Jeff French (PhD, MBA, MSc, DipHE, BA, Cert.Ed.)
President
Jeff French is a global thought leader in Social Marketing, social communication, behavioral influence and citizen focused program planning and evaluation. Jeff has published over 100 academic papers and five books plus numerous guides and tool kits on these subjects. Jeff is a visiting Professor at Brighton University and teaches at a number of other universities regular basis. Jeff was previously Director of Policy and Communication at the UK Health Development Agency and a senior civil servant in the UK Department of Health. In 2004 Jeff headed the UK government review of Social Marketing and set up the National Social Marketing Centre in 2006. In 2009 Jeff became the CEO of Strategic Social Marketing. Jeff works with Governments, NGOs and some of the world’s biggest private companies. Jeff has also worked for the WHO, the UN and the European Centre for Disease Control. Jeff is the co-author of the ECDC technical guidance on social marketing planning and author of the new UN UNITAR tool kit and course on Designing and implementing campaigns in support of vaccination efforts to prevent and reduce the spread of COVID-19. Jeff was a leading member of the European Union funded E-Com EU review of pandemic communication and behavior change research program. Jeff is a member of several national and international policy committees including the UN UNITA working group on road safety. Jeff is also a member of the Editorial Boards of five professional Journals, a board member of the European Social Marketing Association and President of the International Social Marketing association. Jeff is a sought-after keynote speaker at international conferences and chairs the conference planning committees for the European and World social marketing conferences. Jeff’s book; ‘Social Marketing and Public Health: Theory and Practice, 2nd edition’, was highly commended in the 2018, BMA Medical Book Awards and Jeff’s Book with Ross Gordon; Strategic Social Marketing 2nd edition is a standard text book on many university reading lists.
Sharyn Rundle-Thiele
Vice President
Professor Sharyn Rundle-Thiele applies marketing to improve people’s health and wellbeing and to protect the planet. She is the Founding Director of Social Marketing @ Griffith, Founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Social Marketing, and Vice President of the International Social Marketing Association. Sharyn has co-created behavior change programs. She has led the build of projects that have changed behaviors for 10,000’s of people in areas including health, the environment and for complex social issues. Sharyn’s programs have increased healthy eating, changed adolescent attitudes to alcohol drinking, reduced food waste, increased dog’s abilities to avoid koalas, and more. She has published more than 180 books, book chapters and journal papers. Awards and appointments including The Philip Kotler Social Marketing Distinguished Service Award and the Australian New Zealand Marketing Academy Fellow acknowledge her innovative, high-quality practice and science and her leadership.
Karis Schoellmann
Treasurer
Karis has worked in Women’s Health and Maternal Child Health throughout a career that spans 30-years, including work at Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and with the Louisiana Department of Health in their Maternal and Child Health Program. She is currently working as the Director of the Communication, Innovation, and Action Team at the Louisiana Department of Health’s Bureau of Family Health. Karis is also a faculty member at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, where she teaches Introduction to Social Marketing, Health Communication: Theory and Practice, and Social and Behavioral Aspects of Global Health courses. Two ongoing Bureau of Family Health initiatives in which Karis has played a key role and uses social marketing behavior change frameworks, are the Partners for Healthy Babies and the Give Your Baby Space campaigns. Both campaigns, designed to reduce Louisiana’s infant mortality, are targeted to parents and families. Other current work with which Karis is involved includes using social marketing frameworks in a more upstream approach to impact providers to effectively address the social determinants of health involving women’s wellness. Karis takes her role in guiding and inspiring the next generation’s global public health workforce seriously. In fact, her desire to join the iSMA board was inspired by this motivation.
Saud Alrakhayes
Chair, Communication Committee
Saud Alrakhayes is a leading social marketing practitioner in the Middle East working on various projects in the Middle East for the past 8 years. Saud has founded The Behaviour Change, a Strategy House based in Kuwait working on behavior change campaigns and interventions across social issues in the Arab World ( Health, Environment, and Road Safety). He is currently a short term consultant with the World Bank working with the eMBeD unit (Mind, Behaviour, and Development Unit) as a Communication Strategist for the National Job Strategy in Kuwait. Saud holds a mechanical engineer degree from CU- Boulder and further obtained Master’s degrees in Business Administration and Marketing from Melbourne Business School in Australia. He has spent the past 10 years spreading the knowledge of social marketing to the Arab World.
