The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry leaders and experts, the judging is a rigorous two-stage process including pre-scoring to determine shortlists and a judging meeting where entries are discussed and evaluated in detail to decide the winning entries.
The US Agency Awards are one of the few awards schemes that are judged solely by in-house judges; your entry will not be viewed by any other agency.
From a transparency perspective, we may video aspects of the judging session to give entrants an insight into why a winning entry was chosen.
Judges
Dawn Anderson | Founder | Bertey
Dawn Anderson is a digital marketing lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, international conference speaker (UK, US, AUS, IT) and has an international SEO consultancy and agency, Move It Marketing. Dawn has spoken at some of the leading global search marketing conferences, including Pubcon (Las Vegas and Florida), SASCON, Brighton SEO, SMX (London and San Jose), MozCon and State of Search. She has been in SEO for 11+ years and works with leading brands providing digital marketing and SEO strategy across a number of sectors. She is also a Northern Digital, UK and US Search Awards Judge. Dawn also contributes to leading search marketing industry publications such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, The SEMPost, State of Digital and Smart Insights.
Matt Beswick | Co-Founder | Aira
Matt is the co-founder of Aira, one of the UK's leading agencies, has worked in Search Marketing for over a decade, and is a regular speaker at some of the industry's most renowned conferences. A technical marketer at heart, his expertise lies in SEO and Paid Media, and can be regularly heard asking Aira's PR team stupid questions that he should really know the answer to by now.
Shaad Cajee | European Marketing Manager | AliveCor Inc.
Shaad is an agile and entrepreneurial professional with marketing and sales experience across the pharmaceutical and med tech sectors. Beginning his career as an English language teacher, he later connected with his passion for healthcare marketing. Fascinated by the international landscape of communication and connectivity, Shaad is a strong advocate of health technology, solutions and diverse approaches that can change the world. Outside of work, Shaad enjoys spending time with his wife and son exploring different parts of Italy, practising yoga on the beach, and learning to cook Italian dishes with the best chef, his mother-in-law!
Herbert de Luca | Digital Marketing Analyst
Herbert is always in search of knowledge, working with digital marketing and studying neuromarketing, finishing a postgraduate research on the behavioral part of people in social media. Currently, he seeks to consolidate his career and tries to give his best in judgments. His last participation was in the CBMA (Craft Beer Marketing Awards).
Michelle Gledhill | EMPLOYABILITY LEAD DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING, RETAIL & TOURISM | Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr Michelle Gledhill is a specialist in in advertising, branding and media. My former position (2010 to 2022) as Programme Leader for MSc Creative Advertising Strategy combined my expertise in strategic thinking when working on live briefs with brands such as Manchester City, the Happy Linen Company and Rockstar Spirits, with my passion for developing and nurturing student talent in the Manchester and across the UK. This has led to a new role where I am the Marketing Retail and Tourism Employability Lead. She will be working with agencies and businesses to enhance the career prospects of MRT students. Her fascination for branding led her to complete a unique doctoral thesis on how brands are processed whilst playing videogames. She is a highly experienced marketer, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), CIM Senior Examiner and HE Examiner.
Richard Gregory | Co-founder | AgencyNXD
Richard is co-founder of AgencyNXD as well as an advisor and NXD to multiple tech firms and agencies, including Adzooma, Fluid Digitial and Ruler Analytics. Heralding from “Silicon Ramsbottom” he is an ardent supporter of the digital and tech industry in the North of England. Previously, Richard was the managing director of digital agency Latitude, director of Tech North and co-founder of SAScon.
Scott Hand | Chief Brand Officer | Urban Artifact
Scott is cofounder and head of marketing for Urban Artifact, a craft brewery specializing in Fruit Tarts. They redeveloped a historic church building into a production brewery, taproom, event hall, and outdoor gathering space. The brewery has created their own beverage styles, redefining how fruit is used in beer, wine, and seltzers. They've coined the term Midwest Fruit Tart, and currently brew the world's most expensive (and fruitiest) alcoholic beverage. Scott also co-founded and manages Radio Artifact, a regional radio station, that utilizes their own recording soundstage to capture live performances, stream, and archive for viewers and listeners around the world. He is also a practicing Architect, specializing in highly sustainable buildings and architectural acoustics.
