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To borrow a quote from the Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University (6/12/05): "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do." Our management team is focused on doing the things we love…creating great work, developing great products and working with great people.
Mike Sands: Advisory Board Member
Jon Schepke: President and FounderAdam Dorfman: PartnerJay Hawkinson: PartnerNeil Mahoney: eCommerce ManagerJon Schepke: President and Founder
As Co-CEO of Proceed Interactive (1997-2005), Jon built the firm from start-up to an early search marketing leader. While at Proceed, Jon's business acumen resulted in an impressive portfolio of more than 50 customers, including General Motors, Wells Fargo, Omni Hotels, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Kaplan (Score! Educational Centers), and Great Expectations. In 2005, Jon joined industry leader iCrossing as the Director of Client Services for the Central Region. While at iCrossing, Jon managed a team responsible for a roster of blue chip, Fortune 1000 clients. Jon started Strategic Internet Marketing Partners in January 2006. As President, Jon manages all day-to-day operations, helps drive the company's business and product development, sales and marketing, partnerships and strategic direction. Jon earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Indiana University in 1993. Jon is a frequent speaker at industry shows and conferences and an active member of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), where he is the Co-Chair of the SEMPO Institute Committee, click here to view video. Jon is also an active participant for these non-profit organizations:
Outside of work Jon likes to travel, run, play racquetball and tries to keep up with his wife and three kids. Adam Dorfman: Partner
Upon graduating college in 1998, Adam became the first full time employee for a group of Chicago house and techno record labels where he ran all day to day operations as the company grew 500% over the course of two years. By the time he left, the office had grown to seven and Adam had launched a number of websites for the record labels. Getting these sites ranked in AltaVista, Infoseek, Yahoo, Lycos and HotBot had become somewhat of an obsession and Adam was pleasantly surprised to discover a niche industry existed that focused entirely on search engine marketing. In 2000 Adam accepted an offer from Jay Hawkinson to become a member of one of the premier online marketing firms at the time, Proceed Interactive (then Meandaur, Inc). While at Proceed Interactive, Adam was responsible for defining and implementing the online marketing strategy for dozens of clients including Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Milwaukee Tool, and SCORE! Educational Centers. One of many highlights during his tenure was conceiving and executing a network of microsites for Wyndham.com that generated over 75,000 group RFPs in two years - entirely from organic search engine listings. In 2005 Adam accepted a position at Orbitz Worldwide where he managed all of the SEO, Paid Inclusion, and dynamic advertising for Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com. He was also responsible for growing and developing many of the metasearch accounts including Kayak and Farechase as well as working with M&A to identify potential partnerships with a variety of well known websites. Some highlights while at Orbitz include increasing natural search transaction revenue by 103%, increasing total transactions for accounts managed by 140%, conceptualizing and driving the launch of the RSS program, writing the SEO business requirements for future platforms, and receiving the Cendant Power of Many award. After a year at Orbitz, Adam regrouped with Jon Schepke and Jay Hawkinson to accept an equity position at Strategic Internet Marketing Partners where he now divides his time between driving online revenue for clients in the hospitality industry, building out vertical specific web applications and ecommerce solutions, and running a number of blogs and sites to test the latest online marketing tactics first-hand. Excited to be back in an entrepreneurial environment Adam spends most of his non-working hours at his home in Chicago with his amazing wife, old German shepherd, bossy corgi and super-fat cat. Jay Hawkinson: Partner
Prior to joining the search engine optimization space, Jay honed his people skills first as a Sales Rep and one year later promoted to Regional Sales Manager for the largest baseball card and trading card distributor in North America. During his 4 years as a manager, Jay directed over 40 reps across 18 states and 4 provinces from the Midwest to the Northeast relocating 4 times in process to take on new opportunities and territories as they became available. That stint took him from Milwaukee to New York then back to his home in Chicago (by way of Cleveland). After 5.5 years of cutting his teeth in the brick & mortar retail space (and 200,000+ road miles later), Jay sought a more stationary yet exciting occupation; search engine optimization. He joined Jon Schepke in 1998 accepting the role of "search marketer" and tasked with building the search marketing practice at Proceed Interactive (then known as Meandaur Internet). Initial clients included Chicago Hilton & Towers, Komatsu, Kohl's Department Store, and Hanes. Over the next 7 years, Jay