrightWave team. Before attending graduate school for journalism at the University of Illinois, Laura covered over 50,000 miles of Asia as an English teacher and travel writer. She served as a staff editor for several national magazines in New York before being drawn back to her hometown of Atlanta to launch a local news website for AOL & The Huffington Post Media Group. She most recently served as Managing Editor at Scoutmob, overseeing all content there, including creative for their daily emails, the largest driver of traffic and revenue for the start-up.

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

Using his robust digital marketing experience, Tunde heads up the BrightWave platform technology team. He harnesses impressive technical expertise and a passion for constant improvement in equal measure to inspire results. Together, Tunde and his team of data engineers and platform developers execute extraordinary automation projects for our clients.

Born and raised in West Africa, Tunde has lived in Atlanta for the last 25 years. More than half of those years were dedicated to providing complex, fully customized technical solutions for top companies. Because he sees digital marketing technology as a world of endless possibilities, he’s never been afraid to challenge the status quo.

Tunde’s diverse work background includes web development, consulting, team building and process improvements that score big wins for employees and customers alike. Before BrightWave, he led a regional software support team at Marketo, contributing largely to the success of a global premium support offering. He’s also served as the Director of Technology for Safe-Guard Products, overseeing product development and support for their automotive partners including Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes and BMW. Prior to Safe-Guard Products, he spent 4+ years at ExactTarget/Salesforce Marketing Cloud providing complex technical solutions for top customers such as Nike, Home Depot, WebMD, Expedia and Microsoft.

Random Notable Tunde Fact: Tunde enjoys any kind of competitive sport and is a huge Falcons fan. RISE UP!

With a killer combination of agency, client and ESP experience, Kristen is a seasoned pro in many areas of digital marketing, allowing her to develop robust multi-channel strategies. But her primary love has always been email. She oversees all of BrightWave’s strategic and analytic services for their clients, with data serving as the core of all deliverables. Using a consultative and collaborative approach, she executes data-driven recommendations at the program and campaign level, audience and campaign analysis, testing and optimization recommendations and more to enable ongoing success for her clients. 

Before coming to BrightWave, Kristen led the Verizon Wireless CRM team at Moxie USA as Account Director. She also spent over 5 years at Silverpop gaining a deep understanding of email that allows her to develop unique and creative strategies to drive her clients’ goals.

Random Notable Kristen Fact: Kristen has performed a touch-and-go in a Cessna 172 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport while commuter jets waited for her in a holding pattern.

Michelle’s innovative problem solving made her the perfect visionary to bring together a new team at BrightWave – the Rapid Project Delivery (RPD) team – and lead it with gusto. Using her Swiss Army-like talents to form a quick-strike team, something truly unique in the agency landscape, Michelle greatly enhanced our agency’s offerings with the addition of this multi-function, on-demand team. Her team is staffed with some pretty remarkable folks and proves the value of the team for us and for our clients, each and every day.

In addition to leading this important part of BrightWave, she serves as Director of EiQ: The Intelligent Email Gathering. No stranger to wearing many hats, Michelle leads the planning and execution efforts for what is sure to become the best day in email.

Before becoming our RPD director, Michelle served as our Senior Project and Resource Manager. She organized, scoped and planned projects, assessing resource availability and capacity, and developing procedures to improve efficiency across the agency. With all that on her plate, she was certainly well-primed for heading the lean, mean team she’s in charge of now.

Michelle has over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, web design and project management and formerly managed the scheduling and accurate delivery of approximately 1,300 emails annually for a multi-million-dollar email marketing program. She has a Master’s degree in Digital Media Marketing from Florida State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Auburn University.

Random notable 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 Director of Talent Management, Quinn’s focus is set on talent development and coaching as well as employee engagement and satisfaction. His ultimate goal? To make BrightWave one of the top workplaces in Atlanta. He’s even created a BrightWave fun team responsible for throwing BrightWave parties and celebrations. Who can argue with that?

Quinn began his career at Porsche’s NA headquarters, and most recently spent several years at 22squared, inc., an independent advertising agency. This is where he discovered that his true passion is working with creative, driven individuals in a fun, fast-paced, ever-changing environment.

Prior to this role, he has spoken at many conferences, expertly-owned 401k plans and company benefits, implemented performance management strategies and handled recruiting and onboarding in an extremely high-volume environment (think 100+ hires in 6 months). Growth and change are definitely in his wheel house.

Random Notable Quinn Fact: He’s 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.