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2x Marketo Champion, Marketo Revvie Award Winner, and Washington DC Marketo User Group Leader. Having diverse experience and background, Helen found her passion in marketing automation, technology, and analytics. For the last 7 years, Helen is focused on transforming B2B marketing organizations through digital empowerment and innovation and building effective marketing operations and technology stack.
Stacey knows what it's like to be a marketer, after all, she's one of the few agile coaches and trainers that got her start there. After graduating from journalism school, she worked as a content writer, strategist, director and adjunct marketing professor. She became passionate about agile as a better way to work in 2012 when she experimented with it for an ad agency client. Since then she has been a scrum master, agile coach and has helped with numerous agile transformations with teams across the globe. Stacey speaks at several agile conferences, has more certs to her name than she can remember and loves to practice agile at home with her family. As a lifelong Minnesotan, she recently relocated to North Carolina where she's busy learning how to cook grits and say "y'all."
As a Senior Digital Strategist at Whereoware, Erin Alemdar helps clients utilize technology to deliver data-driven, omnichannel marketing automation experiences. Working with clients to understand their business goals, Erin combines analytics and research-based insights to develop scalable digital marketing solutions.
Rinoti Amin is the Director of Online Growth – Retention and Engagement at Malwarebytes. Prior to that she led PayPal's Digital Marketing & Strategy function for the International region where she had implemented growth-hacking techniques for acquisition and engagement. As a growth marketer with a talent for creating experiences that focus on delighting the customer, she enjoys partnering with product, analytics & engineering to bring an agile, hypothesis driven testing mindset to the Marketing function.
Benjamin Bloom is a Senior Director Analyst covering Marketing Technology and Emerging Trends at Gartner. Mr. Bloom's experience spans customer engagement, direct response, CRM, data management, analytics, web development and brand marketing roles, as both a Consultant/Strategist and Client-Side Team Leader. He has developed and optimized marketing campaigns, as well as selected and implemented technology and advertising solutions for over 10 years. Prior to entering the marketing world, he analyzed the technology, media and telecommunications industries at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University.
As VP of Content Marketing and Chief Webinerd for ON24, Mark is the world's leading voice for webinar marketing and is the host of the ON24 "Webinar Best Practices Series" which has thousands of followers. Mark has over 20 years of marketing experience with leading brands including Cisco and GE Access and presents at conferences around the globe.
A long time start-up marketer, Anita co-founded CabinetM in 2014, a marketing technology discovery and management platform that helps marketing teams manage the technology they have and find the technology they need.
Anita Brearton is an experienced start-up executive, skilled at addressing the strategic operational and marketing challenges faced by high growth, early stage businesses. She has spent over 30 years in the United States and throughout the Asia Pacific, working with a range of technology and internet-based companies as a senior operations executive, marketer, advisor and investor.
Prior to CabinetM, Anita served as the Executive Chairman of FashionPlaytes, an online fashion and style destination for tween girls. Earlier in her career, Anita served as vice president of corporate marketing at Sycamore Networks, where she led the company's marketing strategy from its infancy through its highly successful IPO. Prior to Sycamore, Ms. Brearton held senior marketing management positions with Cascade Communications, Artel Video Systems, and General DataComm. A columnist with CMS Wire, Anita also serves on the board of MassVentures as Vice Chairman and is a member of Golden Seeds, a Boston angel group. Anita has also worked with many startups as a marketing and strategy consultant, helping shape go-to-market strategies that enabled her clients to achieve their marketing and business goals. In this capacity, she worked with A123 Systems, Airvana, Azuki Systems, Altruik and others.
Ed Breault is an accomplished marketing and software executive with more than 15 years of business transformation and marketing experience. He currently leads a team of marketing strategists and thought leaders who partner with top enterprise brands to navigate complexity, disruption, transformation, and change to the modern marketing organization. Ed has made many significant contributions to the marketing operations business discipline, working with more than 100 marketing organizations around the globe, addressing marketing challenges within all industry verticals. Ed holds a BS/BA degree in Business and Management Information Systems from Bowling Green State University.
Dan Brewster is the SVP of Marketing & Digital Commerce for contemporary apparel brand Planet Blue (shopplanetblue.com). In addition to marketing and PR functions, he oversees the holistic integration of digital channels into the brand's sales and operations.
Prior to joining Planet Blue, he was the principal of Marketing Endeavors Consulting, bringing close to three decades of integrated marketing experience to a portfolio of CPG, retail and technology clients. His background includes sports event marketing and production, B2B lead gen and corporate marketing and leading B2C digital marketing agencies.
While at Onestop Internet and eBay Enterprise, he served in roles leading client services, strategy, marketing, and business development for SaaS-based e-commerce solutions delivering hundreds of millions in annual retail sales for global brands.
Earlier in his career, he served in leading marketing roles for the Phoenix Coyotes, Los Angeles Dodgers and USC Trojans, developing online ticketing and merchandise sales platforms while executing all sponsor activation, advertising, loyalty programs, promotions, and in-venue entertainment.
Dan is a two-time graduate of the University of Southern California (BA, MBA) and lives in Redondo Beach, CA with his wife and two children.
The MarTech Conference is programmed by conference chair Scott Brinker, who has been chronicling the rise of marketing technology and its impact on marketing strategy, management, and culture on his blog, chiefmartec.com, since 2008. He is the creator of the annual marketing technology landscape supergraphic, the industry reference for the evolving vendor categories of the field, and the author of the book Hacking Marketing, a guide to marketing management in a software-driven world.
Founder of the only exclusively "buy-side" technology analyst firm in the world. At Real Story Group we work only for you the tech customer, and that allows us to keep it real.
I have a personal passion for helping large enterprises make sound strategic decisions, based on solid research, that will set them up for long-term success.
I believe the best companies of the future will be those that invest the most wisely in employee and customer digital engagement. It's my good fortune to have an opportunity to help them get there.
Find my book, "The Right Way to Select Technology", on Amazon.
Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media's Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.
As Acquia's chief marketing officer, Lynne Capozzi oversees all global marketing functions including digital marketing, demand generation, operations, regional and field marketing, customer and partner marketing, events, vertical strategy, analyst relations, content and corporate communications. Lynne is one of Acquia's boomerang stories, first serving as Acquia CMO in 2009. Lynne left Acquia in 2011 to pursue her nonprofit work full-time. She returned to Acquia in late 2016 to lead the marketing organization into its next stage of growth.
Prior to her experience at Acquia, Lynne has held various marketing leadership roles in the technology space. She served as CMO at JackBe, an enterprise mashup software company for real-time intelligence applications that was acquired by Software AG, before that Lynne was CMO at Systinet, which was acquired by Mercury Interactive. Prior to that, Lynne was a VP at Lotus Development, which was later acquired by IBM.
Outside of her work at Acquia, Lynne is on the board of directors at the Boston Children's Hospital Trust and runs a nonprofit through the hospital.
Rishi Dave is the Chief Marketing Officer for Vonage. In this role, he is responsible for leading Vonage's global marketing strategy, positioning the Company as a global leader in business cloud communications and helping to drive the next phase of Vonage's growth. Prior to joining Vonage, Rishi was Chief Marketing Officer at data and analytics provider, Dun & Bradstreet, where he led marketing globally. Rishi has spent his career in the technology industry with marketing, business development and consulting roles at Dell, Rivio, Inc.,Trilogy Software and Bain & Company.
Rishi was named as a Top Digital Marketer by BtoB Magazine (now AdAge) two years in a row, and as a B2B Innovator by the Demand Gen Report. He has authored or appeared in global media including Forbes, PC Magazine, Business 2 Community, VentureBeat, CMO.com, and MarTech Series. Rishi holds degrees in chemical engineering and economics with honors from Stanford University and an MBA in marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Data-driven marketing leader and award-winning Account-Based Marketing strategist transforming marketing from cost-center to critical component of business growth by combining laser focused segmentation, impactful brand messaging and team motivation.
As Sr. Director of ABM Technology and Strategy at Demandbase, Mr. Dering develops the strategy for marketing technologies to fulfill Demandbase's vision of account-based marketing. Over the past decade, John has refined his marketing expertise while holding positions in marketing and sales leadership with StrongView Systems, Spoke.com and Salesforce.com as well as not-for-profit organizations such as SurfForLife.org. John holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Denver with a concentration in marketing.
Hi, there! My name is Matt Desilet, and I am a proud startup marketing enthusiast. Call me "Dez." As a marketer, I focus on growth & engagement. My expertise is in launching new products, and enabling sales + success teams. Some have called me "human spackle" - which I think means that I have varied experience. I've spent time as a contributor, manager, and leader on agile teams. I geek-out over connecting deep customer feedback with data, creating useful insights.
To slow things down, I love to build and tinker with guitars at home. Within 10 minutes of meeting me, you'll know that I'm from Rochester, NY. You will also discover that I love Wegmans and the Buffalo Bills.
Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and CNN. Her firm, Duarte, Inc., is the global leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture. As a persuasion expert, she cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications. She's written five best-selling and award-winning books that have been translated in 11 languages.
Duarte, Inc., is the largest communications firm in Silicon Valley, as well as one of the top woman-owned businesses in the area. Nancy has won several awards for communications, entrepreneurship, and her success as a female executive. On the list of top 250 Women in Leadership, Duarte ranks #67 and on World's Top 30 Communication Professionals for 2017, Duarte ranks #1. She is a keynote speaker at conferences and a number of Fortune 500 companies. Her TEDx talk has had over two million views. She speaks at business schools and has lectured at Stanford University several times a year.