crafted his search marketing expertise by developing new techniques and strategies in common practice today. He also established a leading search optimization and marketing department directly overseeing such clients as General Motors, Choice Hotels, Wells Fargo, and Firestone. Jay had an active role working with the biz dev team in deciding the right search initiatives for prospective clients. However, his best decision was hiring Adam Dorfman. At the end of summer 2005, Jay accepted the Media Sales Strategist position for iCrossing, the largest privately-owned search marketing company with over 500 employees. Operating out of the Chicago office, Jay served in this new role to grow the Paid Search division of iCrossing by improving campaigns and working in tandem with business development on new initiatives. In addition to expanding the Media department in the Chicago office, Jay joined the Client Services team to foster new business within existing accounts and provide hands-on campaign management. Clients included Coca-Cola, Betty Crocker, Disney, Purina, and Sprint/EMBARQ. After thriving for one year in the corporate grind, Jay left iCrossing to join Jon Schepke and Adam Dorfman at Strategic Internet Marketing Partners as an equity partner developing ecommerce solutions and products for the travel and hospitality vertical. This new environment has allowed him to excel in his areas of expertise by growing his accounts' year-over-year online revenue as well as take long-desired vacations abroad. If Jay's not working out of the Evanston office, look for him working remotely from some far-off distant land and enjoying every second of it. Neil Mahoney: eCommerce Manager
Neil joined the Finance team at Orbitz Worldwide where he managed forecasts for the eMarketing departments of both Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, and also assisted with the acquisition of the company and a public offering. While Neil saw the value of having a well rounded financial background he was very excited to take what he had learned and join a group in which he could impact business performance on a daily basis. Orbitz and Cheaptickets combined have one of the largest annual eMarketing budgets in the online travel space, and it was imperative that these marketing dollars were being spent wisely. As Neil was already familiar with the financial side of eMarketing it was a natural progression for him to join the team and bring a financial mindset to the group. During his time at Orbitz Worldwide Neil managed the Paid Search programs on a daily basis for all products offered by both sites including; Air, Hotel, Car, Vacation Packages, Cruises as well as Attractions and Services. Management of these marketing dollars was extremely ROI focused. The majority of Orbitz Worldwide’s marketing dollars were spent online and Neil drove improved spending efficiency by 25% year over year while maintaining transaction volumes. Neil also tested and implemented two third party tracking and bid management tools while at Orbitz. This would enable Orbitz and Cheaptickets to automate what was an extremely manual management process of over 1,000,000 keywords at the time. “I enjoy the intense competitive nature of online marketing, especially Travel and Hospitality. One of my favorite aspects of the industry is the accountability of all dollars spent online. A company can easily qualify and quantify all marketing spend online versus traditional ‘offline’ mediums which generally have no means of doing so. This can allow you to continue to grow your company’s online presence or to perform more efficiently at current levels.” While at Orbitz Neil had the opportunity to work with a SIM Partner, Adam Dorfman. The two shared a strong passion for the online marketing industry and soccer and hit it off immediately. In December of 2007 Adam Dorfman and the other SIM Partners extended an offer to Neil to become the Manager of eCommerce.
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Jon is an Internet marketing industry veteran who has been in the space for over a decade. Since the mid-90's, Jon's passion for technology and marketing have driven innovative marketing strategies that focused on achieving significant ROI for multiple Fortune 1000 companies. Jon's broad understanding of the space include: all facets of Internet marketing, technology, web analytics, web video, research and tracking tools.
Adam Dorfman is an interactive marketing professional with over 10 years experience in all facets of online marketing including organic search, pay per click, paid inclusion, local search, email, RSS/XML driven advertising, ad networks, social networking, blogging, website analytics, usability and offline integration as well as web development, hosting, networking and project management.
Jay Hawkinson is an interactive marketing professional with 17 years of sales, marketing and merchandising experience including over 10 years of online marketing specializing in organic search optimization and paid search advertising.
Neil Mahoney graduated college with a Finance major and held three Finance positions within Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 Company as part of a financial development program. After two and a half years and various roles at Cardinal Neil made the decision to enter a more competitive and challenging industry which led him to the Online Travel company, Orbitz Worldwide in 2004.