Bill Hartzer | SEO Consultant
Bill Hartzer is an independent SEO Consultant. He relies on his 20 years of direct SEO experience to provide technical SEO audits of websites, as well as technical link audits and link cleanups of websites. Mr. Hartzer is known worldwide for his research on the topic of search engine optimization and the New gTLD domain names, as well as Dot Brand domain names. He provides research and marketing of white papers and case studies related to the New gTLDs, as well as consulting related to domain migrations.
Scott Hendison | CEO | Search Commander Inc | @shendison
Scott Hendison is the founder of Search Commander, Inc., an internet consultancy with multiple services and brands. He began selling software online in 1999, attended his first Pubcon in 2004, and is a founding board member of SEMpdx, hosting monthly events and an annual conference in Portland Oregon since 2007.
Rachel Heseltine | VP of Consumer Growth | Trader Interactive
Rachel Heseltine is the VP of Consumer Growth at Trader Interactive in Norfolk, VA. Her award winning team is responsible for all traffic channels for industry leading sites such as Cycle Trader, RV Trader, Equipment Trader and Commercial Truck Trader. Rachel has led US Search Award winning teams at ForRent (2017) and AOL (2014), also working in-house at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and for several years on the agency side. Rachel taught digital marketing for 5 years at Georgetown University, and was on the board of SEMPO for 4 years, 2 as VP of Education. Rachel was a frequent speaker / trainer / moderator at conferences around the world on a variety of online marketing topics in the "before times", and is hoping to get back to that when the world returns to a semblance of normality.
Chris Lehault | Other Half Brewing
Chris Lehault is a hybrid creative/marketing leader who believes that brands succeed when both work together. Currently, he is the VP of Marketing at Other Half Brewing, where he oversees the marketing function, in-house design studio, and the brand's direct-to-consumer eCommerce platform. His previous roles include serving as the Global Director of Brand Experience at ZX Ventures, the accelerator arm of Anheuser Busch InBev, as well as stints as a creative director at FCB, Sapient Razorfish, and Wunderman. Off the clock, he enjoys doing the most suburban of things with his wife and two kids across the river in New Jersey.
Trond Lyngbø | Senior SEO Consultant & Founder | Search Planet AS
Trond Lyngbø is the founder of Search Planet and a senior SEO Consultant. He has over two decades of experience in SEO, e-commerce, content strategy and digital analysis. His clients include multinational Fortune 500 corporations and major Norwegian companies. Trond has helped grow businesses through more effective search marketing and SEO strategies. He is most passionate about working with e-commerce companies and web shops to develop and expand their omni-channel marketing initiatives.
Debra Mastaler | Founder | De9eR Media
Debra is an experienced SEO who specializes in link building and content promotion through traditional and online media outlets. She is an OMCP certified link-building trainer, has written for numerous tech publications and has spoken at over 300 search marketing conferences.
Lexi Mills | CEO | Shift6
Lexi Mills is a multi-award-winning and data-driven digital marketing expert, specializing in PR SEO and emotionally intelligent business strategy. She’s President of The Future of Search Foundation and CEO of Shift6 Studios and CIO of UB, an international consultancy that provides professional services and training to fast-growth startups, agencies, corporations, government entities and investors. Lexi’s research focuses on the opportunities and ethics of artificial intelligence, and the growing risks posed by bias within internet algorithms.
Andor Palau | International SEO Consultant | Andor Palau - SEO & Online Marketing
Andor is an independent international SEO consultant based in Berlin, Germany, and has started his online career back in 2009. Having worked both in-house, as well as on the agency side, he is currently advising online shops, classifiers, marketplaces, and other companies regarding international organic growth strategies as well as technical SEO issues as an independent SEO consultant. He is former Head of SEO at Peak Ace, where he was responsible for SEO and managed a 20+ people team of SEO consultants and editors. Before joining the agency side, Andor was In-house SEO for a top-3 comparison portal in highly competitive verticals such as insurance, power, and telco. Andor’s core expertise is strategic SEO as well as technical SEO, covering topics such as crawlability, indexing management, migrations, and site structure optimization. He is a lecturer at the afs Akademie in Germany, which has made it its mission to offer quality education and training in the field of SEO
Dan Petrovic | DIRECTOR | DEJAN
Dan Petrovic, the Director of DEJAN, is Australia’s best-known name in the field of search engine optimisation. Dan is a web author, innovator and a highly regarded search industry event speaker.