Seth Earley is CEO of Earley Information Science (EIS, www.earley.com), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact, with expertise in knowledge strategy, data and information architecture, search-based applications, and information findability solutions.
Earley is also the author of The AI Powered Enterprise: Harness the Power of Ontologies to Make Your Business Smarter, Faster and More Profitable (April 2020).
Joel is a software architect and product owner at Red Hat. He focuses on building software that moves data, but just moving bits from one data store to another isn't enough - data is only useful when we know what it means, when we trust its accuracy and timeliness, and when we interpret it correctly to solve our real business problems.
In software, Joel is a passionate evangelist for scrum and domain driven design. He applies those concepts in Marketing Operations at Red Hat, helping a development team work with domain experts in Red Hat global marketing to build software that works within the model of marketing data.
Joel went to Georgia Tech, is a certified scrum master, and has built data integration software for technology companies for the past twelve years. He lives with his family and two cats in Raleigh, NC.
Jeff Eckman is the Founder and CEO of Blue Green Brands, an agile marketing technology company that delivers exponential growth in returns on marketing investments to medium and large enterprises. With over 20 years' experience in digital, design, and agile teams, Jeff has a passion for applying simplicity to complex problems, and creating relationships between people and technology that generate novel value.
Jeff leads cross-functional teams supporting the diverse and ever-expanding needs and responsibilities of marketing organizations—from strategy to creative to technology. Beneficiaries of Blue Green's work include national and global brands such as NBC Universal, California Closets, athenahealth, and PayPal. Jeff earned his BS in Operations Technology at Northeastern University, and holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Jeff lives in Belmont, Massachusetts with his wife and two children, and can be heard anytime on iTunes or Spotify as the drummer for Boston's original reggae band, Pressure Cooker.
Matthew Edgar is a partner at Colorado-based Elementive (www.elementive.com), a consulting firm specializing in analytics, research, and technical SEO. Author of Elements of a Successful Website and Tech SEO Guide, Matthew has worked in the web performance analytics field since 2001. He has been interviewed by Forbes, American Express, and other publications about analytics, CRO, UX, and SEO. He regularly speaks at conferences and teaches workshops, including speaking at MozCon and teaching courses with O'Reilly Media. Matthew holds a Master's in Information and Communications Technology from the University of Denver. Learn more and connect at MatthewEdgar.net.
Tracy Eiler is a revenue-driving CMO with "core DNA" in demand generation and awareness. She is the CMO at InsideView and has more than 25 years of experience with enterprise and SaaS software companies. She co-authored the best-selling "Aligned to Achieve: How to Unite Your Sales & Marketing Teams into a Single Force for Growth" (Wiley, 2016). She was recently recognized as one of the 15 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing.
David Encizo thrives at the intersection of data, technology, and marketing. With over 10 years martech experience (startup to corporate), his passion lies in leveraging data and technology to innovate and drive better business outcomes.
At Wells Fargo, David leads social media technology and operations where he ensures team members have the best tools and technology at their disposal to perform key social media functions at scale. He works across internal business partners to align, optimize, and integrate social media marketing technology with the rest of the enterprise.
In his free time, David spends time training his two rescue pups, wine tasting in Anderson Valley, and enjoying the outdoors.
Partner and Director, Personalization & Digital Marketing, Boston Consulting Group
Stefano is a BCG Partner and Director based in NY and a core member of BCG's Marketing, Sales and Pricing (MSP) practice. He is an expert in Personalization and Digital Marketing with focus on digital transformation, customer data management, marketing technologies and operations, capability development and operating models.
With over 20 years of experience and a unique skill profile across strategy, analytics and digital marketing technologies, Stefano advises and supports his clients with transforming their analytics, marketing and distribution operations to develop the capabilities and operating models to accelerate growth in customer acquisition, retention and value across the customer lifecycle.
Stefano has served clients across multiple sectors including telco, financial services, retail and CPG.
Sarah took the leap from Anthropology to Marketing Technology five years ago and never looked back. As a Marketing Technologist, she strives to answer the question, "How can we best use technology to reach our customers and prospective customers?" Prior to working at Pearson VUE, Sarah led the marketing automation program at AmeriPride (Now Aramark Uniform Services). In her current role, she maintains a best-in-class MarTech stack and ensures that users are effectively trained on these platforms to track, measure and reach their omnichannel marketing goals.
Yaagneshwaran Ganesh (popularly known as "Yaag") is among the top 100 global martech influencers, a TEDx speaker and a best-selling author. Yaag comes with 10+ years of experience in B2B marketing for martech organizations and startups. He has helped several startups achieve product market fit, and scaled them to sustainability. He is an active member of the startup ecosystem and is part of the Google for Entrepreneurs initiative "Startup Weekend", thus being a sounding board for startups in APAC and Europe.
He is also a member of the Forbes Council and has authored 6 books, with the latest one titled "The Growth Hacking Book". He speaks at international forums such as Performance Marketing Moscow, Startup Communities in Germany, Chamber of Commerce Netherlands, CII, and also academic institutions such as the IITs, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and more.
Matt is a 2019 Marketo Fearless 50 Recipient, Marketo Champion Alumni, Marketo Revvie Award Winner, and Baltimore Marketo User Group Leader. Matt has a passion for martech and has been serving organizations with marketing automation and CRM expertise for over 12 years, and has implemented both platforms multiple times in B2B, B2C and higher education applications. He is currently Digital Product Manager for strategic transformation at Walden University. He lives in Columbia, MD with his wife and rescue dog, "Neil Armstrong".
Paul brings more than 20 years of technology marketing experience to Extreme Networks where he currently serves as Director, Marketing Technologies. Paul leads the strategy for budgeting, planning, enablement and optimization of Extreme's Marketing Technology Stack. Paul is a passionate marketer fueled by the intersection of technology and data and the competitive advantages those connections deliver to organizations. He has won numerous awards for MarTech trailblazing, is a frequent speaker on the circuit and serves on the technology advisory boards for enterprise software companies including Integrate, Leadspace and Loominance as well as holding association board positions at Marketing Operations Cross Company Association (MOCCA) and Boston Marketo User Group (BMUG).
Stephanie Hanson is the Director of OneTrust PreferenceChoice, Americas - part of the #1 most widely used privacy, security and third-party risk technology platform. In her role, Hanson oversees OneTrust PreferenceChoice's team of Marketing and Privacy Consultants across the Americas, working with emerging and enterprise companies on best practices to drive engaging user experiences and build trust while demonstrating compliance across 100s of global data privacy regulations, including the CCPA, TCPA, CASL and GDPR. Hanson has publicly spoken on a variety of privacy, security and marketing topics, providing deep insight into regulatory issues and practical approaches to marketing compliance. Additionally, she helps facilitate OneTrust's MarketingConnect workshops across the Americas. Prior to OneTrust PreferenceChoice, she developed a payment processing platform for hospitals and drove mobile device management retail implementations for many of the world's Fortune 500 companies. Hanson is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/E and CIPM) and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Sean Hiss is the Director of Marketing Strategy and Operations and Chief of Staff to the CMO at Equinox, the world's largest IBX data center & colocation provider. This organization connects the world's leading businesses to their customers, employees and partners inside the world's most connected data centers in 40 markets across five continents.
In his role, Sean focuses on business strategy, planning and execution eprofessional with twenty plus years of cross-functional experience, leading global teams in Sales, Marketing and Engineering Operations, PaaS / SaaS / IaaS Go-to-Market enablement, pricing and analytics, and enterprise portfolio and financial management. His past experience includes marketing leadership positions at Adobe, Cisco Systems, and Enfocus Software.
Kelly Jo Horton is currently a Principal Engineer of Marketing Operations & Technology at ROOM (room.com) in New York City. She is a 2x Marketo Champion and a current Marketo Fearless 50 member. Kelly Jo has a deep digital marketing background that includes designing and building interactive digital experiences and social media campaigns for music labels, bands, B2C brands and movies such as Hunger Games and Taken 2. She was the Lead Technical Operations Engineer on the Ensequence team that won a Primetime Engineering Emmy in 2010 for "Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development," for their work on an interactive television app for live Showtime boxing events. She is an active voting member of SAG/AFTRA, and an active voting member of the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences in the New Media Peer group. Kelly Jo's super power is the ability to visualize, architect and implement digital ecosystems that connect disparate platforms into a cohesive unit. She currently splits her time between Bend, Oregon, and ROOM in New York City.
Teresa Joy is the Vice President of Marketing Technology and Operations at Autodesk, where she is focused on ensuring the marketing team has the right level of insights to drive better business decisions driven by a technology stack that enables execution efficiency and scale. Previously she was Senior Director of Marketing Ops and Customer Insights at Dell. She is also a frequent guest speaker at UT Austin and Texas State on the topic of purpose built analytics powering business decision making.
Andrew LeClair is the Product Marketing Manager for the Decision Sciences division at Pegasystems, accelerating Pega's portfolio of marketing technology, decision management, and customer engagement solutions. Before joining Pega, Andrew was the lead Marketing Investment Benchmark Analyst in IDC's CMO Advisory Service and previously was the Manager of Commercial Programs at Wyman-Gordon.Andrew holds degrees in Economic Sociology and Anthropology, and graduated Suma Cum Laude from James Madison University. Aside from a diehard Boston sports fan, Andrew is an avid golfer, foodie, and craft beer enthusiast.