Christene Jennings
Professional Development
Christene has used her drive for collaboration and efficient processes to help grow U.S.-based Marketing for Change from a small startup to a full-service behavior change marketing firm. As Chief Operating Officer, she is laser-focused on driving measurable social change for clients that do good for the world. Previously, as Marketing for Change’s director of behavior change marketing, Christene designed environmental, safety, public health and end of life campaigns for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Safe Kids Worldwide, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Known for cultivating effective partnerships, Christene has been tapped to lead two national Blue Ribbon Panels, which brought together disparate groups to bring attention to and develop solutions for emerging traffic safety challenges. Prior to joining Marketing for Change, Christene spent nearly a decade in traffic safety, developing social marketing-based solutions that moved away from the crowded risk-messaging market and focused instead on reinforcing positive norms. In her role on the iSMA Board, Christene applies her passion for mentorship to help iSMA develop more robust professional development and educational exchange offerings for social marketers around the world.
Nancy Lee
Representative, Social Marketing Association of North America and Pacific Northwest Social Marketing Association
Nancy Lee has more than 25 years of professional marketing experience, with special expertise in Social Marketing. She is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington and the University of South Florida. She conducts seminars and workshops on social marketing and marketing in the public sector and has participated in the development of more than 100 social marketing campaigns. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the Health Promotion Board in Singapore, Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, National University of Ireland in Galway, Yale, and Oxford University. She has conducted social marketing workshops for more than 5,000 public sector employees involved in developing public behavior change campaigns. She has delivered more than 200 social marketing trainings, most recently in Jordan for USAID, Canada for the Ministry of Health, and in Seattle for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has been a keynote speaker on social marketing at conferences including ones addressing Public Health, Injury Prevention, Environmental Protection and Poverty Reduction. Nancy is a member of Rotary and the City of Mercer Island’s Green Ribbon Commission, has been a volunteer member of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Advisory Committee, and the Mercer Island School District’s Advisory Committee.
Vilarmina Ponce-Lucero
Representative, Asociación Latinoamericana de Mercadeo Social (LAMSO)
Vilarmina Ponce-Lucero is Co-Founder the Latin America Social Marketing Association (LAMSO). For more than 16 years, Vilarmina has been working as a Communication Specialist in Social Development Projects, with an emphasis on social marketing for behavioral change. In recent years, she has been focusing on health research in various areas such as women´s health (sexuality and rights), early childhood nutrition (children, chronic malnutrition and rights), and population health (chronic non-communicable diseases – NCD).
Vilarmina began her professional practice as part of division Public Impact at CVR (http://cverdad.org.pe), she organized social mobilization actions in support of the CVR mandate and for the defense of human rights. Since then Vilarmina’s work has focused on the right to health of the especially vulnerable population, namely children and women. She has been chief communications in different NGOs. In AB Prisma (www.prisma.org.pe) her mission was to achieve high levels of awareness in child health and nutrition among the target population and to create spaces for multi-sectorial consultation in health and nutrition. In Chemonics (www.chemonics.com/country/peru/) Vilamina implemented training and communication strategies for the involvement of local authorities in awareness campaigns about health and identity in native communities.
Recently as head of communications in CRONICAS (www.cronicas-upch.pe) Vilarmina led successfully a project that incorporated a common salt substitute through a social marketing campaign that promotes its consumption and allowed researchers to test the change in blood pressure levels.
Duncan Musumba
Representative, Africa Social Marketing Association (ASMA)
Duncan Musumba has over 12 years of professional experience in the field of Social Marketing and public health communication. For over four years, he worked at Marie Stopes Uganda as the integrated marketing and Social and Behaviour Change Communication manager and later as the Senior Marketing and Communication Manager. His currently with Uganda Health Marketing Group as the Head of Marketing and Communication. Mr. Duncan is a Master Trainer of Trainers in the prestigious John Hopkins Center for Communication Programs Leadership in Strategic Communication Course. Starting 2019, he co-facilitates the Leadership in Strategic Communication Workshop in Nigeria with Center for Communication Programs and Social Impact with the aim of Inspiring change. Duncan is also a guest speaker at the Makerere University Mass Communication department, lecturing on applied strategic communication and public relations. He has served on the iSMA board for 2 years as the Africa Social Marketing Association Representative. “I strongly believe in iSMA and know that Africa is already benefiting from iSMA, and the opportunity that ASMA presents”. I am highly motivated to actively support iSMA work in Africa and ensure that ASMA grows and realizes its full potential. ASMA brings together a network of Social marketing organizations in Africa with the aim of transforming lives through effective social marketing programs. Duncan holds a Master’s in Business Administration and BA in Mass Communication from Makerere University.