Janna Pugh | SEO Manager | Vintage King Audio
Janna Pugh is a SEO Manager with a history of agency and in-house work. She has recently been nationally recognized as the Industry Rising Star in Conductor's 2022 C2 Summit and regularly speaks with college classes about the essentials of organic marketing. With her passion for SEO, she knows firsthand how to make the smallest and largest websites succeed organically. Her areas of focus specialize in enterprise SEO, with scalability and automation for both small and large SEO teams. Her varied approach to SEO combines on-site content with off-site brand management. In her free time, she loves trying out new recipes and reading mystery novels.
Eli Schwartz | SEO Expert and Consultant
Eli Schwartz is the author of the bestselling book Product-Led SEO. He is an SEO expert and consultant with more than a decade of experience driving successful SEO and growth programs for leading B2B and B2C companies. He helps clients like Shutterstock, BlueNile, Quora, Gusto, Mixpanel, and Zendesk build and execute Global SEO strategies that dramatically increase their organic visibility at scale. In the past, Eli led the SEO team at SurveyMonkey, building organic search from nearly zero to one of the largest growth drivers at the company. He helped launched SurveyMonkey’s first APAC office and oversaw international SEO pre- and post-IPO. Prior to SurveyMonkey, he led user acquisition at High Gear Media, pushing the company from 500,000 new users to 6 million every month in just three years.
Grant Simmons | Marketing Consultant | Simmonet Marketing, LLC
Grant leads the Performance Marketing team at Homes.com, helping drive brand awareness, search traffic, affiliate traffic, and lead optimization for one of America’s top real estate sites. Grant has over 27 years of agency & brand experience serving industry-leading organizations such as; Paramount Studios, Red Bull, M&M/Mars, Disney, Napster, Warner Bros., UPS, Move.com, YPO, GE, Amgen & Fox Sports. Grant is a popular speaker at search & real estate industry events worldwide, including; SMX, SES, SIS, Pubcon, Brighton SEO, Chiang Mai SEO, UCLA Anderson School of Business, eMarCom, C3, Social Shakeup, Multifamily Brainstorming, R3, Digital Elite, DMA, LRTCon, and has written for or been quoted in Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine News, Forbes, Fox Business, MSN, Media Post, Yahoo & other national & international publications. Described as an online marketing strategist, motivator, ideator, entrepreneur, asker-of-tough-questions, and “proud American with a funny accent”, he prefers; father, sailor, search marketer & expat Brit – though not necessarily in that order when there’s a fair wind.
Michelle Stinson Ross | Co-founder and CMO | Mindful Appy
Michelle Stinson Ross is the Director of Marketing for Mindful Appy, an Austin based, mental health app. She specializes in marketing strategy, particularly the convergence of content, search, social media, and how it all works together to impact customer engagement and emotional well-being. Michelle started working with social media in 2009 when she began working for a Key West tourism company as a content writer and community manager. Today, she is an internationally recognized speaker, trainer, and author.
Purna Virji | Senior Content Marketing Evangelist | LinkedIn
Purna Virji is a globally recognized content strategist and Senior Content Solutions Consultant at LinkedIn. She has been crowned the Search Personality of the Year by the US Search Awards, was named by Adweek on their Young Influentials List, and was named by PPC Hero as the #1 Most Influential Expert in the world. She is a columnist and top-rated international keynote speaker who regularly speaks at conferences such as AdWeek, DMEXCO, The Next Web Conference and INBOUND. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Purna led global learning and thought leadership programs for Microsoft. An award-winning former journalist, Purna is an avid traveler, aspiring top chef, and amateur knitter in her spare time.
Lisa Williams | Associate Director of Digital Engagement | Oregon Health & Science University
Lisa Williams is a 25-year veteran of digital marketing and the author of "When Everybody Clicks: Sustainable Digital Marketing". She has been featured in Kiplinger Magazine, Glamour Magazine, Boston Globe and The Oregonian. Lisa is on the SEMpdx (Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland Oregon) Advisory Board. She founded and leads a Portland Oregon LeanIn Circle and volunteers at Emerging Leaders to mentor diverse, aspiring professionals to serve in technology and health care. She speaks at regional, national and international conferences on the topics of digital strategy, marketing integration, team development and leadership.