McDonald's role is to develop research-based content and educate marketers on digital marketing best practices including the application and impact of AI and machine learning. He has 35 years of experience as a consultant, marketing executive and content marketer at companies including IBM, Silverpop, Arthur Andersen, USWeb/CKS, EmailLabs, and Lyris.
Dan McGaw is an award-winning entrepreneur and speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Effin Amazing, a marketing technology and analytics agency, and the creator of UTM.io, a campaign management and data governance tool. Named one of the godfathers of the marketing technology stack and one of original growth hackers, Dan has decades of experience in digital marketing, technology, and analytics. (His team won't let him take this out even though he says it makes him sound old.)
Before founding Effin Amazing, Dan succeeded Neil Patel as the head of marketing at Kissmetrics. He was the first employee at Code School, taking the company from $80k MRR to $400k MRR in revenue in just over a year and setting them up for success and their eventual acquisition by Pluralsight. As a volunteer for the SPCA and Orange County Animal Services, Dan used his marketing technology expertise to help 12,000 animals get adopted.
In 2015, Dan was selected by the US State Department to be a United States Ambassador of Entrepreneurship, where he had the privilege to advise universities, governments, and private corporations on how to build entrepreneur ecosystems.
When he isn't helping companies increase revenue and accelerate growth, he can be found doing laundry for his three children.
Living in a world of opens and clicks, Signe has been in email marketing for 10 years. Evolving from batch and blast messages to honed personalized messaging and automation marketing, Signe has worked within several email platforms in both for profit and non-profit sectors.
As the digital and email marketing specialist for CaringBridge, Signe uses data to identify key communication points so users understand how to use CaringBridge (either desktop or mobile app) to engage with their community for support during a personal health journey.
Mike McKinnon is the VP of WW Revenue Operations at LogRhythm, a network security firm. With nearly 20 years of experience in operations with companies both large and small, Mike has tackled most every problem a B2B software organization has encountered. One of Marketo's initial customers back in the early 2000s, Mike was beginning his operations career when marketing technology was exploding, and Marketing departments were searching for ways to prove their worth.
Mike can turn vision into reality through technology, process architecture and great teamwork. He has a passion for creating high performing organizations that can track their entire demand engine from lead to bookings. He was most recently featured in Roland Smart's book "The Agile Marketer: Turning Customer Experience Into Your Competitive Advantage". He has been a repeat speaker at SXSW, MME, Oracle Open World and Sirius Decision's Summit.
Sara is a LeanData OpsStar of the Year, Marketo #Fearless50 member, Influential Woman to Watch in Martech (Everstring.com), top "Ops Pro Shaping The Future of B2B Marketing" (Drift.com), "Pardot Champion" (Pardot.com), and martech influencer who is passionate about the marketing operations industry. Hear Sara's thoughts on her podcast, Wizards of Ops, at www.anchor.fm/sara-mcnamara.
Heidi has over two decades of senior marketing leadership and a reputation for building award-winning marketing teams in the technology industry. She has a proven track record of driving measurable growth for some of the most respected enterprise SaaS technology brands and has been recognized for her industry expertise. Before joining Workfront, Heidi served as CMO at Eloqua, Polycom, Taleo, Hyperion, and was the group vice president of marketing at PeopleSoft.
In Heidi's free time she enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, traveling—especially to Lake Tahoe—and is an avid reader.
I am an analytically driven marketing professional who has experience as a marketing practitioner, industry analyst, and customer success manager at a marketing technology company. My special talent is the ability to focus on details or specifics to learn, but also step back and distill this information at a higher, more strategic level.
In my career I have found I enjoy learning about and discussing marketing; some of my favorite topics are: Emerging digital practices, marketing benchmarks, change management within marketing and marketing technologies. Feel free to reach out if you want to connect around interesting ideas, projects, companies, and/or tools!
Outside of work I love skiing, basketball, and cooking. Additionally, I am a barbecue and craft beer aficionado.
Carol Mendenhall has worked in B2B marketing for over twenty five years. As a true believer in the power of marketing automation, she helps marketers embrace technology to generate leads and drive demand. Carol is a certified Oracle Eloqua Master with extensive salesforce.com experience.
David leads Product Marketing at Acoustic, the industry's largest independent Marketing Cloud provider with solutions including campaign, content, personalization, and analytics. David works with clients and prospects to identify needs, value propositions, and messaging for all Acoustic solutions. David has more than 20 years of experience in various marketing leadership roles at companies including IBM (in the Watson Marketing division), Model N, eFront, Intralinks, CA, and Oracle. David holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Northwestern University.
Matthew leads Merkle's Enterprise Technology Group and has 20 years of IT experience with 16 years focused on marketing technologies. Merkle's Enterprise Technology Group is focused on marketing technology innovations that enable Merkle's clients to achieve Connected CRM. These innovations are focused around Connected Recognition, cross-channel event management, real-time interaction management, and delivering personalized optimized consumer experiences.
He has helped clients evolve and improve their marketing efforts around multi-channel customer relationship management, and he has specific experience from traditional data warehousing to big data management and from analysis to channel execution. These efforts have included the integration of traditional channels to digital channels and media in order to support acquisition, retention, and loyalty.
Prior to joining Merkle, Matthew was a senior executive with other leading marketing service providers. In those roles, he managed client marketing solutions, enterprise decision management, and marketing consulting practices. For one of those marketing service providers, Matthew established and led the European consulting practice that provided strategic marketing advisory services covering marketing strategy, advanced analytics, and marketing technology. He has provided these services across multiple industries: financial services, retail, telecommunications, travel, and entertainment.
Matthew was a member of the United States Air Force.
Madelyn Mullen is obsessed with how people tell stories and leads Enterprise Product Marketing at Segment, enabling customer-focused growth with good data. Before joining Segment, Madelyn was a Senior Product Marketing Manager with expertise leading go-to-market strategies for three of VMware's emerging product lines-now all market leaders. She loves blending growth ideas and technical marketing skills to engage customers throughout their lifecycle. Her data background comes from early years in enterprise IT for financial services, an MBA from Chicago Booth, and a degree in Mathematics-Computer Science from UCSD.
Matthew Nolan is the head of Product Marketing for the Decision Sciences division at Pegasystems, driving Pega's portfolio of marketing technology, decision management, and customer engagement solutions. Before joining Pega, Matt was General Manager of the National Data Cooperative at Target Analytics, and served as Product Director for Analytics & Data Services at Blackbaud, Inc. A life-long marketing practitioner and analyst, he is a regular keynote speaker, an active supporter of the American Red Cross, a green-blooded Boston Celtics fan, and has held membership in the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) since 2004.
A serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of digital marketing experience, Alexandre is CEO and cofounder of Perkuto, an industry-leading marketing operations agency and an Adobe Platinum Partner. Perkuto helps leading brands orchestrate memorable customer experiences through flawless marketing operations by eliminating infrastructure uncertainties, safeguarding against campaign errors, improving marketing performance, and executing high-volume campaigns. A digital marketing thought leader, Alex often speaks at industry conferences including Sirius Decisions Canada, Marketing Nation Summit, Search Marketing Expo and Adobe Digital Experience Maker. Outside of work, Alex can be found riding his mountain bike and spending time with his four children.
Christopher S. Penn is an authority on analytics, digital marketing, marketing technology, data science, and machine learning. A recognized thought leader, best-selling author, and keynote speaker, he has shaped five key fields in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing and PR, modern email marketing, marketing data science, and artificial intelligence/machine learning in marketing. As co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights, he is responsible for the creation of products and services, creation and maintenance of all code and intellectual property, technology and marketing strategy, brand awareness, and research & development.
Mr. Penn is a 2020, three-time IBM Champion in IBM Analytics, a Brand24 Top 100 Digital Marketer, an Onalytica Top 100 AI in Marketing influencer, and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. Prior to co-founding Trust Insights, he built the marketing for a series of startups with a 100% successful exit rate in the financial services, SaaS software, and public relations industries. His work has served brands such as Twitter, T-Mobile, Citrix Systems, GoDaddy, AAA, McDonald's, and many others.
Mr. Penn is an IBM Watson Machine Learning Certified Professional, a Google Analytics Certified Professional, a Google Ads Certified Professional, a Google Digital Sales Certified Professional, and a Hubspot Inbound Certified Professional. He is the author of over two dozen marketing books including bestsellers such as AI for Marketers: A Primer and Introduction, Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer, Marketing Red Belt: Connecting With Your Creative Mind, and Marketing Blue Belt: From Data Zero to Marketing Hero, and Leading Innovation.
Elise oversees social media and email marketing strategy at the University of Washington. In this role since 2007, she launched the UW's primary social media channels and grew their followings from zero to hundreds of thousands. She continues to push the boundaries of digital marketing at the UW, recently overseeing the selection and rollout of a university-wide marketing automation system. Elise and her team are passionate about telling the many compelling stories about Washington's flagship public university—and are just as passionate about building positive and authentic connections with the UW community.
Denise has more than 25 years of technology marketing experience at high-growth companies. Prior to joining Snowflake as Chief Marketing Officer, she served as CMO for Apigee, an API platform company that went public in 2015 and Google acquired in 2016. She began her career at collaboration software company Genesys, where she built and led a global marketing organization. Denise also helped lead Genesys through its expansion to become a successful IPO and acquired company. Denise holds a BA in Business Administration and Economics from Stockholm University, and holds an MBA from Georgetown University.
