About.

Joni is our general. She leads the charge into the strategic future of KSM, including the future of our clients and the future of the KSM community. She guides our clients from where they are today to where they need to go tomorrow. Joni is a relentless advocate of KSM’s purpose, mission, and values. She pushes our KSM community to be marketplace leaders, not just marketplace competitors. Joni is also a champion of KSM’s strength in attracting unique individuals; with her own background in musical theatre, she understands that groundbreaking business solutions are rooted in diverse experiences. Outside of KSM, Joni is an avid gardener, will bike 100 miles on any given Saturday, and loves spending time with her dog, Jake.

Jon turns the power of media into a competitive advantage for our clients. His years of experience have provided KSM’s community with valuable expertise and leadership—including specialties in marketing and media research, negotiation, and retail traffic building. It’s possible that Jon’s strategic thinking goes all the way back to childhood when he enjoyed reading and solving the puzzles in the Encyclopedia Brown novels. When not at KSM, Jon relaxes by driving, and someday he plans to drive to Alaska through Canada in a classic muscle car while enjoying the scenery all the way.

David began at KSM in 1993 as a Research Analyst working under Jon Lichter. He is the only person who has worked in every single KSM department. Today, as one of three partners and KSM’s Treasurer, he is responsible for developing client contracts and overseeing company operations. He also enjoys getting to know the teams. You can often find him by the front desk greeting everyone who walks by; he loves that doing payroll allows him to learn everyone’s name. David also plays and coaches basketball. He can often be found playing pick-up games after work, sometimes with former NBA players!

Chad is a scientist-turned-marketer, using his skills in cultural understanding to create brand connections. He spearheads Agency Strategy, Product, and Growth to move client solutions forward quickly in ways that align with the changing marketplace and our clients’ evolving needs. He does this all from a consumer-centered point of view given that he’s a people scientist. Chad is also an avid traveler, even choosing to live in the mountains of the Dominican Republic for three months during graduate school fieldwork, using his focus on applied anthropology to study the cultural effects of agro-forestry on migration. In short, he’s always combining his love of science with a deep curiosity about humans and their stories.

Laura has a robust history of client leadership, strategy/planning, account operations, team leadership, and agency program development. She makes things happen across the broader alignment, streamlining, standardization, integration, and communication of our total agency operations, infrastructure, delivery, and advancement. Her leadership adds short and long-term value for our talent community’s growth and client success. Think of those trips when you’re driving somewhere, and you sail through all green lights…and how good that feels: Laura’s role at KSM is to remove barriers, potholes, and roadblocks so we can do that more often, together. Her passions include traveling and reading.

Sy has a long and successful history of getting results for clients. As a consummate expert across all media, he delivers investment that moves beyond tactics—he makes it a place to grow data and drive media differentiation. Sy leads the investment teams to produce cross-channel solutions that deliver on precision, quality, and value for our clients. He inspires our people to create best practices, build channel expertise, create innovative, data-focused solutions to our clients’ business challenges, and drive integration across disciplines to better inform media recommendations. Sy loves the diversity of businesses he gets to work on at KSM, and surrounding himself with smart and enthusiastic people. When he isn’t at KSM, you’ll find him cycling, fishing, playing foosball, and enjoying wine and "good eats."

Elizabeth brings comprehensive knowledge of various retail and other foot-traffic driving businesses. Her starting point is rich customer data as a guide. She believes if we apply audience trends to a deep understanding of each brand’s position in their targets’ lives, we can anticipate lasting business growth. She has a track record of elevating client business and advancing the sophistication of the strategic media approach as part of a broader marketing plan. She has a love for challenging clients in healthy ways to drive innovation and growth, and builds high-performing teams. When Elizabeth isn’t working, she can be found playing with her 5-year-old and his army of dinosaurs, or flying all over the world with her family to support her husband’s travel business.

Allison is a proven strategic leader who grows businesses through her media expertise and marketing acumen across verticals. She has a data-driven, consumer-centric mindset and ensures that Strategy, Investment, and Data & Analytics are all working together to enrich our work and quickly bring additional value to our clients. In Allison’s free time, she spends a lot of time reading with her dogs at her side, but she learns best through experience and thus finds herself on countless travel adventures.

Henry specializes in the application of analytics techniques to prove and predict media performance, generate insights for strategy development, and apply data in new and exciting ways. He delivers growth to our clients through fresh analytics solutions tailored to specific business and campaign objectives. His favorite part of KSM is that it is close-knit and hands-on. The close relationships our agency fosters with clients provide him direct line-of-sight into how his work builds brands, makes people smarter, and drives everyone forward. Outside of KSM, Henry loves to spend as much time outside as possible, camping, hiking, reading in his hammock and riding his bicycle.

In 2010, Kay googled “digital agencies in Chicago” and found Fuor Digital—then a subsidiary of KSM until it was fully acquired in 2012. She joined the KSM digital team in 2011, and has been moving us forward ever since. Today, Kay drives innovation and strategic thinking across KSM's business, including identifying growth opportunities for current and prospective clients. Outside of work, Kay’s childhood skills at Tetris translated into excellent packing skills as an adult; she can pack a carry-on bag for three weeks of international travel without a problem. This comes in handy as she enjoys exploring the globe, especially with her husband. Kay also loves walking her dog, and once ran a marathon without training for it.

KSM is known for getting best-in-class media deals from our fantastic industry relationships, and a large part of that is thanks to Mel Greve. Mel discovered her love for negotiating shortly after college during a trip to Mexico, where she haggled with street vendors and learned the tremendous value in knowing when to walk away. When she was ten years old she subscribed to Psychology Today and wanted to be a psychologist; whether or not psychology is her secret to a great deal we can’t say, but whatever she’s doing seems to be working!

As head of KSM’s social function, Ashley oversees all paid social campaigns across KSM’s book of business and works closely with our brand partners to drive human connections in moments that matter. Her upbringing and experience across all digital channels have grounded her in a data-driven and forward-leaning mindset, and over the years her passion for social media has motivated her to be a thought leader in the space. She's also a big fan of live music; in fact, Ashley and her husband have seen their favorite band 50 times, traveling all over the country (and even internationally!) to do so.

Donna is always networking; her favorite part of working at KSM is getting to know our vendors and clients as people. She then takes that experience to connect our clients with the vendors that perfectly fit their needs. Donna is the definition of non-stop: she has over 1,200 Soul Cycle sessions under her belt, and won Best Female Dancer at the charity ballroom event “Dancing with the Giordano Stars” in 2015 by performing 18 lifts in a disco number.

Sara is an investment expert. Her digital prowess has led to unique investment strategies, innovative thinking, and highly effective campaigns. Her role across the investment discipline helps to drive cross-channel investment solutions and efficiencies. Sara loves that she is always thinking about what is next for KSM, our clients, and the industry. She also loves the industry passion found at KSM, and that our people truly want to grow our clients’ businesses. Outside of KSM, Sara loves to travel, especially the experience of exploring a new city or country. She is constantly seeking ‘new’ in all aspects of her life.

Amanda and her team bring brands to life through strategic approaches to content and experiential marketing. From sports sponsorships to custom curated content, our promotions team amplifies the personalities of brands and infuses them into the fabric of their communities. Amanda loves that KSM provides the flexibility to cultivate innovative solutions, develop people, and curate an agency culture that is client first. When Amanda is not working to build integrated marketing solutions, she loves creating small adventures with her son Gerry, catching a barre class, or spending time in her volunteer executive chair role at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.