Mission and Purpose
Our Hero Conf advisory board provides invaluable new ideas, feedback and opportunities for us to grow our event and ensure that the quality of our conference content is upheld.
The board endeavours to inspire the team who bring Hero Conf to life.
The board members seek out new ways for Hero Conf to improve with each conference cycle.
The board members will always be mindful of the overall attendee experience and will work inline with the event’s Code of Conduct.
Chair of the Board – Kelvin Newman
Kelvin Newman is the Founder of Rough Agenda, the company that arranges specialist digital marketing events including BrightonSEO.
In 2014 Kelvin was voted by econsultancy as the most influential individual in digital and in 2013 won the Search Personality award at the UK Search Awards.
Board members
Jeff Allen
Jeff is the CEO of OuterBox, a 250-person performance marketing agency. He’s spent his career on the agency side, working with both global brands and local businesses. Over the past 20+ years he has hired thousands of digital marketers and worked on a dozen M&A transactions. His previous roles included COO of North America for Brainlabs, and President of Hanapin Marketing, where he helped launch and run the earlier iteration Hero Conf.
Andy Goodwin
Andy heads up the paid search team for Brainlabs UK. He plays a leading role in the development of Brainlabs’ search product & proposition, as well as supporting clients at scale. Andy has a passion for L&D within the search community and, as a long-standing member of the Brainlabs team, has supported hundreds of Brainlabbers along their personal growth journeys.
Samantha Noble
Samantha Noble is a Paid Media Freelancer that works with brands, agencies and individuals helping them to improve the performance of their paid advertising campaigns. She specialises in everything from Strategy and Auditing through to Implementation, Automated Reporting and Training.
Over the past couple of years she has worked with some amazing brands including The Sole Supplier, Bloomsbury, Wicked Uncle, Tenpin, Popeyes and the University of Southampton to name a few.
Navah Hopkins
A veteran of the digital marketing industry, Brand Evangelist for Optmyzr, and VP of the Paid Search Association, she began as an SEO in 2008, transitioning to PPC in 2012. She manages the strategy and execution of paid media campaigns, as well as helping brands build relationships with profitable partners and customers.
Throughout her career, Navah makes a point to give back and loves sharing lessons learned on the international speaking circuit as well as local universities. She is a frequent contributor to SEJ, SEMrush, and WordStream blogs/webinars.
When she’s not helping brands on the path to profit and victory she enjoys playing with her rescue pups HK, Freyja, and Momo; as well as video games and board games.
Duane Brown
Duane has been called an international man of mystery and digital nomad by friends. He has lived in 6 cities across 3 continents and visited 55 countries around the world. Over the years Duane has had the opportunity to work with brands including LARQ, Birdies, Pela Case, The Lost Co and Tiger Companies. Him and his team help ecommerce and DTC brands grow through strategy, PPC marketing, and data.
Alessandro Creso
As VP, Paid Search at Brainlabs, based in New York, Alessandro oversees the growth and evolution of the agency’s powerful paid search practice for the North America region. He works with partners and the Brainlabs in-house tech team to develop solutions to strategically position Brainlabs as center of excellence for Modern Search as well as ensure that the paid search best practices are in place across all accounts.