Darryl Praill, Chief Marketing Officer of VanillaSoft, is a high-tech marketing executive with over 25 years' experience spanning startups, re-starts, consolidations, acquisitions, divestments and IPO's. He has been widely quoted in the media including television, press, and trade publications. He is a guest lecturer, public speaker, and radio personality and has been featured in numerous podcasts, case studies, and best-selling books. Praill is a former recipient of the coveted Forty Under 40 Award, and has held senior executive roles in leading companies including Sybase, Cognos (now IBM), webPLAN (now Kinaxis), and CML Emergency Services (now AIRBUS). He has raised over $50 million in venture funding across multiple organizations and consulted with world-class corporations including Salesforce, SAP, and Nielsen. He is a Computer Science graduate from Sheridan College.
David M. Raab is founder and CEO of the Customer Data Platform Institute www.cdpinstitute.org, a vendor-neutral organization which educates marketers and technologists about customer data management. Mr. Raab named the Customer Data Platform category in 2013. Before CDP Institute, Mr. Raab spent most of his career as a consultant helping marketers to understand, find and deploy marketing technologies and vendors. He is a frequent speaker and writer on marketing topics and author of Marketing Performance Measurement Toolkit (Racom Books, 2009). Prior to Raab Associates, he held senior marketing positions in the publishing and continuity industry. Mr. Raab holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia University and MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Priya Rajan is VP of Marketing at DataVisor, the world's foremost provider of comprehensive AI-powered fraud solutions. Priya is a highly-regarded leader in the technology and payments sectors, bringing more than two decades of experience to her role. Since joining DataVisor in 2018, Priya has been driving growth and expansion for the company and advancing brand awareness and thought leadership in the AI/ML space. Founded in 2013, DataVisor is a pioneering innovator in the application of advanced AI and machine learning solutions to the challenges of modern digital fraud. DataVisor protects more than 4.2B global accounts for many of the world's largest financial, e-commerce, and media organizations. Priya has previously held leadership roles with high-growth technology organizations such as VISA and Cisco, and Silicon Valley unicorns like Nutanix and Adaptive Insights. She holds an M.S. in Information Sciences from the University of Florida and an M.B.A from the University of California at Berkeley.
Tony has worked in digital advertising for 15 years in roles spanning both the buy and sell sides of the industry. His sell side experience includes leading globally scaled engineering and product solutions related to the development, integration and monetization of what were (at that time at least) the highest volume advertising solutions in the world (Yahoo and Google). His pure marketing technology experience includes design and implementation of advanced programmatic tools and tactics as Netflix brought their media buying practice in-house; driving end-to-end personalization and marketing data platform efforts at Intuit and most recently taking on a marketing product management leadership role for Walmart eCommerce.
Erin leads the enterprise Marketing Technology office at Deluxe, responsible for marketing automation strategy, integrating new technologies into the martech stack, and managing the marketing data supply chain. She is a frequent speaker on the marrying of technology with marketing strategy & operations. She pulls from her 13+ years of marketing operations experience on both the client and agency sides. Erin lives in Minnesota with her husband and 5 year old daughter, Liv. If she's not at work, you'll find her enjoying the Minnesota lake life, hosting friends and family at her home, or playing Barbies (begrudgingly) with Liv.
Jenifer Salzwedel has been a leader in the Marketing Operations space for more than two decades, driving a passion for 'making marketing work'. Her expertise includes building, executing, and measuring global strategic marketing campaigns; engineering process; launching and organizing multiple tech platforms. Currently as the Sr. Director of Marketing Operations & Enablement at Poly (formerly Plantronics and Polycom), Jenifer leads a team responsible for dynamically evolving marketing processes in the areas of Marketing Technology & Automation, Marketing Intelligence, Content & Creative Services Operations, and Investment Operations. At Poly, Jenifer's team oversees over 100 MarTech solutions, enabling marketers globally. She joined Plantronics 15 years ago and has held multiple pivotal marketing roles—growing with the company over that time—including Marketing Infrastructure, Enterprise Demand Gen Programs, and Enterprise Marcom. Prior to Plantronics, Jenifer held both agency-side and client-side marketing roles serving companies in the hi-tech, commercial security, and sporting goods industries. Jenifer holds a BA in Marketing & Advertising from California Lutheran University. Jenifer is also a graduate of the Bay Area's Women Unlimited leadership program.
Ajay thrives on scaling companies with state of the art growth tech stacks. He currently heads the Marketing Automation team at Lyft. Prior to Lyft, he started the SF office for Canadian startup TextNow and led their Growth team, making it a Top 30 Android app. Before that, he spent 3 years at KIXEYE building out the Growth engineering org managing multiple desktop & mobile game titles. He started his career at Hitachi working on supercomputers.
Tim is a Data Engineer in the Marketing Operations organization of Red Hat. His journey began with exploring predictive anomaly detection at Lenovo for the purposes of manufacturing quality control, soon tumbling into the medical world at a software startup designing neural networks to calculate heart pumping efficiency via echocardiogram video feeds. Through these experiences, one thing became very clear: data extraction and cleanliness is fraught with challenges, and having someone dedicated to designing good software around it is critical.
With that realization, he joined Red Hat's Marketing Operations data engineering team. They had ambitious goals of transforming their overnight data transformation system into a real time, event-driven data processing platform with Python, Openshift, and Kafka. Today, he continues to help make this vision of fundamentally changing the way marketing data is handled, and thought of, into a reality.
Outside of programming, Tim has recently become a board game enthusiast with a collection spanning over 50 games. Luckily this has only led to a minor increase in his fiance requesting him to sleep on the couch!
Steve is a high-tech industry veteran with a unique blend of marketing functional expertise and technology leadership. He has led enterprise Marketing Operations, Analytics/AI and cloud data strategies for empowering Digital Customer and Marketing experiences. In his current role, Steve is driving Thomson Reuters' digital transformation through an end-to-end Marketing Technology and data strategy for a modem commercial engine. Steve's experience at Fortune 500 companies includes tenures at both Microsoft and Oracle in marketing operations leadership roles.
Brian Solis is a world-renowned digital analyst, anthropologist and futurist who has been called "one of the greatest digital analysts of our time." Brian is also a world-class keynote speaker and an 8x best-selling author. His latest books include, Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life, X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, and What's the Future of Business aka WTF.
Based in Silicon Valley, Solis studies disruptive technologies and its impact on business and markets. Key areas of focus include cognitive automation, corporate innovation, digital transformation, customer experience, and evolving digital behaviors. Through his advisory practice, custom research and published work, he humanizes disruptive trends to help leaders understand how technology, markets and people are evolving and how to drive innovation and growth.
With a loyal online audience of over 700,000 people online, his work makes him a sought-after thought-leader to leading brands, celebrities such as Oprah, Shaq and Ashton Kutcher and over 1,000 startups around the world.
Amisha Sud manages digital demand generation for Twitter's Developer and Enterprise Solutions business and has been a key contributor in building an ecosystem of Twitter's martech vendors, creating a lead flow engine and overseeing all web,social, email, search and digital channel marketing. Prior to this she has worn various hats in developer marketing, partner marketing and social community management. She has a Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern University.
With more than 15 years of hands-on B2B and digital marketing experience, Kelly guides clients through the complex interplay of technology, processes, research/data, programs, creative and analytics. Over the years, he has built and led teams in the corporate marketing, marketing consulting, vendor and creative agency environments.
Kelly also leads the engagement efforts for the Hinge Research Institute—helping clients use research to grow and be more profitable. A well-known practitioner and thought leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), Kelly has been recognized by Onalytica as a Top 50 Martech Global Influencer. He has won awards with Eloqua (now Oracle) and Marketo (now Adobe) for his marketing automation expertise. As a co-host of Hinge's The Visible Expert Podcast, he talks with thought leaders across a variety of industries and disciplines.
As a former researcher at the bench, now Associate Director of Marketing Technologies at New England Biolabs, Tanya Waldroup has led a multi-year web project that included a new CMS, ecommerce platform, enterprise search engine and IA re-design. She manages marketing automation and a robust email program that integrates Salesforce and Pardot with the website, Marketing, and the Sales Team. Tanya's efforts led to NEB winning the 2018 Life Sciences Industry Award for "The Most Useful Website."
Kristen Walker is an experienced marketing technologist and Eloqua luminary currently focusing on helping Pearson VUE build out their MarTech stack. Previously, Kristen was an Eloqua consultant as well as a lead generation manager with Arrow Systems Integration. With 11+ years of experience, Kristen uses her skills in marketing automation, Salesforce, and paid advertising to help organizations drive lead generation, return on marketing investment, and user adoption of marketing tools.
Guan is a pioneer in applying machine learning to business domains. He currently serves as the Director of Marketing Analytics at DocuSign, where he has built a high-performing team from the ground up. With over 10 years of experience across Marketing Analytics, Business Analytics and People Analytics in both startup and Fortune 500 high-tech companies, he has guided business leaders with actionable insights via best-in-class dashboards and advanced analytics models. He is passionate about using analytics and insights to drive growth, building things from scratch, solving complex business and technology problems, as well as fostering a data-driven culture.
He holds a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and a master's degree in Information Systems and Operations Management from University of Florida.
Send me event updates and exclusive offers to MarTech!


