Will is a member of Merkle’s executive leadership team and vice president and general manager of Merkle’s Retail Banking and Consumer Finance group. In this role, Will is responsible for existing client relationships, growth and profitability of the business, and the continued application of Merkle’s core value proposition into the Retail Banking space. With more than 12 years experience in relationship marketing, Will leads a dedicated team of CRM marketing experts, across disciplines.

Before joining Merkle in early 2008, Will spent five years in the Asia Pacific for Acxiom Corporation as a member of Acxiom’s regional leadership team. In this role, Will worked to integrate Acxiom’s acquisitions in the region into an organized regional footprint. During that time Will built and led sales and marketing teams and worked with leading global brands, defining and implementing region-specific CRM strategies. Prior to his overseas assignment, Will held various roles with Acxiom in the US.

Will holds a BS in international economics from Louisiana State University.

Lisa Freeman is a Vice President and Client Group Leader in Merkle’s Retail Banking and Consumer Finance group. In this capacity, Lisa is responsible for a group of clients in the role of account executive for the integrated delivery of all Merkle services and the attainment of the client’s business goals.

In her tenure with Merkle, Lisa has leveraged her deep and diverse direct marketing experience to help our clients launch new products, create acquisition strategies, and develop customer communication platforms that build brand and enhance the customer experience in crowded and competitive marketplaces. Lisa held previous roles with Merkle in client management and marketing strategy. Prior to joining Merkle in 2001, Lisa was Vice President of Marketing and Operations for a major wireless distributor. Her agency career began over 17 years ago in the New York office of Draft Worldwide, and includes 6 years at Devon Direct, where she launched MCI’s revolutionary Friends & Family program and worked with financial services clients including Advanta and Fleet Bank.

Lisa holds a BA in English from Rutgers University.

Paul Evers is a Vice President and Client Group Leader in Merkle’s Retail Banking and Consumer Finance group. In this capacity, Paul is responsible for a group of clients in the role of account executive for the integrated delivery of all Merkle services and the attainment of the client’s business goals.

Paul has more than 15 years of both client- and agency-side experience database and customer relationship marketing and interactive. Paul began his career with eight years in consulting at both Ernst and Young, and Diamond Management and Technology Consulting. Paul then spent five years on the client side, leading database marketing and then interactive marketing and analytics for Cendant and Wyndham Hotel Group.

Most recently Paul joined Merkle from Rosetta, where he spent three years, originally in their consulting and strategic services practice and then leading their relationship marketing services group. In this capacity, Paul managed CRM and had direct responsibility for the design and deployment of consumer-led marketing programs.

Paul completed his MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Diana leads the Retail Bank Marketing Strategy team focused on deploying data-driven direct marketing acquisition and CRM strategies for banking and consumer finance clients.

Diana has deep experience managing high performance strategic marketing teams, with more than 20 years experience in retail bank direct marketing. Diana has successfully deployed direct marketing strategies for 20 of the top 50 banks in the U.S.

Prior to joining Merkle in 2009, Diana was the SVP of Strategic Planning for Harte-Hanks financial practice. She also played a key role in building Alcott Routon, a direct marketing company acquired by Harland Clarke. Diana has extensive experience in credit marketing, and was formerly Vice President of Card Marketing for SunTrust BankCard ($800 MM credit card portfolio).

Diana has participated as a guest speaker in national conferences including DMA, CBA, and has been published in DM News and Bank Marketing.

Diana earned an MBA with honors as well as a BS in Marketing from the University of Central Florida.

Prior to joining Merkle, Dean spent 10 years with a teleservices firm as Vice President of Account Management, managing the global financial services division. Prior to that he created and built their training and development department, in addition to managing their national accounts group. He also led the launch of the company’s first wholly-owned subsidiary 365biz.com. He served on the executive board that brought the company public with a successful IPO in April 2006.

