RAIN THE GROWTH AGENCY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Marketing Analytics
Allison pushes the boundaries of what advanced statistical analysis can accomplish for our client's direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing efforts. Allison leads our Marketing Analytics team responsible for working directly with clients to customize measurement and optimization solutions to drive campaign strategy and success.
As a trained data scientist with over 15 years of experience in predictive modeling and marketing analytics, Allison focuses on providing innovative solutions to clients' measurement needs with her team of analysts, developers, and data experts. Her team is constantly mining insights from our proprietary media analytics and planning tools: Tracker™, Signal Link, WaveCast and ConsumerID - as well as shaping these tools to be future proof. By analyzing real-time behavioral signals, quantifying cross-channel marketing synergy, and measuring the longitudinal impact on business objectives, Allison and her team are breaking new ground in terms of measurable marketing results.
Before joining Rain the Growth Agency, Allison was the Director of Analytics and Predictive Modeling at access2insight, Inc. (a2i) and prior to that she managed predictive modeling projects at Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc. In both roles, she worked closely with the client to build predictive models and custom analysis to meet their business needs.
Throughout her career, Allison has had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of brands in consumer packaged goods, retail, and healthcare: Consumer Cellular, Soma, Lending Tree, SmileDirect Club, Home Chef, Mercari, Pepsi Co, Kellogg's, Kimberly-Clark, ULTA Beauty, Unilever, Lands' End, Cost Plus World Market, Georgia-Pacific, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, and more.
Allison received her Bachelor of Science in Marketing Statistics with a minor in Computer Science from the Missouri State University and a Master of Science in Marketing Analysis (M.S.M.A.) from DePaul University. Allison and family are avid travelers, so be sure to ask for recommendations.
Job Titles:
- Media Director
- Senior Vice President
- Author
- Digital Media Director
- Vice President, Marketing Analytics
When will programmatic TV truly take off? Is more data a good thing for advertisers? A recent survey of media sales executives gauged how the industry views the evolution of TV and the transformative trends and technologies that are in play today.
It's not a secret that in many areas linear TV viewership is trending down, and that no traditional thinking on this subject is likely to change this. The thing that's scary is that we seem to have lost the ability to predict success.
If virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) aren't in your video vocabulary yet, they probably should be. These new technologies represent the most significant evolution to the video medium since color television.
In a burgeoning on-demand world, the value exchange represented by content that is underwritten by advertising has become pretty muddled.
Traditional linear and pay TV viewing has remained basically stable for the most part with older viewers, but less so with younger ones. Over the past 12 months, 60% of baby boomers report their traditional TV viewing has remained the same compared to 43% for Millennials.
In Part Two of this series, learn what URL hijacking is, how to identify when it's happening to you, and how to go about protecting your brand.
If affiliate marketing is part of your paid-search strategy, there is a 29% chance that one of your affiliates is stealing valuable Web traffic by hijacking URLs.
Everything was measurable, and everyone was confident in their decision-making - until they weren't.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Client Services Inclusion Marketing
Bianca began her career working in Account Management and Sales Marketing roles. After spending time at global companies such as Hershey, Kellogg's and Coca-Cola, she was recruited by CEO Michelle Cardinal to join Rain the Growth Agency.
When Bianca joined the agency in 2017, she fell in love with the company values and ability to scale direct to consumer brands through traditional and digital media. She is currently the Vice President of Client Services + Inclusion Marketing, working across all departments to manifest measurable and unprecedented growth for clients. Bianca has extensive experience working with fully integrated brands in the direct to consumer, retail driving, and drive to online space. She has flexed her strategic muscle on BISSELL, Mirror, Thirty Madison and OOFOS.
Bianca puts her love of advertising to work by sitting on the Board of The Initiative and mentoring female-founded cannabis businesses. Bianca is a driving force behind SheScales, a marketing program within Rain the Growth Agency that empowers female founders to scale fearlessly. Bianca is passionate about the advertising industry reflecting the world around us. She believes diversity unites us and it should be acknowledged and celebrated.
Chris Peterson's career spans 30 years of performance-oriented marketing and has worked with some of the world's largest brands. He has consistently innovated throughout his career with a focus on strategy and emerging trends and technologies. He founded an early digital agency with such clients as eBay, HP, IBM, 3Com, and Oracle, which was acquired by Publicis Groupe.
