As the company’s best year to date, 2014 was a busy year at Walker Sands. We’ve moved offices, partnered with exciting new clients, won multiple awards and our headcount is quickly approaching over 55 full-time digital and public relations professionals. With all of this growth into 2015, we’re thrilled about the appointment of four company veterans to partners!
Walker Sands’ newest partners are Senior Account Directors Andrew Cross, Will Kruisbrink and Dave Parro and Vice President of Digital Services John Fairley. All four partners have extensive leadership experience at Walker Sands and exemplify our core values of continuous learning, supporting team members and getting things done.
In the coming years, these skills will be key for continued growth. At Walker Sands we recognize the importance of fostering a competitive learning environment where employees have abundant opportunities to advance their careers. By making our senior leaders partners in our journey, we’re creating new pathways to invest in our employees and the continued success of the company.
In particular, we’re proud of how each new partner has played a vital role in expanding their respective company practice area. Andrew leads the financial technology, electronics and growth-stage practice areas at Walker Sands and serves as the PR mentor to the Techstars Chicago program. Will leads the professional services and enterprise software practice areas, which serves several top cloud enterprise software solutions in tax, ERP and sync and share. Dave leads the marketing technology and retail technology practice areas and served as the company thought leader on the Walker Sands 2015 Future of Retail Study.
John brings more than 20 years of experience to his role as the strategic architect and technical director of Walker Sands Digital’s Web and social media offerings. Under his leadership, Walker Sands has developed an industry-leading Web development process based on five principles – design, business alignment, maintenance, SEO and affordability.
Appointing senior-level managers from both Walker Sands Digital and the Walker Sands public relations team to partner roles validates our continued commitment to the digital ecosystem model. This model is a significant driver of our recent growth and focuses on providing a mix of earned, owned and paid media to our clients. Andrew, Will, Dave and John have a full understanding of the digital ecosystem, from articulating the model in the sales process to executing integrated social media, search and public relations strategies.
An ability to leverage the digital ecosystem model is just one of the many ways in which Andrew, Will, Dave and John exemplify the strengths of a Walker Sands’ partner. We could not be more proud of these four, and we cannot wait to see what the rest of 2015 brings!