Zenaida Leite
Representative, Africa Social Marketing Association (ASMA)
Zenaida Leite works at Cape Verdean University, as a teacher and at a Cape Verdean bank as a member of the board, and is involved in several institutions whose main goals are aligned with those of iSMA. She works every day to contribute to a better Africa for its countries and for its citizens. Social marketing plays an important role in this purpose, and the improvement of social marketing across the African Continent will offer a critical contribution.
“During the recent XXI International Congress on Public and Nonprofit Marketing which took place at the University of Minho, Portugal, last June, I was honored with the Best Student Paper Award, with the work titled “Managers’ intentions towards green microfinance: The case of Microfinance Institutions of the developing country of Cabo Verde”. Following my presentation and considering my professional experience and academic interests, my colleagues encouraged me to apply to this iSMA election as a candidate from Africa. My paper was a part of larger research I am currently conducting about green microfinance in Cabo Verde and Brazil. Besides this research, I have dedicated a great part of my life to social marketing-related projects, including social and environmental responsibility, consumer protection, and participatory local development.
I am a black woman; a Cabo Verde citizen and I live here. I have what I consider a relevant education in the management and marketing fields, including an undergraduate and a master’s degree. Now I am in the final phase of my Ph.D. at the Portuguese University of Minho. A purely academic career motivation did not gear my decision to pursue a doctoral degree. Instead, it was mainly based on my profound conviction that education is a way to be better prepared to get involved in real problems and contribute to social interventions that can produce impactful social results. As my curriculum vitae shows, I have always been professionally active and I have extensive experience in working with and for the community.”
Past Directors
Ross Gordon
Elections Committee Chair & Representative of The Australian Association of Social Marketing
Ross Gordon is a Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. He is also President of the Australian Association of Social Marketing (AASM). His work focuses on social issues & social change, through a critical, reflexive & multi-perspective lens. His expertise lies in social marketing, consumer cultures, and critical marketing teaching and research. He works across various social change topic areas including energy efficiency, environmental sustainability, alcohol, gambling, tobacco control, mental health, and workplace bullying. He has extensive experience in research, designing, implementing and evaluation behavior and social change programs. Ross has been a principal or named investigator on projects attracting over $6.6m in research funds in Australia, UK, Europe and India. He has published over 70 academic journals, book chapters and conference papers including in outlets such as European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Theory, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Social Marketing, Energy Policy, and BMC Public Health. He has also delivered numerous client reports and invited speaking engagements. Ross co-authors one of the leading texts on social marketing: Jeff French and Ross Gordon (2019). Strategic Social Marketing: Got Behaviour and Social Change. London: Sage. Ross is a keen player and follower of sports including playing football, some tennis and cycling, loves travelling, enjoys current affairs, and is a big music fan and occasional techno DJ.
Patrick Cook
Past President
Patrick Cook, Principal of Cook & Sow Communication, has more than 25 years
of experience in leading and delivering communication, social marketing and training and technical assistance solutions. He has led large capacity-building and social marketing projects for US and Canadian government and for-profit corporations as well as delivered focused solutions for community-based organizations and local agencies. Over the years, Patrick has designed, developed, and delivered dozens of training workshops, courses, and materials that help adults working at the community level be more effective communicators and social marketers. Drawing on his academic studies in rhetoric and composition, his experience working as a social marketer and trainer, and his passion for social justice, Patrick’s work focuses on helping good people do good things better by improving communication, developing capacity, and enabling change. Prior to his current role, Patrick was Senior Vice President, Social Marketing and Communication, at IQ Solutions, Director of Training & Technical Assistance for the Social Marketing and Communication group at FHI 360, and Principal with the Strategic Communications and Marketing division at ICF International. He has previously worked as a journalist,
copywriter, technical writer, and lecturer.