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- What is Bitrex?
- Preventing poisoning
- News
- Taste Test
- Trade/Retail
- Contact Us
Partner Benefits
The Bitrex Premium Partnership recognises the importance of working with dedicated manufacturers who operate to the highest industry standards.
Becoming a Premium Partner is a simple process, yet offers many benefits, including:
- The opportunity to promote your company to our retail partners
- A way for your sales teams to differentiate your product offering, especially in the competitive environment of retailer tenders
- Price breaks, seasonal promotions and contributions to labelling costs
- Direct communication with a key account manager at Macfarlan Smith Limited
- Fast-tracking your products through our Certification Programme, reducing lead times by 30%
- The ability to align yourself with expert safety organizations to promote your use of Bitrex, and use our PR and e-marketing to recommend your business over others

subset: commoncrawl


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First thing I did when I saw this article on ESPN was use the find function on my browser to see if they mention Gwynn. They didn't! Hooray!
Maybe unfunny sports writers have read Gaslamp Ball. They really give it to Cabrera though, Sports Writers love giving overweight ballplayers "the business". They are what some would call "Chubby Chasers". They talk about how Miguel came into the league at 6'2" 185 lbs., a normal guy by most accounts. Here let me check his Body Mass Index... 23.8 which falls under the normal category. This year coming into Spring Training he weighed in at 260 lbs. giving him a BMI of 33.4 which makes him obese.
The thing is that Cabrera continues to produce offensively. Even ESPN can't help to mention how sexy he looks in his street clothes:
I just bit my lower lip and let out a "mmmm, girl", when I read that. I have a good imagination and those words lit the fuse. Wearing an outfit like that, he's just asking for it. Oh he knows what he's doin'!
Some people don't find the pleasantly plump ballplayer sexy though. Those people are anonymous American League GM's (probably Cashman).
This GM (probably Cashman) thinks that everybody should be pretty with fade hair cuts like Jeter and A-Rod. That look may get you more magazine covers, but doesn't get you a bronze plaque in Cooperstown.
Cooperstown is looking for other qualities, is sensitive and likes long walks on the beach. I'll be Cooperstown's wingman and we'll hit sports bars looking for the thing that makes players attractive. We'll look for guys that can flat out rake and not worry about the size of their gut.


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7 days a week
09:30 – 17:15 Hrs – Last Cable Car down 17:45
the Top of the Rock
09:30 – 17:15 Hrs – Last Cable Car down 17:45
Frontier – Cable Car
Plus Free Fast Track at the Cable Car ticket office when you pre-purchase.
The Cable Car runs continuously throughout the day, approx.. every 10 min to 15 mins. No reservation is required.
N.B. The Cable Car will not stop at the middle station between the months of April to October inclusive.
Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar was quick to respond to the Covid-19 crises. Thanks to the heroic efforts of the Health Authorities and its citizens, Gibraltar has suffered only a small number of cases with NO fatalities and there are currently very few isolated active cases of Covid-19 on the Rock.
Help us keep Gibraltar Covid FREE
Please follow the instructions of staff who are there for your Health & Safety:
Wash your hands regularly.
Use hand sanitisers.
Refrain from touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
Keep a respectful distance from others.
Wear a mask when in an enclosed space or whenever social distancing is difficult.
Sneeze and cough into a tissue or elbow.
Catch it, Bin it, Kill it!
It is in your hands to make a difference. Stop Covid-19!
Please be advised that it is mandatory to wear a mask when travelling on the Cable Car.
Masks are available for purchase at the Cable Car ticket office and at the GibraltarInfo kiosk.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Follow us on Twitter for live updates
The Rock itself is an impressive sight but it's only when seen from on high that you appreciate why so many have wished to conquer this small isthmus and how it has played such an important part in world history. From the terraces of the Top Station you can gaze down over the town below, look North towards Sierra Nevada over the Costa del Sol, look East over the blue Mediterranean Sea and South across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Rif Mountains of North Africa. In short you will view 2 continents, 3 countries and the meeting point of 2 great bodies of water. Impressive is not the word!
Built and completed by a Swiss Cable Car manufacturer, Von Roll, in 1966 the Cable Car is a must for all visitors to the Rock. The Top Station is the best place to meet our most famous residents, the Barbary Apes, not to mention the views and the unique hand-held personal Multimedia Guide all included in the price of your ticket. You can also download, for free, all the info on the Multimedia Tour to your own personal mobile device via the CityGuide App – click here to download the App and learn more about the Cable Car Experience. On purchase of your Cable Car ticket you will be issued a WiFi code from which you can access your preferred app store and download absolutely free!
The Top Station is the perfect location to relax while enjoying the spectacular vistas with a hot or cold drink and a light snack from the Top of the Rock Café or enjoy a more leisurely meal or cocktail at the Mons Calpe Suite Restaurant and Bar. You won't be disappointed. The Top of the Rock Souvenir Shop is also packed with unique gifts not available in town.
The Top Station is the perfect location to relax while enjoying the spectacular vistas with a hot or cold drink and a light snack from the Top of the Rock Café or enjoy a more leisurely meal or cocktail at the Mons Calpe Suite Restaurant and Bar. You won't be disappointed. The Top of the Rock Souvenir Shop is also packed with unique gifts not available in town.
This amazing space is also available for private hire and for weddings. Please click here www.monscalpesuite.com.
The Cable Car is located just beyond the southernmost end of Main Street right next to the Alameda Botanical Gardens. The GibraltarInfo exclusive and direct shuttle service will take you from the Gibraltar side of the frontier to the Cable Car base station. The shuttle bus can be found on the left side of the road just before the runway. Cross the road at the first set of traffic lights, keep walking passed the large advertising billboard and you will find the shuttle bus located just beyond that on the left. The shuttle departs every 30 mins however please be warned that traffic in Gibraltar, including the landing and taking off of planes, might cause delays to the service. The GibraltarInfo shuttle buses will have a sign on the front window. If in doubt, please ask for more information at the GibraltarInfo kiosk located on the Spanish side of the frontier and they will be able to offer assistance also see TICKETS for Shuttle Bus schedule.
If you are coming from the land frontier with Spain and have pre-purchased your tickets online or at the Gibraltarinfo kiosk, you are eligible to use the Gibraltarinfo Cable Car shuttle. This is located on the left-hand side of the road just before you cross the runway. Local bus number 10 also stops very near the Cable Car.
Local transport buses number 10 will all drop you off within sight of the Cable Car base station. Just ask the helpful bus drivers to point you in the right direction. There is stop near the frontier and near the Cruise Liner Terminal.
If you do plan to drive in (you are warned you might find yourself in a lengthy queue to enter and/or exit Gibraltar) and are looking for a car park you might be lucky and find a free space on Grand Parade. Please read the signs carefully as there are zones for local cars, free spaces and paid parking.
The brain child of local entrepreneur, John G Gaggero, the Cable Car built and completed by a Swiss Cable Car manufacturer, Von Roll, in 1966. Today known as Garaventa, the same Swiss team continue to look after the installation ensuring it meets wit all the Swiss regulations and safety standards. A team of Swiss engineers join the local Cable Car team on an annual basis, usually in late January, for its annual service although the Cable Car cables are checked on a daily basis, in fact it is the first thing the Cable Car team do before allowing anyone to ride in cabins. The original cabins were replaced in 1986 with the current 30 passenger cabin. The original cabin can still be seen as you enter the ticket office area.
The Cable Car has received many famous visitors over the years. Some famous names include, Prince Michael of Kent, Julian Lennon, Elaine Paige, Dennis Waterman, Ian McShane, band members of The Script, Martin Corry, Justin Marshall, Sir Alex Ferguson, Bryan Robson & Bruce Grobbelaar to name but a few.
On July 21, 2009, a trilateral meeting held at the Mons Calpe Suite hosted an historical meeting between Chief Minister of Gibraltar; Sir Peter Caruana, the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; Mr David Miliband and the then Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs; Sr D.Miguel Angel Moratinos. It was the first time a serving Spanish Minister had set foot in Gibraltar since 1704.
The Cable Car is owned and operated by MH Bland who have plans to undertake a major refurbishment of both the lower and upper station plus increase the capacity of each cabin to 80 passengers.


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Local Minister for Skills, Research and Innovation and Meath West Fine
Gael T.D. Damien English has said that funding of €100,552 for Meath
Volunteer Centre will provide a great boost for Meath's volunteers.
This is part of national funding of €3.15 million for volunteering
"Funding of €100,552 has been allocated to Meath Volunteer Centre to
help support Meath's volunteers for 2016. This money will add to that
being raised locally by many hard working volunteers.
"Volunteerism helps people to feel involved in their communities and
to participate in local events. Volunteers drive local development,
sports organisations and charities in all parts of the country and
this funding will help to support the structures behind this valuable
work. The importance of volunteers in our local communities cannot be
"There is a wide range of social and community initiatives operating
in Meath, all of which are only possible because of alliances that
have formed between communities, voluntary agencies, government, and
business. The level of professionalism, skill and cooperation that
exists among volunteers here in Meath has never been greater.
"This funding has been provided to support volunteer centres and
volunteer information services in all parts of the country including
here in Meath. A number of national organisations such as Volunteer
Ireland, Young Social Innovators, Chambers Ireland and Focus have also
received support under this scheme.
"Supporting volunteers in our community is extremely important and now
possible due to resources available from growing employment. Fine Gael
has a long term economic plan to keep the keep the recovery going and
job creation is at its core. The plan has three steps: more and better
jobs, making work pay more than welfare, and investment in better
public services, which will only be possible as a result of the
increased revenue generated by creating more jobs. This plan will
ensure that more people feel the benefits of a recovering economy in
their own lives."