Sandra leads Merkle’s technology teams supporting banking and consumer finance clients. Sandra has deep experience deploying large scale high-performance technology solutions, with more than 10 years’ experience serving the financial services industry. Sandra has successfully architected and led technology solutions for several of the top 10 financial service institutions in the U.S. that include both large scale warehouses and real-time POS systems. Her experience spans consumer and small business banking, consumer and small business credit cards, private label credit cards, and global wealth management solutions across a wide variety of multi-channel marketing and customer service platforms. 

Bruce brings over 30 years experience in data driven retail bank marketing, both from a service perspective with marketing agencies and client-side within retail banks. Bruce was the principal marketing strategist for FUSION marketing, which was acquired by Acxiom in 2000, where he remained the strategy lead for Acxiom’s retail bank marketing group for the following 11 years.  Prior his agency roles, Bruce was at Beneficial National Bank for 12 years where he held the roles of chief retail banking officer and chief marketing officer and was a member of the executive management and ALCO committees.

Bruce is a frequent speaker within the industry, including BAI, ABA, CBA, BMA and DMA National Conferences. Bruce also served on the faculty of the Advanced Financial Database Marketing School at Northwestern University. Bruce is a graduate of Illinois State University with a BS in Business Management and Marketing where he was also Founding President, Illinois State University Chapter of the American Marketing Association.

Dawn has been in banking and financial services marketing since the early 1980s with a balance of client and agency side experience. Dawn started her career working on the client side and worked for multiple banks over her career with specific experience in marketing databases, direct marketing strategies, line management and strategic planning. Dawn’s client side experience includes: Premier Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), Union Planters (now Regions) and Whitney National Bank.

Dawn was one of the original database marketing strategists at Fusion Marketing, a retail bank direct marketing agency, later acquired by Acxiom. Having worked across all lines of business in retail banking, she brings depth of product knowledge paired with experience gained from developing and implementing effective marketing strategies that build quality customer relationships, improve retention and drive profit. She has extensive experience in enterprise segmentation strategies, as well as product specific implementation strategies.

Dan has more than 20 years of practical and innovative experience in financial services and ecommerce businesses. Prior to joining Merkle, Dan led LendingTree's product management, consumer experience, and direct marketing teams where he brought advanced analytical concepts and product marketing experience to drive substantial revenue growth. Prior to LendingTree, Dan built and managed the online channel for Wachovia's home equity and mortgage products, responsible for online marketing, ecommerce product development, pricing, and overall channel management.

Dan also worked in direct marketing roles for Wachovia, First Union National Bank and Signet Bank and consulted with a variety of financial service clients. Dan has marketing and analytics expertise across a wide range of direct marketing channels and financial services products.

He holds an M.S. in Management Information Systems from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business and a B.S. in Business from the University of Virginia.

Brian has experience across many lines of business with great depth of knowledge in debit and credit card marketing strategy, acquisitions and portfolio direct marketing programs, loyalty product development, and payments strategy. Brian joined Merkle from Chase Bank, where he served as vice president, responsible for leading the successful launch of Chase’s Ultimate Rewards Debit Card products.

Prior to Chase, Brian spent several years in vice president roles at Washington Mutual and GE Consumer Finance. His career started at Bank of America where he spent seven years sharpening his competencies in leadership, strategic thinking, business analysis and customer segmentation.

Julie brings more than 20 years of experience in direct marketing communications strategy and execution. With a passion for marketing aligned to customer need, Julie has built her experience and beliefs through a diverse career of strategy and leadership roles. Prior to joining Merkle, Julie held a senior vice president role at Rapp. Before that Julie held various vice president roles in strategy and client management at Epsilon and Rapp Collins Worldwide, FKB Direct, and Steven Winchel and Associates.

Julie’s breadth of experience across industries provides her a great perspective on how customer driven marketing has evolved, both within and outside the realm of banking. She brings a great deal of experience across nearly every line of business within retail banking – with consumers, small businesses, corporate and institutional.