At Publicis, he ran North American direct and digital marketing with clients that included Whirlpool, Google, Microsoft, and Sprint. He went on to found Chautauqua Communications, an early digital content agency with such clients as WebEx, Vonage, and Microsoft. Chautauqua was acquired by Rain the Growth Agency where he serves as Managing Partner. His experience and focus is with high-growth DTC brands, such as Peloton, Mercari, HomeChef, The RealReal, Lending Tree, and more. In his work, he helps create the intersection between advertising and business strategy to fuel continuous growth for his clients.
Chris is regularly published on emerging trends, including advances in attribution, programmatic, addressable, AI, and OTT, as well as success factors for DTC brands. Chris is passionate about revealing paths to growth for clients. In his own words: "It's no longer about the immediate campaign result. It's about where a campaign can go to scale with even greater efficiency. We now have highly predictable views into campaign potential that transforms how we think about growth and media investment risk."
Chris holds a dual degree in English and Physics from Amherst College, and resides with his family in Sausalito, California, just north of San Francisco. They are avid sailors in one of the world's greatest sailing destinations. He and his family also enjoy traveling to gain global perspective, often from the bike lanes of the world's great cities.
I dream of democratized media: a converged, channel-agnostic world with granular targeting capabilities, bought programmatically and accessible.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President, Brand Strategy Research
At Rain the Growth Agency, Dan Gallagher oversees all brand strategy and research activities. His role includes oversight of the agency's Transactional Brand Building methodology as well as the development and deployment of MindReader™-a proprietary online research platform. In addition to his skills in mining brand insights from primary research and secondary social media measurement, Dan is responsible for ensuring that the agency creates accountable advertising that simultaneously builds brands and sells.
Dan brings over 20 years of experience in advertising to the agency, with a strong background in brand planning and research. Dan spent most of his career in New York City and has held executive leadership roles at Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Mather, JWT, and McCann Erickson. Dan relocated to Portland in 2004 to be a Senior Vice President at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, where he led a 12-person research and strategic planning department.
Throughout his career, Dan has had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of brands in technology, healthcare, consumer packaged goods, and financial services: Microsoft, Humana Healthcare, Alka-Seltzer, AMD, Toshiba, Chevron, AT&T, Tylenol, Cheerios, Merrill Lynch, Wheaties, USAA and more. Prior to advertising, Dan worked for the NSA in West Berlin-but he won't be able to share many details from that time.
While Dan has a passion for brand building and discovering what is the consumers emotional trigger to purchase, his true love is sharing Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and fine dining with his wife, Pati, who is a local Portland chef.
Given the sheer size of Baby Boomer demographic, that group has had an impact on every decade since the 1960s. Our team examines how the 55+ group, specifically those who are retired, behave economically, environmentally, and politically.
The Baby Boomer demographic represents a large and influential segment of society totaling roughly 70 million people. Given the size, accumulated wealth and Boomer buying power, marketers shouldn't ignore this age group. Consequently, Rain the Growth Agency developed a Senior segmentation identifying three discrete Baby Boomer cohorts.
As Chief Financial Officer at Rain the Growth Agency, Dave Maher oversees financial operations of the company. He works closely with the agency's Creative, Media, and Client Services teams to develop flexible and innovative financial solutions for clients, as well as staying on top of the latest technology solutions for streamlining finance operations.
In addition to deep agency experience, Dave brings decades of senior financial management experience, working in privately-held entrepreneurial environments from a broad range of industries including manufacturing, technology, and online retail. His wide-ranging financial experience helps build high-performance teams driving operational improvements. He is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an MBA from Washington State University.
Dave is a native of Washington State and enjoys discovering the wonders of the Pacific Northwest with his wife Vicki. In his free time, he enjoys tending to a small herd of alpacas on his property, spending time at his vacation home on Whidbey Island, and is an avid cyclist and backpacker.
With more than 30 years of experience in brand building, digital marketing, data mining, marketing analytics and operations, Jane is focused on agency innovation and ensuring delivery of Transactional Brand Building to our direct-to-consumer clients.
Jane is passionate about using technology and data to guide informed marketing decisions, and she taps into her deep experience in technology and data to build teams (analytics/digital/offline), capabilities (DTC/OTT/Cannabis) and tools (Tracker™, WaveCast™, Signal Link™, Leavened) for the agency and its clients.
Before Rain the Growth Agency, Jane came up through the digital side of the marketing industry and held executive management positions at Garage Team Mazda, T3, Team Detroit, JWT, Organic, and Carlson Marketing Group. In her 30+ year career she has had the honor to work with great brands that include Ford, Mazda, Chase, and Coca-Cola.