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by Miss Rizos | May 29, 2014 | Eventos | 1 comment
1 Comment
Hermy on June 27, 2014 at 5:33 pm
I just wanted to say that this event helped me find a product that I loved, and made me fall more in love with my curly hair. I did not get a chance to meet you that day, but your blog has been very inspirational to me in helping to love my curly hair. I shared a post about that and more, linking to this blog (Because it was really what inspired the post). Hopefully you have more events in NYC and I'll have a chance to meet you.
Love,Log in to Reply
Hermy From http://www.thestylamiss.com
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School funding outage ahead?
Second in a series
OAK HARBOR - Removing a new school levy from the ballot may just be the first domino to fall from the impact the potential closure or devaluation of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station would have on a school district that is so reliant on the plant's operation.
Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., which owns the plant, announced in December that it plans to sell or close Davis-Besse and a dozen others in 2017 or early 2018 unless state officials change energy regulations to make it financially feasible to keep the plants running.
READ MORE: Davis-Besse plant may be closed in cost-cutting move
Hanging in the balance of that decision are hundreds of high-paying jobs and millions in tax dollars Davis-Besse generates for the surrounding community, including the Benton-Carroll-Salem Local School District.
"It plays an extremely big part within our community and school district," said Cajon Keeton, treasurer of Benton-Carroll-Salem.
The district receives around $8 million each year from taxes on Davis-Besse, which represents about 40 percent of the district's total annual revenue.
"The tax base is critical for us, but they're also a community partner," Superintendent Guy Parmigian said.
Davis-Besse offers professional development for teachers and helps students through grants in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
"Aside from the financial end of it, they are truly a partner for our school district," he said.
Davis-Besse's "Teach the Teacher" program is one example, where teachers not only get hands-on learning experience in a given field, but often also return to school with new supplies and ready-made projects to engage students.
"It's always very exciting what they bring back (from 'Teach the Teacher')," Parmigian said.
'A sinking feeling'
With that level of financial reliance and community partnership, ever since FirstEnergy made the announcement late last year that it may close Davis-Besse there has been a lot of anxiety among district residents, especially school staff.
"It was a sinking feeling," Parmigian said. "As leader of a district that depends so heavily on that plant's operation, it felt personally like being punched in the stomach."
Keeton said it would be unprecedented in Ohio for a company representing 40 percent of a school district's revenue to abruptly cease operations.
"Certainly, it's a fear of ours," Keeton said.
As soon as they became aware that FirstEnergy was considering either closing or selling Davis-Besse, Keeton said district officials began researching how it could impact their schools.
He said the school district has been saving and putting away money for years where and when it can, closely examining all of its purchases and spending.
"We take pride in the fact that we're not frivolously spending district funds whatsoever," he said.
Keeton explained that Ohio's school funding is essentially based on a community's capacity to raise revenue, which means a "worst-case scenario" of the plant closing would change how the state views and measures Benton-Carroll-Salem.
"If Davis-Besse were to close, it would make our school district look a lot less wealthy, therefore raising the amount we get from the state of Ohio," Keenton said. "That would help offset our losses from the state, but it's going to be a cliff for us."
Potential cuts
Though the district cannot definitively point to exactly what cuts would have to be made if Davis-Besse were to close, especially because the precise amount of how much potential loss could be recouped is unclear, staffing might be the first place to look.
"I think there's a lot of anxiety around our school district, on behalf of our board and our staff," Parmigian said. "They realize that about 80 percent of our budget is our salaries and benefits."
Parmigian said if or when they have to look at reductions, personnel issues would be on the table. But they would try to reduce the payroll through attrition, without anyone losing their job.
"There would be some very difficult decisions ahead, if we had to go that route," Parmigian said. "But we hope that day never comes."
"Because of steps we've taken in the past — putting money in the bank for our future — in case doomsday ever happened and Davis-Besse did close, we wouldn't have to make those decisions tomorrow," Keeton said.
The district would have time to lobby the state for additional funding, educate the taxpayers on the situation and, if needed, examine any potential cuts.
Ultimately, he said it will be up to local taxpayers and the state what Benton-Carroll-Salem continues to provide into the future.
"The good thing is, because we were good stewards of our tax dollars, we won't have to make a split decision," Keeton said. "That's one thing we are thankful for."
'Every voter's radar'
The murky future of Davis-Besse remains a source of unease for the school district and the broader surrounding community, many whose livelihoods depend on the nuclear plant. There could be broader implications as well.
"I know of families who have left already in anticipation of the worst-case scenario," Parmigian said. "It's not a lot of students, but there are families with students that are considering leaving and have left. The anxiety out there is ramping up."
But the topic of energy policy should be on the minds of more than just those in Benton-Carroll-Salem, he said. It should be of interest to all Ohio citizens.
"Nuclear does need to be part of the (energy) portfolio that we have, especially if we're looking to attract manufacturing jobs back to our area," Parmigian said. "I think it's something that should be on every voter's radar."
Twitter: @JonDBN
Read Saturday's story: All eyes on Davis-Besse


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Mary Therese Kurkalang is an Art Manager and Communication Consultant. She started her career in 1995 working with people with disabilities before moving to the arts and publishing.
She set up an independent practice, KHUBLEI, in 2012 through which she works across disciplines — culture, art and books. KHUBLEI has a special focus on human rights related projects.


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Always a good experience, if you have a problem I recommend telling them about it so that they can make it right. I have never had anything not made right or fixed appropriately.
Yet another great experience at Adams. I work with machines all day and I know it takes skill to repair them, unfortunately some fixes don't stay, but Adams always makes it right. 5 star guys


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Detroit Red Wings use draft combine, steak dinner to size up prospects
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Jesperi Kotkaniemi happily accepted the Detroit Red WIngs' invitation to dinner: It afforded an opportunity to impress and satisfy his hunger.
Kotkaniemi — who ordered steak — was among approximately 20 players the Wings took out to get to know beyond the 20-minute interview that's standard during the NHL combine. Others included Evan Bouchard, Noah Dobson, Quinn Hughes, Adam Boqvist and Oliver Wahlstrom, all of whom could be selected by the Wings when they make their first choice at sixth overall in the 2018 entry draft.
Bouchard, Dobson, Hughes and Boqvist are defensemen, an area the Wings need to address, while Kotkaniemi is projected to be the first center to be drafted.
Defenseman Rasmus Dahlin is projected to go first overall, and wingers Andrei Svechnikov, Filip Zadina and Brady Tkachuk are expected to be selected soon after.
This is an important draft for the Wings, who are trying to speed up the rebuilding process. They interviewed 80 players during the combine, and the 20 who received dinner invitations are the ones the Wings expect to be available over the four selections they have between sixth and 36th (Detroit's first-round pick, Vegas' first-round pick, Ottawa's second-round pick and Detroit's second-round pick).
"We're going to draft a really good player for the Detroit Red Wings and then let's be patient, let's have a plan," general manager Ken Holland said. "Great if they can play next year, but if they don't, I don't know if it really matters.
"We're trying to build something."
The Wings hold 11 picks headed into the June 22-23 draft in Dallas. The Wings' hopes of building around Dahlin, considered a generational player, were dashed April 28 when the Buffalo Sabres won the draft lottery. The Wings are not planning to move up in the draft, because an elite prospect will be available at sixth. Of those, Bouchard and Dobson both have aspirations of jumping to the NHL as soon as next season.
"It'd be fun playing in Detroit," Bouchard said. "It's a great city, I've been there a couple times — I actually played at Joe Louis Arena once, so it's special for me."
More:2018 NHL draft: Top prospect Evan Bouchard wants to play in NHL in fall
More:Evgeny Svechnikov highlight of Red Wings' 2015 draft class
Bouchard crammed 87 points into 67 games last season with London (Ontario Hockey League) while Dobson had 69 points in 67 games with Acadie-Bathurst (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League).
"My goal this summer is to put some weight on my frame and go into an NHL camp next year and be able to compete with men and not look out of place and make the decision hard on management to send me back to junior," Dobson said. "I think I bring a complete two-way game. I'm reliable defensively as well I can get up in the play and create offense. I think two-way defensemen are pretty valuable for teams and that's what I bring."
Boqvist was more conservative in his estimation.
"I think in two, three years, I hope I can play in the NHL," he said. "I think I need to improve my defensive play and win more battles than I lose. Be harder in front of the net. Of course I can be better in the offensive zone and be smarter out there. My skating and my puck handling, my play on the PP — that's where I think I'm best."
Kotkaniemi is a playmaker whose mindset will warm any coach's heart.
"I'm big guy, I like to go in corners, be in front of the net," Kotkaniemi said. "I love those hard battles."
Wahlstrom looks like he has an elite scoring touch — he had 40 goals and 83 points in 54 games with National Team Development Program. He described his time with the Wings at the combine as "awesome. I love them. It's my dad's favorite team, so it was cool. Meeting Kris Draper was awesome — I had his stick when I was little, so it was awesome, it was a really cool experience. I was like, 'whoa.' I'd seen him on TV winning the Stanley Cup, so it was just really cool."
The Wings have needs to address, which they'll focus on with their first four picks.
"Probably more so we're looking at a D or center over a winger, because we've drafted a lot of wingers the last three or four drafts," Holland said. "Between our first four picks, I'm expecting that one or two of them are going to be defensemen."
Holland plans to speak with most of his fellow general managers over the coming weeks, and "some of it will be about draft, some about trade possibilities," he said. "I'm open to woking on the phones to see what other people are thinking. We are trying to build a program through the draft to be a really good team. That is going to take time and patience."
More:Anthony Mantha, Tyler Bertuzzi stars of Detroit Red Wings' 2013 draft
There is a possibility the Wings might fall back to seventh or eighth if the right enticement is offered, but such a deal isn't likely to materialize until draft night. In 2013, for example, the Wings swapped first-round picks with San Jose, dropping back from 18th to 20th (where they selected Anthony Mantha) and gaining a bonus second round pick (which the Wings used on Tyler Bertuzzi). Holland said the Wings won't slide out of the top 10.
The expectation is that there'll be at least one if not two new young faces on the team for 2018-19, with competition headlined by 2017 first-round pick Michael Rasmussen and 2016 first-round pick Dennis Cholowski, and also including 2015 first-round pick Evgeny Svechnikov. Depending on who they select with their first pick in the 2018 edition, he could be in the mix, too.
Contact Helene St. James: firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.


