North America

Peter Kim

Managing Director, North America

Peter Kim is recognized as a leading thinker and analyst on social business, which he discusses on his blog, Being Peter Kim. Peter has been quoted in the press by media outlets including CNN, CNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Peter was previously an analyst at Forrester Research, focusing on the intersection of social technology and marketing strategy while winning awards for best research and top keynote. Earlier at PUMA AG, he managed international marketing operations, e-commerce, and digital marketing. In this role, he grew US revenue by 8x and opened online stores in Europe, built the firm’s internal advertising agency, and created the process for worldwide collaboration.

Peter holds degrees from the University of Virginia’s Darden School (MBA) and the University of Pennsylvania (BA).

Follow Peter on Twitter @peterkim.

Kate Niederhoffer

Principal, Engagement Manager

Kate is a founding member and joined the team from Nielsen Online where she was the VP of Measurement Science, liaising between Research, Product, and R&D. 

Kate focused on developing internal methodologies, introducing established Nielsen data to consumer-generated media, and consulting on innovative client requests. Kate has spoken at industry events and conferences including Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, WOMMA, ARF, and ICWSM.

 She has published in several academic journals including the Journal of Advertising Research, Annual Review of Psychology, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, and Handbook of Positive Psychology.

She completed her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Kate blogs at Social Abacus and is on Twitter as @katenieder.

Susan Scrupski

Executive Director, The 2.0 Adoption Council

Susan has been analyzing the IT Services market for 20  years, with her insights having been featured in industry research, as well as mainstream media such as The New York Times, Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. Her interests are in Enterprise 2.0 and the next generation web. Susan is on the advisory board of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, blogs for the Enterprise Irregulars, and spends most of her time supporting the council members in their efforts to evangelize social business in their own organizations.

Follow Susan on Twitter @ITSinsider.

Dion Hinchcliffe

Engagement Manager

Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist and enterprise architect with an extensive track record of building enterprise-class solutions with clients in the Fortune 500, federal government, and Internet startup community.

Dion helps lead the industry by evolving the thinking for next-generation businesses in various social media including ZDNet’s influential Enterprise Web 2.0 Blog and the Web 2.0 Blog. He is extensively published in leading industry periodicals and journals including the Microsoft Architecture Journal, AjaxWorld Magazine, SOA/Web Services Journal, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Social Computing Journal.

Dion is a regular keynote speaker on the topics of Web 2.0, SOA, and Enterprise 2.0 and has presented or keynoted at Web 2.0 Expo, CeBIT, Business Integration Forum, Interop, JavaOne, SOA Web Services Edge, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Office 2.0, and many other major business and software conferences.

Follow him on Twitter @dhinchcliffe.

David Mastronardi

Engagement Manager

David comes to Dachis Group from Raytheon, where he was a Program Manager and Solution Architect. He was the overall lead for Enterprise 2.0 efforts at Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems business unit and implemented a collaborative platform providing social networking, knowledge management, and reuse & innovation capabilities. His experience with Enterprise 2.0 solutions includes Microsoft Sharepoint, Atlassian Confluence, and Lotus Connections.

Prior to Raytheon, Dave was a consultant with EDS where he worked with high tech and Fortune 100 companies. He earned a Masters in Information Technology and an MBA from Boston University, and graduated magna cum laude from Providence College with a bachelors degree in business economics

Follow him on Twitter @vzrjvy.

Peter Fasano

Engagement Manager

Peter joins Dachis Group from The Coca-Cola Company, where he led social media marketing strategy for the Global Interactive Marketing Group, supporting diverse brands and geographies. He spearheaded social media competitive intelligence while building an overarching social media marketing framework and supporting intranet resources. Peter has in-depth experience working with and maintains strong relationships with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media platforms, having built, launched and managed integrated brand campaigns.

Prior to Coca-Cola, Peter has lead client engagements encompassing interactive marketing, search marketing and mobile marketing to firms including The Coca-Cola Company, Turner Broadcasting Systems, Microsoft and CBS. Additionally, Peter has deep experience with enterprise software and content management consulting the Federal Government, Financial Services and Higher Education clients.

He graduated from California State University, Long Beach, blogs at mass+logic and publishes on Twitter @pfasano.

Lars Plougmann

Engagement Manager

Lars moved to the Dachis Group office in Austin from London-based Headshift where he led the consulting team.

Lars’s background is in professional services: management consulting in an international consulting firm, internal consulting in a big law firm, market strategy in a specialist consultancy and twice the owner of his own independent consulting business. He joined Headshift (now part of Dachis Group) in 2007 although the professional relationship goes back to 2004. Collaboration and social technologies has been his focus since 1998. Lars has spoken at conferences in the UK, US and Europe and regularly shares his thoughts in the Collaboratory.

Lars holds a master’s degree in economics and still recalls his game theory. He grew up in Scandinavia, studied in Canada and worked in London for a decade before heading to North America.

Lars is on Twitter as @Larsz.