Jane earned her MBA in Marketing from Wayne State University and holds a B.S. in Decision Science and Marketing from the University of Oregon. Her career has taken her from Oregon to New York City to Detroit to Southern California-and then back to Oregon again. She is happy to be living in the Pacific Northwest once more-the place where she grew up.
As an agency obsessed with audience identification and scale potential based on real customer purchase data, we have clients that we have successfully scaled in all demographic categories. Still, our depth of experience in the 55+ category is unsurpassed, and we want to share it with the world. Here are some of the ways brands can harness the Boomer Silver Tsunami and authentically engage with their older audiences.
Job Titles:
- Vice President
- Vice President, Digital Media Director
Jennifer Eenigenburg (pronounced Any-gen-burg) is our Vice President of digital media, including paid social. Jennifer supervises the digital team to develop and implement impactful strategies for our clients.
In her previous role as director of the programmatic specialist team at Cadreon, Jennifer developed programmatic initiatives to drive results for clients including Amazon, Uber, Best Western, Tourism Australia, Carl's Jr and Hardee's. Prior to joining Cadreon, Jennifer oversaw the client services team at BuzzLogic, a startup ad network located in San Francisco. Prior to that she was at Universal McCann managing the digital media team focused on planning and buying for an array of Microsoft products including Internet Explorer and led campaign strategy, planning and execution.
Before moving to the West Coast, Jennifer planned digital media for Ford, Lincoln and Mercury at Team Detroit in her home state of Michigan, including the vehicle launch campaigns of the Mustang, Taurus, and Fusion, in-market media and branded integrations with American Idol.
Jennifer is a Michigan State University alumni (Go Green!) and currently resides in Portland with her husband and two cats, Buddy and Holly. In her free time she enjoys yoga, hiking, and practicing the ukulele.
Job Titles:
- Director, Talent Management
We live in a world surrounded by gamification. It's only natural that these concepts have crept into the workplace. Here are a few ideas for the HR team where gamification can lead to increased employee engagement and good health.
Job Titles:
- Director of Integrated Strategy
Today, people of all generations are watching TV on their own terms -- and they're unlikely to give up this convenience any time soon.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Client Strategy
Kyle helps drive growth for the agency, overseeing business development and leading growth initiatives for existing clients. His expertise in action-driving analytics has led to close collaboration with the creative process, making him an agency and industry leader in integrated communications strategy. He also plays a significant role in identifying companies that are a great fit for our integrated DTC approach.
Marrying the needs of a client with our end-to-end solution is a special talent, and it's Kyle's forte. He will figure out how to get a client exactly what they need to grow, and he'll work relentlessly to give them speed-to-market, too. He understands the importance of using a multi-channel approach to build businesses, helping deliver transformational growth.
Kyle has been a practitioner of Transactional Brand Building for more than 15 years and has had the opportunity to build successful campaigns for major brands including Humana, Ancestry, Vonage, Alaska Airlines, Chase, Microsoft, Wayfair, SimpliSafe, Chewy.com, 1-800 Contacts, and Mercari. His greatest client achievement was being involved in a 70% improvement in CPA for Vonage in the first three months of its partnership with Rain the Growth Agency.
Kyle earned his MBA from Fort Hays State University in Western Kansas. Today, he and his wife Wendy and daughter Mary enjoy all the food, culture, and adventure Portland has to offer, while still fervently supporting the Kansas Jayhawks from afar.
This year marks an exciting generational milestone - the youngest of the Baby Boomers turns 50 years of age.
With over 30 years in the direct to consumer business, Marilyn leverages her deep business and media experience to help advertisers adapt to modern multi-channel marketing. Passionate about helping our clients achieve transformational growth, she leverages data and marketing insights, to provide strategic guidance to help clients build their brands.
Marilyn started her DRTV career at American Telecast Corporation, where she transformed the in-house media-buying division into one of the nation's leading media-buying agencies. She's helped launch many of the industry's top campaigns for marketers such as Total Gym, Bare Escentuals, Murad, Smile Direct Club, AdoreMe, Leesa and BISSELL.
Marilyn earned her degree from the University of California at Berkeley. While there, she achieved All-American status in Cross-Country. And, a year after graduation, qualified for the Olympic trials in Track and Field (3000M Track). Out of the office, Marilyn enjoys traveling with her husband, spending time with her family and practicing yoga.