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Daddy issues are universal and exist no matter your age, ethnic background, gender or financial status. Phil Davis Sr, CEO and founder of Alemaedae Theater Productions, has created a new TV Series that deals with these issues entitled "Daddy's Girl Club". This show not only focuses on the women with daddy issues but men who have them as well. Several characters deal with various issues such as domestic violence, depression, abandonment, substance abuse, sexual assault and molestation, among others. This show was created to not only bring attention to these problems but act as a healing mechanism for those who suffer from these issues. A few of the central characters throughout the series take advantage of counseling services, including but not limited to interpersonal therapy and anger management and the show displays the benefits thereof. Each character's story in the series reveals how some of them overcome these problems in spite of their issues.
This project uses homegrown talent from the WNY area as the cast and crew. The original pilot episode has been shown at various locations since 2016. The first private screening was held at Buffalo Academy for the Visual & Performing Arts in December 2016. The show received positive feedback by those in attendance and those people are looking forward to seeing future episodes. Since the first screening we have been holding monthly public screenings at various venues including Canisius College, Merriweather Library, and McKinley High School. The series is currently streaming on the SkoVu TV network as of Feb 2019 and Amazon Prime as of Dec 2019.
We have collaborated with and donated part of proceeds from one of our screenings to Crisis Services. As we continue to promote our project, we will be hosting events in collaboration with organizations that help individuals affected by the various issues the characters in the show deals with. We will donate part of the proceeds from the event to the organization we're partnering with and immediately after the screening of the pilot episode, we will have representatives of the organization participate in the Q&A talk back session, where they can promote the benefits of their organization and distribute any promotional material. If you feel that your organization can benefit from collaborating with our company please contact us at 716-250-9935 or firstname.lastname@example.com for more information.
The following links are to our social media pages:


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Cal State LA awarded NSF grant for shake table for simulated earthquake testing
Cal State LA's College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology was awarded a $279,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to acquire a shake table for simulated earthquake testing.
This instrument will significantly enhance the research capabilities of the University, allowing faculty to help improve earthquake safety in buildings in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
"The shake table will enable our University to contribute to earthquake safety in our communities for years to come," said Tonatiuh Rodriguez-Nikl, an assistant professor in civil engineering who was the principal investigator on the NSF grant.
The research comes at a time when elected officials in Los Angeles have made seismic safety a top priority. Just last week, the City Council enacted some of the most stringent regulations in the nation, requiring thousands of buildings to be retrofitted so they can better withstand powerful shaking during a major earthquake.
Cal State LA's 5-foot-square shake table will have the ability to shake test objects weighing up to one ton at twice the acceleration of gravity. This capability can match the ground shaking expected from the "big one" that could strike the Los Angeles region.
The shake table will also allow students to take part in real-world research opportunities and hands-on classroom demonstrations. This will prepare them to be ideal candidates for jobs and advanced graduate programs in earthquake engineering and related areas.
"Cal State LA engineering students will gain powerful experience in analyzing structural designs for earthquake resilience, a knowledge base critical for our region," said Emily Allen, dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology. "This type of experience will be invaluable as officials and agencies in Los Angeles and the rest of the West Coast work to improve our ability to withstand the big quakes."
The shake table will also be used for K-12 outreach opportunities such as Cal State LA's Summer Transportation Institute.
Faculty in the college have a wide range of uses envisioned for the shake table. Topics include seismic performance of energy efficient residential construction, photovoltaic panels and advanced, renewable materials. The instrument will also allow faculty to collaborate with other professors and industry partners regionally, nationally and internationally. The shake table is expected to be operational in summer 2016.
"Faculty will be able to test earthquake safety measures first-hand in our laboratory," Rodriguez-Nikl said, "and students will gain invaluable hands-on experience that will help their engineering skills and job prospects."
Image: Rendering of the shake table. (Credit: Tonatiuh Rodriguez-Nikl/Cal State LA)
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Cal State LA is a university dedicated to engagement, service, and the public good. Founded in 1947, the University serves more than 27,000 students and 240,000 distinguished alumni, who are as diverse as the city we serve. Located in the heart of Los Angeles, Cal State LA has long been recognized as an engine of economic and social mobility. Led by an award-winning faculty, the University offers nationally recognized programs in science, the arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and the humanities.
Cal State LA is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, Hydrogen Research and Fueling Facility, Billie Jean King Sports Complex, TV, Film and Media Center and the Center for Engagement, Service, and the Public Good. For more information, visit CalStateLA.edu


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Beyoncé had the BeyHive swarming Disney+ early Friday morning (July 31) to watch her Black Is King visual album, but which of her solo albums still has you buzzing?
Excluding her work in Destiny's Child and her Everything Is Love LP with husband Jay-Z under the name The Carters, Queen Bey has six No. 1 albums to her regal title, from her debut studio album Dangerously in Love to her surprise eponymous project Beyoncé.
Then, of course, there's her new Black Is King visual album, which celebrates the journey of a young Black king and is accompanied by a deluxe edition of The Lion King: The Gift, which adds three new tracks and eliminates the audio snippets from the Disney live-action remake of The Lion King.
Bey also gave her 2016 album Lemonade the visual album treatment, which spoke to the personal and societal betrayal and mistreatment of Black women. But she documented her own journey of becoming the first Black woman to headline Coachella in 2018 in the 2019 Netflix concert film Homecoming and paired it with HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM, filled with renditions of her career hits like "Crazy in Love," "Formation" and "Diva."
So which is the buzziest Beyoncé album? Vote below!


