Akash is a 20+ year marketing leader with CMO experience, focused on e-commerce, CPG, and omnichannel brands. He has a proven track record of driving financially sustainable growth and improving marketing team operations.

Akash is passionate about mentorship, marketing, leadership, English Lit, and giving back. 

Former: McDonald’s, Accenture, Humana, and Trunk Club.

Kristen Faust is an experienced, empathetic leader with a diverse background that spans from helping to build the consumer internet at America Online aka AOL, to working at storied brands, National Geographic & the Chicago Tribune.  Kristen pivoted to participate in the media buying revolution of programmatic and helped to build Accuen, Omnicom’s Trading Desk to a successful business unit.  She transitioned to help Performics expand its programmatic offerings, co-led a large multi-agency team on an account that started with the North America business and expanded to a larger global remit.

Kristen holds an MBA from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of business and a BA from the College of William & Mary.  Kristen volunteers on alumni boards at William & Mary and is the President of her condo board association.  When she’s not working you can find Kristen traveling across the globe, playing tennis, golf and running,  attending a Blackhawks game or music festival with friends and most importantly doting on her niece. Kristen credits her network for leading her to new career opportunities and values the mentors in her life and pays if forward whenever she can.

Crystal Wallace, Chief Growth Officer - Platforms is an elevated leader in integrated media, consumer data and marketing technologies.  With over 15 years’ experience leading technology, analytics, and media teams, Crystal brings her expertise in marketing, finance, and sales to her role.  Crystal is responsible for unifying and managing IPG’s  Global IPG partner platforms program, to assist brands in connecting with products and solutions that provides a full end-to-end media experience and delivers growth for their business.  

Previously with Publicis Media, where she led Data Strategy, Operations, and Infrastructure, Crystal has been a driving force for critical and profitable innovations and is an expert in finding new paths to tangible gains for clients.  

Beyond her love of data and technology, Crystal is most passionate about developing people and helping them become the best versions of themselves. She has had an amplified effect on her employees’ growth because of her self-described servant leadership approach, and focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Crystal leadership resulted her to be featured in Yahoo’s EMpower Ethnic Minority Executives Role Model list.

Crystal has an undergrad in Risk Management and Insurance, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Master’s in Health Administration, from Georgia State University. She currently resides in Atlanta, GA.

Elisa is so excited to be a "Hello" mentor via OhHello.io. She is an accomplished brand marketer, social impact leader and collaborative, inspirational leader. Elisa's marketing career at Kraft Foods and Mondelez International spanned traditional brand strategy and management, innovation, customer relationship management and corporate partnerships in Canada, the US, Singapore and globally. She has spearheaded corporate initiatives partnering with nonprofit organizations throughout her career. Elisa is the author of the book Be A Mensch: Unleash Your Power to Be Kind and Help Others and also works as a nonprofit consultant.  She is a mom to two fabulous young adults and an amazing Newfie, partner of a fishmonger and a balaboosta in her community.

Mom to two young adults and her Newfie Thomas, and partner to her fishmonger husband. Balaboosta - a caretaker and nurturer.

Jody Rones is a proven revenue leader and team builder. Jody recently took the position of CRO at Gamurs Group, one of the leading publishers in the gaming, eSports & entertainment industry where he will be building out their monetization engine and partnering with marketers to connect them to the more than two thirds of Americans who game regularly.  Prior to that, he was the SVP, Head of Brand Partnerships at Leaf Group. During his time there he oversaw all the departments within brand partnerships including Sales, Programmatic, Account Management, Integrated & Brand Marketing, Branded Content, Video and Design and drove substantial revenue growth. He was also Chief Revenue Officer at Thrillist where he led revenue, partnerships and sales strategy for the leading lifestyle publisher. Additionally, he served as SVP, Group Publishing Director at Group Nine Media, the no. 1 mobile-first publisher, for Thrillist and Seeker. In that role, Jody ensured connectivity between the written and video editorial strategy and advertising partnerships. Those partnerships included bespoke branded content, sponsorship of editorial programming and experiential activations. He also led the team responsible for bringing advertising solutions across Group Nine and Discovery, Inc. to market. Prior to Group Nine’s formation in late 2016, he spent more than 10 years building Thrillist Media Group overseeing advertising sales, solutions and events. Before joining Thrillist, he held roles at Weather.com, Zenith and Initiative Media.

