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Erin O. Patton

Erin Patton is widely regarded as one of the nation's foremost experts on branding, sports marketing and Hip-Hop culture. Under his leadership, The Mastermind Group (TMG) emerged as a recognized leader for brand management and groundbreaking strategic partnerships, providing counsel to an exclusive roster of Fortune 500 brands and pop culture icons.

Patton has been widely acclaimed for "cracking the code on the urban market" with his breakthrough 7 Ciphers™ segmentation study that attracted flagship sponsors including Pepsi and The Brookings Institution. He has also been instrumental in the most notable footwear product launches in recent memory. During his tenure with Nike, Inc, he served as the original architect for the Jordan brand, engineering its successful launch in 1997. He later spearheaded NBA star Stephon Marbury's award-winning Starbury brand launch that revolutionized the sneaker industry and earned launch of the year from Footwear News and Advertising Age in 2006.

Patton has been recognized with awards from distinguished organizations including the coveted Edison Award from the American Marketing Association, United Nations Honorable Mention, International Public Relations Association, The Network Journal's "Forty Under Forty Award" and the Innovator Award from the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).

Gifted as a dynamic public speaker with extraordinary communication skills, Patton is sought as a speaker for conferences, workshops, universities, and corporations. He has also appeared as an expert on ESPN, CNN, VH1, and BET and been quoted in USA Today, Time, Inc., Business Week, Wall Street Journal and Fortune.

As a staunch advocate for higher education, Patton serves an Adjunct Professor of Sports Marketing in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU) where he also directs its Sports Management Consortium targeting front-office executives and athletes with innovative executive education programs.

As a civic leader, Patton devotes his time, talent and treasure to various national non-profit organizations and causes, including KaBOOM!, which builds playgrounds in underserved areas, and Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), which uses sports to teach life lessons and character development. He is also a board member of the Texas Leadership Forum, SMU Athletic Forum, and Hispanic Youth Symposium, a program of the Hispanic College Fund.

Patton is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He earned his MBA from the SMU Cox School of Business in Dallas. He currently resides in Frisco, Texas with his wife Nicole and two young sons.

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