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It's Unanimous!
So the Hall of Fame is done, this blog can go back to regularly scheduled programming, but first, let's talk a little bit about what happened:
Mariano elected unanimously!
So, it finally happened. I don't know if my review of the sordid history of the Hall of Fame's history of non-unanimity had anything to do with it -- I doubt it -- but Mariano Rivera was on all 425 ballots this year, and that means that finally, finally, finally, we can put to bed that ridiculous "No player has ever been unanimous" thing.
And it's wonderful.
Sure, as expected, there are lots of people who will say that Rivera shouldn't have been the first unanimous pick. And that's right. Rivera, as great as he was, wasn't Henry Aaron or Ted Williams or Willie Mays or Stan Musial or Johnny Bench or Ken Griffey Jr. or Mike Schmidt or Cal Ripken Jr. or Tom Seaver or George Brett or Greg Maddux or a dozen or so other players who should have been elected unanimously but shamefully were not.
But this stupid thing had to end sometime, and what Rivera had -- an unquestioned spot* as the greatest ever at his position -- proved powerful enough to end the madness. As I wrote in the piece, it's nice that the greatest closer closed out that era.
*Goose Gossage excluded.
Now, look, people will ALWAYS find dumb reasons not to vote for somebody if that's what they want to do. But this silly reason is off the table. And that's worth celebrating.
Roy and Edgar get the same vote total
They faced each other 19 times, and Edgar Martinez owned Roy Halladay in those meetings -- .444/.474/.722. But really, they were of slightly different times. Martinez got the bulk of those at-bats before Halladay had established his dominance.
Because of that, their Hall of Fame journeys were very different. Martinez was on the ballot for 10 years and, as recently as 2015, received barely a quarter of the vote. The understanding that he really was one of the most brilliant hitters of the last 50 years evolved very slowly (many still don't buy it) and then spread very quickly. He jumped from 27% to 43% to 59% to 70% to 85.4% and the Hall of Fame.
Halladay's tragic death at age 40 focused everyone's attention on his greatness. When he retired, there were substantial questions about his Hall of Fame case. Was his career long enough? Did he have enough great seasons? Would his somewhat slight overall numbers -- 203 wins, 2,117 strikeouts -- prevent people from seeing how great he was? I can remember these arguments flying on the Internet.
But after he died, everyone took a closer look -- the sort of closer look that usually takes several years for players (like Martinez). And so, on first ballot, he got 85.4% of the vote.
Each with exactly 363 votes.
Mussina (whew) makes it by seven votes
The drama was always going to be Mussina; it was clear from Ryan Thibodaux's tracker that Mussina was either going to just make it or just miss it, depending on those unpredictable private ballots.
And as it turned out, Mussina did just well enough on the private ballots. He got 70.7% of the private vote, which would not have been good enough to get him elected, but when put together with strong public support (more than 83%), he made it by the aforementioned seven votes.
Mussina was a terrific pitcher. He really was. I think there are a substantial number of people who -- without saying it -- would prefer that the Hall of Fame be just a continuation of the story we tell ourselves. This, I believe, is where that whole gut-feeling, "I know a Hall of Famer when I see one" sentiment comes from.
-- Steve Garvey felt like a Hall of Famer while he was playing, so he should be in the Hall.
-- Mike Mussina didn't feel like a Hall of Famer when he was playing, so he shouldn't be in the Hall.
-- Jack Morris felt like a Hall of Famer when he was playing, so he should be in the Hall.
-- Scott Rolen didn't feel like a Hall of Famer when he was playing, so he shouldn't be in the Hall.
I like to think about it differently. The more we learn about baseball, the more history we see, the more we can judge what greatness looks like. If it really was a Hall of FAME, where Fame was the thing that mattered, it would be fine and easy to populate and, for me, not especially interesting. I write a lot about fame in this certain book that I will not mention (self-promotion is vile) that comes out on Oct 22 (and I will link it here), and what you find is that fame itself doesn't last. So many of the people who were most famous in the time of Houdini (oops, mentioned him) are not only forgotten, they're too obscure to even be trivia questions.
Mike Mussina was a great pitcher. A lot of people didn't see it or feel it when he played. A lot of it doesn't come through in the most obvious numbers, because he played in a time when numbers were skewed toward offense. But he was great. And that lasts.
Bonds and Clemens ... nothing
I've been telling you for a while now that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will not get elected by the BBWAA. People argue with me about that -- and, like many arguments I get in, I actually hope THEY are right -- but I'm as convinced as ever. Both stayed about where they were last year -- Bonds at 59.1%, Clemens at 59.5% -- and I'm telling you I don't see how they get the sixty-some votes that they're missing.
This is a good time to go through the Thibodaux public ballots vs. private ballots for some of the outliers (and for "private" ballots, I'm referring to those that were not revealed BEFORE the Hall of Fame announcement. There have been quite a few ballots revealed since the announcement, and I don't think those are quite the same).
Bonds: Private minus-24.5% Clemens: Private minus-24.4% Walker: Private minus-25% Halladay: Private minus-16%
Vizquel: Private plus-20% Pettitte: Private plus-8%
These private votes, I believe, are the toughest ones to swing. While Larry Walker's case has gained huge momentum in the public sphere, only about 40% of the private voters are convinced. He cannot get into the Hall of Fame when 150-200 private voters are giving him only 40% support. That's why, as much progress as he made and as much I want to dream, I don't think Walker is going to get enough votes next year, his last year on the writers' ballot.
Well, Bonds and Clemens are getting about 45% of the private vote. That's about what they got in 2018, about what they got in 2017 and about what they got in 2016. That number is not moving. Those voters have made their decision. And with that being the case, Bonds and Clemens will not get elected by the BBWAA.
I've also made this point: If things begin to swing toward Bonds/Clemens, the Hall of Fame itself could step in. They've made it clear without saying it -- they do not want Bonds or Clemens. The Hall of Famers. in particular, do not want Bonds or Clemens. Things can always change, but I think those two are toast, and they have zero chance with the veterans committees as currently constructed.
I've believed all this since Joe Morgan sent out his "Don't vote them in" letter to the voters: They're not getting in. At least not for a very, very long time.
Schilling and the next three years
Curt Schilling actually had an OK year, all things considered. He got up into the 60s in the voting (60.9%), and his best comp on the ballot, Mussina, was elected.
Overall, Schilling has a very different and slightly similar problem to Bonds and Clemens.
The differences are vast: Nobody is claiming Schilling used PEDs, and also Schilling wasn't nearly as good a player as Bonds or Clemens (who was?).
But the key point is similar: Lots of people don't want to see the guy honored. I imagine that there are plenty of Hall of Famers and Hall board members who cringe at the idea of Curt Schilling Day in Cooperstown. I can't blame them.
Even with that, though, Schilling has a lot going for him in the years ahead. For one thing, as mentioned, Mussina is off the ballot now. With Halladay and Rivera elected, Schilling will be far and away the best non-Clemens pitcher on the ballot for his last three years. He will be impossible to ignore.
For another, his on-the-field accomplishments remain untouched by scandal or controversy.
But the biggest thing, I think: The ballot is about to take a very interesting turn.
For the last decade or so, the Hall of Fame ballot has been a crazy windstorm. There have been too many great players and too much controversy for anyone to keep up.
It began in 2011, when Jeff Bagwell, Larry Walker, Rafael Palmeiro, and Kevin Brown (not to mention the underrated John Olerud) all came on the ballot at once. All four of them had what, by historical standards, were Hall of Fame numbers, Hall of Fame achievements, but all four of them were problematic in one way or another. The BBWAA sort of panicked and ignored them all and just voted in Bert Blyleven. The next year, we still panicked, ignored them all, and just voted in Barry Larkin.
Then came an even crazier wave: Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, Kenny Lofton, all in one year -- holy quagmire Batman, the ballot was a thundercloud of talk radio madness, and we in the BBWAA were so freaked out by it all that we didn't vote in anybody.
Then Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mussina, and Jeff Kent were added to the ballot ... then Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Gary Sheffield, and Trevor Hoffman were added to the ballot ... then Ken Griffey Jr. and Jim Edmonds were added to the ballot ... then Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero (not to mention Jorge Posada) were added to the ballot ... then Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Andruw Jones, Omar Vizquel and Johan Santana were added to the ballot.
This is year after year after year after year. It was pure madness.
Well, the madness is about to end, at least for a while. Next year, one Hall of Famer -- Derek Jeter -- will be added to the ballot. Oh, there will be some arguments about Bobby Abreu (I see Brian Kenny already pushing this one), but let me just say this up front: I appreciate Abreu*, appreciate his remarkable patience at the plate and his rare combination of power and speed, but I don't see his Hall of Fame case at all. If Jim Edmonds gets 11 votes, if Kenny Lofton gets 18 votes, if Lance Berkman gets five votes, if there's no place in the Hall for Dwight Evans, Reggie Smith, Minnie Minoso or (so far) Larry Walker, get out of here with your Bobby Abreu.
*I have on this blog called him the greatest boring player in baseball history.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest.
So Jeter will be the only Hall of Famer added to the ballot next year. With four getting elected this year, that clears the deck for Schilling (and maybe Walker). But if Schilling doesn't get in next year, that's OK, because there's not a single Hall of Famer coming on the ballot in 2021. The closest candidates are Tim Hudson, Mark Buehrle and Torii Hunter, fine players all, but I don't see any of them getting much Hall of Fame consideration.
A-Rod and David Ortiz come on the ballot in 2022, so things pick up a little bit then.
Point is, the next couple of years things will settle down significantly. And the voters will get a chance to take a good hard look at guys like Schilling, Clemens, Bonds, Vizquel, Manny, Rolen, Kent, Helton, Sheffield, Sosa ... maybe even Pettitte, Andruw and Billy Wagner. It will be very interesting to see who -- if anybody -- separates from the pack.
Prediction? I think Schilling will get elected. I think Walker will run out of time. I think Vizquel will continue to gain at a steady rate. And, as mentioned, I think none of the Steroid Seven will get elected by the BBWAA.


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Cars, as anyone who drives one knows, are expensive. But, their expense doesn't stop once you've signed on the dotted line at the dealership: the costs keep building through the life of your car. In fact, per AAA, the average cost to own a car is 9,122 dollars each year, with part of the bill coming from fuel, insurance, and maintenance. The latter is particularly pricey: between 2012 and 2013, the cost of car maintenance rose by 11.26 percent. Presently, it is nearly 5 cents to the mile.
Maintenance costs is just one of the reasons it's so important to drive a vehicle that is dependable, especially when SUV maintenance costs can be higher on average than cars.
Five Dependable SUVs Worth Driving
According to JD Power, five of the most dependable SUVs on the market this year include:
2014 Buick Enclave: A much updated version of the 2013 model, the Enclave includes a forward collision alert, lane departure warning systems, 288-horse power, and a 3.6 liter V-6 engine as well as several things to enhance the comfort for drivers and passengers – text to voice capability, second row USB ports for charging devices, and full size interior volume.
2014 Chevy Tahoe: The Tahoe's dependability is, in part, due to its size: it fits 8 passengers comfortably. It also boasts a 320-horse power, a 5.3 liter V-8 engine and trim levels available in LS, LT, and LTZ.
2014 GMC Yukon: The sibling vehicle of the Tahoe, the Yukon, in 2015, is scheduled to be completely redesigned. In the meantime, the 2014 version maintains its reliability. It has more standard equipment and better paint quality. It also is ideal for those with large families as it sits seven passengers.
2014 Honda CR-V: The 2014 Honda CRV is largely unchanged from its 2013 model – it continues to have seating for five, 185 horsepower, a 2.4 liter 4-cylinder engine, and models with either front wheel drive or all-wheel drive. It also offers three different trim levels with LX, EX, and EX-L available.
2014 Toyota RAV4: When compared to last year's model, the 2014 RAV4 underwent a few changes. Minor trim updates, a change in color (blue crush metallic paint), and a new technology package are all included. Like the 2013 car, the newer model has several safety features, such as a new lane departure alert, auto high beam systems, a blind sport monitor, and rear cross traffic alert systems.
Functionality and style often weigh heavily on the buyers of SUVs but these five most reliable 2014 SUVs can be dependable vehicles for year reducing your long-term operating costs.


text: Born Oct. 15, 1933 in Kumamoto, Japan to Akira and Yaeko Kitazumi, the retired landscaper passed away peacefully surrounded by his family. He is survived by his loving wife, Dianne, along with his children, Koichi Kitazumi, Shoko Kitazumi-Kafkaloff and Akiko Kitazumi. His grandchildren, Kristen, Lauren, Mika and Jacqueline also survive him. Memorial services will be held on Saturday, March 7, 2015, 1 p.m. at Green Hills Memorial Chapel, Rancho Palos Verdes, (310) 831-0311.