Miva Merchant Conference 2012

Gillian Muessig

President, SEOmoz

Gillian Muessig is the President & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, the web's most recognized and respected name in search engine optimization tools, resources & community. Known as SEOmom throughout the industry, Gillian travels the world evangelizing for both the company and the search marketing industry.

Tim Ash

President And CEO, Site Tuners

Tim Ash is the President and CEO of Site Tuners and its parent company, Epic Sky. He is the author of Amazon.com ecommerce bestseller, "Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide To Testing And Tuning For Conversions."

Larry Osborne

Pastor, North Coast Church/Founder And President, North Coast Training Network

Dr. Larry Osborne is a pastor, leadership consultant, and author. He has worked with thousands of leaders in both the profit and non-profit sectors, helping them to build healthier and "stickier" organizations. Larry and the church he pastors, North Coast Church, have been nationally recognized and honored as one of the most innovative and Ten Most Influential Churches in America.

Evan Fishkin

Head Of Research And Development, Slingshot SEO

Evan Fishkin is an avid gamer, marketing theory junky, head of R&D at Slingshot SEO, Indianapolis, and thought leader in the world of search marketing, marketing game mechanics, and gaming communities. He speaks internationally on these and mind numbingly esoteric elements of the effects of search algorithms on cloud marketing at conferences such as SMX, PubCon, Wappow!, and International Marketing Conference.

Elizabeth Marsten

Director of Search Marketing, Portent Interactive

As the Director of Search Marketing, Elizabeth supervises the PPC, SEO, copy, link and social media teams at Portent, along with managing her own select client load. Elizabeth is a Google Certified Individual, an adCenter Accredited Professional and the co-author of Wiley Publishing’s “Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies.” (Check out book 4 of 8: Online Advertising and Pay-Per-Click.) She has also written a set of eBooks on PPC for Small Business as well as posting on the Portent blog.

Russ Carroll

CEO, Miva Merchant

While in his teens, Russ was a contemporary research astronomer, earning the highly regarded Westinghouse Science Award and, by age 17, made one of the first major astronomical discoveries using the HEAO I X-ray satellite. By the following year, Russ held investigator status with NASA on the HEAO II satellite while at the UCSD Center for Astrophysics and Space Science.

Astronomy led Russ to pioneering work with supercomputers, first at Boeing, then subsequently, in his first major entrepreneurial role as VP of computer services for Digital Productions, which won an Academy Award for 22 minutes of groundbreaking computer animation in the film The Last Starfighter.

In mid-1998, after leading several other successful supercomputing and software companies, Russ took over as CEO of a floundering three year old real estate training company. Under his leadership over the next 4 years, the company went on to become the largest training and coaching company in the United States, growing from 18 employees to over 200.

Rick Wilson

President-COO, Miva Merchant

Rick began with the original Miva Corporation (now Miva Merchant) in 1999 as Director of North American Sales. His responsibilities included channel sales and management, strategic partnership development and end user adoption. Rick took over as Vice President of Sales and Business Development in 2002. In 2007 he became Executive Vice President when the company was spun out of MIVA, Inc (formerly FindWhat) into a standalone entity. Today, Rick's duties include overseeing all parts of day to day operations with a specific focus on Sales, Marketing and Business Development. During his tenure at Miva Merchant, Rick has worked with thousands of web hosting companies to assist them in offering an ecommerce platform to their end users.

Rick's more than 12 years of executive-level sales and marketing experience also includes his tenure as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Providence Systems (now Buffini and Company), a privately held sales training company. At Providence Systems, Rick developed and executed the sales and marketing strategies that helped lead a successful corporate turnaround in the late 1990's.