Caroline Dangson

Consultant

Caroline Dangson joins Dachis Group with two years experience as a research analyst at IDC covering online advertising, digital media and social business software. In addition to forecasting opportunities and challenges for both vendors and buyers of social software, Caroline has explored the cultural and operational transformation required for companies to realize the full potential of social business initiatives. Caroline has been quoted numerous times in the media, including Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, Reuters, CIO.com, and VentureBeat. 

Prior to IDC, Caroline served as a research coordinator for Harvard Medical School where she administered a battery of cognitive assessments to patients for research studies sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. Caroline has also worked in the media as a writer and producer for FOX8 WGHP-TV News in North Carolina and as a video editor for public relations agency Ruder Finn in New York. 

Caroline graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Join Caroline’s conversations about #socialbiz on Twitter @cdangson.

Cynthia Pflaum

Consultant

Cynthia joins Dachis Group from Forrester Research, where she focused on helping clients understand how consumers use social technologies through data-driven insights and research. Her reports have been quoted frequently in the press, including media outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Advertising Age. In addition to writing research and consulting with clients across industries, Cynthia helped manage Forrester’s Social Technographics product globally. Her data analyses were featured in the award-winning business book, Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

Prior to Forrester, Cynthia worked as a research analyst for Knowledge Networks, where she conducted qualitative and quantitative brand research studies.

Cynthia holds a B.S in Mass Communication and a B.A in Psychology from Boston University.

Join Cynthia’s conversations on Twitter @cpflaum.

Tom Cummings

Consultant

Tom joins the Dachis Group from Forrester Research, where he focused on writing social media research for the Interactive Marketing role. Additionally, as part of Forrester’s internal social strategy team, he helped develop several companywide social guidelines, including Analyst rules for blogging and engaging on Twitter. He also served as a Community Manager for an internal employee community and worked closely with web marketing on several client facing projects.

Previously at Forrester, Tom was a client facing Market Research Data Advisor, providing on-demand insights from consumer technology data to media, marketing, and automotive clients.

Tom graduated with a Bachelor’s in Economics from the University of Vermont and studied econometrics and resource economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Follow Tom on Twitter @tomcummings.

Ellen Reynolds

Consultant

Ellen Reynolds is a Consultant at Dachis Group, performing both client engagements and internal research. She has experience in listening landscape analysis and social media training and implementation with companies in the finance, software, utility, food & beverage, and service industries. Ellen joined the Dachis Group in October 2008 and was instrumental in the successful establishment of the Austin office.

Prior to Dachis Group, Ellen planned, marketed and executed customer and internal events for boutique event firms, non-profit organizations and large corporations, including National Instruments, the Austin Chamber of Commerce and the Austin Children’s Museum.

Ellen graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin.

Follow Ellen on Twitter @ellenreynolds.

Brian Kotlyar

Consultant

Brian Kotlyar is a Consultant at Dachis Group. He joined the team from expert network firm Gerson Lehrman Group where, as Research Manager, he managed the primary research process for Fortune 500 clients in the consumer packaged goods, information technology, entertainment and professional services industries. He also worked closely with some of the world’s largest wealth management firms in this role. Prior to this he managed the Enterprise Technology Council at Gerson Lehrman Group – a group of industry leading Information Technology advisors composed of CIOs and technology leaders. Before Gerson Lehrman Group, Brian developed quantitative and qualitative research as a collaboration, telecommunications and social software analyst at market research firm Yankee Group. He started his working career in strategy and corporate communications at Staples and Bose Corporation respectively.

Follow Brian on Twitter @bkotlyar.

Kate Rush Sheehy

Associate

Kate is an Associate with Dachis Group. She works primarily on client engagements and is also involved with the internal research team. Kate has worked on engagements that have included listening landscape analyses, competitive assesments, and social strategy projects. She has done projects with companies in the finance, consumer packaged goods, food & beverage, and information technology industries.

Prior to joining Dachis Group, Kate directed the business development efforts for a consulting firm that specializes in Atlassian implementation. She served as the liaison between company and client for a number of software and technology enterprises. Kate also gained agency experience during her time at The Richards Group, where she worked in account service on interactive campaigns for Home Depot’s ESPN Game Day, La Madeleine, and the National Pork Board.

Kate holds a B.S. in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin.

Follow Kate on Twitter @katerushsheehy.

Amanda Johnson

Operations Associate

Originally from Dallas, Amanda Johnson is a communications professional with a breadth of experience in event planning, marketing and social media systems. Amanda recently relocated to Austin after five years in New York City, where she worked as a Senior Analyst on the event marketing teams for both Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, planning over 1200 events worldwide, and on the marketing launch team for Moet Hennessey’s Hennessy Black. Amanda is thrilled to be back in the Lone Star State.

Amanda holds a Bachelors of Science in Communication from the University of Missouri and is a member of the Austin Junior League.

Follow her on Twitter @akjnyc.