Aman Sokhi has over 14 years of experience focused on quantitative strategy and advanced analytics within the financial services sector. Aman joined Merkle from Bank of America, where he was a Senior Vice President in roles that spanned several capacities including risk, product marketing (particularly credit card and mortgage), portfolio strategy, customer retention, finance, credit operations and customer portfolio analysis.

Prior to Bank of America, Aman held similar roles at Citigroup and MBNA, including experience in affinity and cobrand marketing strategy. Aman’s broad experiences in financial services with Fortune 500 banks provides a great perspective on enterprise strategy, relationship management, customer-driven marketing and profitability optimization. Aman leads a dedicated team of analysts and statisticians, articulating quantitative strategies and bringing insights to life through advanced analytics. 

Aman has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Temple University.

Rakesh has over 9 years experience in quantitative solutions in data-driven marketing, focused on building the quantitative strategies driving evolution of our clients’ product-driven marketing programs and the alignment to customer-driven marketing. Rakesh joined Merkle from Equifax, where he was the Associate Vice President for offline credit solutions. Prior to that, he was with Capital One. Rakesh is a proven manager of large strategic projects working with cross-functional teams with a consistent track record in creating sound business strategies, exceeding performance goals, and delivering substantial business value. His experience within the financial services area includes building solutions for credit card, mortgage, home equity, and deposit product lines.

Evan has over 13 years of experience in financial services, focused on quantitative strategy, advanced analytics, and execution.  Evan joined Merkle from MasterCard Advisors, where he was a Senior Managing Consultant focused on developing and analyzing revenue generating initiatives for local banks and credit unions.  In his 5 year tenure at MasterCard Advisors, Evan also had experience consulting to many larger issuers with regards to their the small business portfolios. 

Evan began his career in financial services with Capital One, focusing on cross selling additional services to existing cardholders, predominantly via inbound channels such as Customer Service Marketing or the Voice Response Unit.  Over 7 years at Capital One, Evan also worked on the analysis of initiatives such as Retention and Online Account Servicing.   Before joining MasterCard Advisors, Evan spent a year with E*Trade, analyzing the lead source selection and overall performance of the consumer mortgage business. 

Evan has an MBA from Duke and a BS in mechanical engineering from MIT.

For the past 18 years, Paul has crafted his direct relationship marketing experience on a variety of financial driven accounts from mutual funds, banking, auto insurance, health insurance and personal wealth management. He has built an impressive portfolio with the simple philosophy that a strong understanding of a company’s brand combined with a well-crafted direct response message can be very powerful. The results have established a number of longstanding business relationships and awards ranging from local and national ADDY’s to the coveted ECHO Award that honors direct marketing campaigns that have excelled in direct response strategy, creativity and results.

Before joining Merkle, Paul was a Creative Director at W.B. Doner in Detroit where he managed their Direct Response and Design Studios. Prior to working at Doner Detroit, he worked his way up from an Art Director to an Associate Creative Director in the co-headquarters of W.B. Doner in Baltimore. Paul has brought great creative alive for a diverse group of companies including, ADT, AutoTrader, Black & Decker, Citizens Bank, Expedia, Hibernia Bank, LensCrafters, Owens-Corning, PNC Bank, Progressive Auto Insurance, Scudder Investments and Sylvan Learning Centers. The challenge of bring results-driven creative alive for clients is what he is committed to fulfilling.

Chris has 20 years of database marketing agency creative experience, and has been with Merkle since 2002. He has built his career directing multi-media, integrated-channel creative over a wide range of clients. A specialty of Chris’s has been his long-time commitment to various financial services clients in banking, credit/financing, insurance, brokerage and other related fields.

He has fulfilled on creative and marketing initiatives for digital and direct mail media, television, print, collateral, point-of-sale, outdoor and more. And he is committed to an exacting creative process — from start to finish — so he can ensure delivery of on-strategy creative that brings measurable success, maximum ROI and fits the moniker, “Think Brand, Act Direct.” He has won awards from competitions that include the American Marketing Association, Tempo’s, Bennie’s, Telly’s and ECHO.