Jennifer Wayman, MHS
Secretary
A sought-after expert in social marketing, Jennifer has built a career out of making positive change in the world. She currently leads Hager Sharp, an award-winning U.S. agency that specializes in marketing social change. She has extensive and proven experience leading initiatives that result in pervasive social change. Throughout her career, her commitment to using communications and marketing to make a positive difference in the world has been applied to numerous “big, messy” issues, such as heart disease, cancer and violence. Jennifer is a respected thought leader in her field, serving on the editorial board of Social Marketing Quarterly and as a founding and current board member of the International Social Marketing Association. Prior to joining Hager Sharp, she spent 24 years at Ogilvy Public Relations where she was instrumental in establishing and leading the agency’s U.S. Social Change Practice. Jennifer holds an MHS in Behavioral Science and Health Education from The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a BS in Business and Economics from Lehigh University.
Carlos Oliveira Santos
Board Member
Carlos is a pioneer of social marketing in Portugal. In 1992, he introduced a social marketing class in a graduated course and, in 2002, he co-directed the first post-graduation in this field. He is the editor of the Marketing Social Portugal website, and the editor of the book Improving Life: A Guide to Social Marketing (Melhorar a Vida: Um Guia de Marketing Social, 2004, 2nd edition, 2012), the first social marketing textbook in Portuguese. In 2019, he published with Professor José Afonso Mazzon (USP, Brazil) the Index of Portuguese Language and Portuguese Speaking Authors Focused on Social Marketing. Carlos earned his Doctorate in Public Policy from the NOVA University of Lisbon in Portugal, and he is recently invited professor at the Institute for Public and Social Policy, Lisbon. In 2018, he was one of the 40 leading social marketing experts contributors to the Compilation of Social Marketing Evidence of Effectiveness Key References, coordinated by Jeff French and Doug Evans for the International Social Marketing Association (ISMA) and its affiliates. His book Social Marketing in a Country: The British Experience (2016) was included in this compilation. In 2019, he received the Outstanding Achievement Award, conferred by the European Social Marketing Association, during the World Social Marketing Conference in Edinburgh. Now his main purpose is to preserve freedom and democracy as social marketing’s roots, facing threats to human freedom that abusively condition people’s behaviours (Social Marketing Political Manifesto, 2019).
Diogo Veríssimo
Representative, European Social Marketing Association
Diogo earned his Doctorate in Biodiversity Management from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. His latest work in press is, ”Does It Work for Biodiversity, Experiences and Challenges in the Evaluation of Social Marketing Campaigns.” He is also currently Guest Editor at the Social Marketing Quarterly for a Special Issue on Biodiversity Conservation and Social Marketing. Diogo has devoted his career to the conservation of biodiversity using social marketing approaches, from research to evaluation, to make a positive impact in these areas, including the use of conservation marketing as a tool to promote human-wildlife coexistence.” Diogo is currently an Oxford Martin Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK, where he focuses on the design and evaluation of behaviour change interventions to reduce demand for wildlife products, a key part of mitigating the threat of the illegal wildlife trade on wildlife populations. As Diogo looks forward to his work with the iSMA Board, he is keen to explore ways to foster the growth of the community of social marketers working on biodiversity-related issues, and to promote information exchange between academics and practitioners working in social marketing, both through the literature and other non-formal channels.
Leonidas A. Skerletopoulos
Membership & Member Database Chair and Volunteer Chair
Our world is facing complex social issues and there is growing evidence that proves the contribution of social marketing to resolving many social and individual issues. Social Marketing provides the foundation for sustained social change. I have served the iSMA for 4 years, through direct volunteering and my role as a national representative for the European Social Marketing Association(ESMA) in Greece. I strongly believe in the impact of ISMA and the regional associations to further the future strength of Social Marketing as a field. I am highly motivated to play an active role in the future of ISMA, especially now that we are in the transition to a federation model. I am eager to work with ISMA Board Members to create value within the social marketing community, and to contribute in the Membership Chair role to serve and deliver value to our members globally.