Jody is excited to be a mentor/expert within the OhHello.io tribe! 

From joining her first start-up during the original dot com boom, Karin O’Connor has followed her curiosity through the evolution of technology, data and marketing over the past 20 years.

Karin is currently a Senior Director of Innovation Consulting at Salesforce, where she gets to talk about the intersection of business goals and technology with the most amazing people daily.

Her past roles include Managing Director at Accuen (Omnicom), Digital leadership at OMD and was the SVP of Marketing at an ad tech start up.  In her quest for lifelong learning, she earned her Masters of Science from the School of Engineering at Northwestern through their MPD2 design program. 

Approaching her work through the lens of Strategy, Empathy and Technology, Karin is passionate about creating opportunities for others.

Inspired by her experience being the first in her family to graduate college she recently founded The First Graduates Club, a year long mentorship program for individuals that are the first in their family to graduate from a four-year college or university.  To learn more, join us at thefirstgraduatesclub.org.

Stacy is a people-driven leader who is passionate about developing new businesses. With decades of experience within the digital marketing and technology space, Stacy finds herself most proud of the teams she has built - both at early stage, Series A and Post-IPO organizations. With a sharp eye on results, Stacy insists that people are the most valuable asset of any fast-growing business.

Today, Stacy is Vice President of Sales for the Midwest and West Coast for OpenX, an adexchange platform in the adtech ecosystem. There, Stacy works with her teams, clients and agencies to ensure that high quality inventory is coupled with rich data for effective digital marketing campaign results. Stacy also consults organizations separately under the name, UpLift Consulting (her personal consultancy), helping fast-growing companies balance growth with cultural demands.

Stacy offers a vast history in marketing and adtech, holding positions within Radio, Print, Television, Social, and Programatic. Notably, in 2013, Stacy launched the Midwest business for The Trade Desk as the first Midwest employee, quickly building the company’s portfolio and establishing The Trade Desk as the platform of choice among programmatic buyers in the region. Stacy helped take the organization public in 2016 and oversaw the 150+ Midwest organization until her departure in late 2021.

Finally, Stacy is a never-ending student with an ongoing quest for knowledge. This past year, Stacy graduated from Northwestern University with a Masters in Communication, a degree which she insists is already paying dividends in her work. Stacy is also a proud member of Chief, an organization devoted to keeping women in leadership.

Alex Grant is an award winning sales executive with over 20+ years in media and content. He has built the monetization foundation for some of the worlds most successful startups including Twitter, Snap and Overtime.

Prior to his career in media, Alex attended the Grainger School of Business at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Alex is a native of Minneapolis, MN and enjoys playing ice hockey and is avid amateur cyclist with thousands of km left to explore.

Alex resides in New York with his wife author/entrepreneur, Barri Leiner Grant, the founder of The Memory Circle. He is a proud step-dad to daughters Emma and Quinn, and pop to their pup, Bean.

Antonio McFadden is a loving/handsome husband, father and tech professional originally from Chicago, but currently living in LA. He has over 12+ years of industry experience currently working at Google as a Product Strategy Lead with experience in programmatic sales,  analytics, campaign management and product strategy across DSP, Agency, Client and Publisher centric roles. In addition to his core role, Antonio has been a chapter lead of the Black Googler Network for the last 6 years across both the Chicago and LA Google offices. Lastly, Antonio's biggest passion and life purpose is helping others so mentorship and giving back is core to who he is as a person.

Well, it's episode 9 and ABOUT (a-boot) time we showcase a Canadian mentor! Our 3rd country, out of 9 pods thus far, repping the mentorship/expert tribe of OhHello.io. Grab some Timbits, a Raptors jersey, and enjoy the Rush!

Tricia brings over 20 years of experience in strategic consultation and partnership, media planning, buying, strategic planning, leadership and overall problem solving. ​

Her current role at ReticleAI focuses on business development and helping agency partners and brands contextually align the emotional intent of their ads within congruent digital content where audiences are most receptive to the messaging.