Mark Brown - Chief Investment Officer
Mark Brown joined Rain the Growth Agency in May 2021 as the company's first Chief Investment Officer, a new position created by the agency as it continues to push the boundaries of media targeting and investment strategies. Mark is a proponent of audience-based media approaches, and one of his responsibilities will be to drive this philosophy across planning and buying teams for digital and offline media. He is developing and promoting innovative media strategies throughout the agency.
Mark has led media strategy at Initiative, Garage Team Mazda, and Mindshare. Most recently, he ran U.S. media strategy for Chevrolet while at Carat. He was also a managing partner of Canvas Worldwide, a co-venture between Horizon Media and Innocean Worldwide. As one of the founders, he helped build the $1 billion agency from the ground up. Mark also has over a dozen years of experience in media sales at Yahoo!, Univision, and Broadcast.com.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, New Business Development
Mark is constantly looking for great companies who could succeed with a Transactional Brand Building campaign. Always eager to build relationships, he develops new connections across the country with executives looking for the next great marketing tool for their arsenal.
Mark loves being a part of the team at Rain the Growth Agency because of the agency's mission to deliver ROI-driven campaigns. He's a supporter of accountability and efficiency in all work. It makes him proud to see clients receiving a high ROI for each dollar invested in marketing.
Before joining the agency in 2000, Mark worked for CBS as a TV reporter, Kingworld Direct and Guthy-Renker. His clients have included Cancer Treatment Centers, Invisalign, BISSELL, Consumer Cellular, Sears Craftsman, Ace, Home Depot, PetSmart, Walgreens, 1-800 CONTACTS, ThredUP, Kitchen Aid, Vonage, Hamilton Beach, Sunbeam, Mutual of Omaha, and Peloton.
After earning undergraduate degrees from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and Annenberg School of Journalism, Mark went on to get his MBA from Pepperdine University. He's a devoted husband and father and is inspired by individuality, genuine kindness, and mutual respect.
Industries continue to digitize and market transformations accelerate across transportation, energy, agriculture, and DTC. Here's some sage advice from a few of the most successful entrepreneurs
Mark Yesayian is responsible for guiding the strategic direction of digital campaigns for our clients. From web strategy and development to social media, search and CRM, Mark plays a key role in keeping the agency at the forefront of finding ways to create digital campaigns through alternative and unexpected channels.
With over two decades of marketing and advertising experience and a deep background in online marketing, Mark is an ideal asset to any client looking to reach an audience through multiple screens. He's an expert on digital best practices in e-commerce website design, the Amazon marketplace, email campaigns and more.
Since joining Rain the Growth Agency in 2013, Mark has provided executive leadership on Humana Healthcare, Kindred, USAA, Schick, 23andMe, and Chervon North American (EGO and SKIL brands).
Prior to joining the agency, Mark served as President of the Ryan Partnership and has held executive leadership roles in Boston, New York City, and San Francisco, at Digitas, Ogilvy, and MEC/MediaEdge. While there, he worked on AT&T, American Express, Dell, Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab.
Mark graduated with a B.S. in Communications from Michigan State University. He has a passion for digital innovation and feels a strong connection to his home and family in San Francisco.
Michelle's career spans 30 years in DTC media, beginning in TV media buying and ad sales in the early 90s. She is the founder of several companies: Cmedia (1998), Production West (2001), R2C Group (2005) and Leavened (2018).
Her first company, Cmedia quickly became one of the top DRTV media buying players in the country with clients such as Humana, Carnival Cruise Line, and Cancer Treatment Centers of America. In 2005, Michelle merged her company with Respond2, a Portland, Oregon creative agency, to create the fully integrated DTC agency, R2C Group. After rebranding as Rain the Growth Agency in 2020, it is one of the top, independent advertising agencies in the country, helping to build many well-known brands including: 23andMe, Peloton, Chewy, SimpliSafe, Humana, Bissell, 1-800 Contacts, LendingTree, and many more.
Michelle pioneered the marketing philosophy "Transactional Brand Building" which believes in driving sales and building a brand at the same time. This concept has helped propel Rain the Growth Agency to become the top choice for fast-growing e-commerce brands, as well as many traditional brands who have expanded their DTC channels.
Michelle is passionate about using technology and data to guide informed marketing decisions, hence the founding of Leavened, a DTC data and analytics company that specializes in media mix modeling. Leavened has invested heavily in the development of leading media analytic tools and platforms like Tracker™, MMM ™, WaveCast™, Signal Link™, as well as unique tools that mine client data to better target customers, which includes ConsumerID™.
Michelle is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a B.A. in Communication and sits on the University's Alumni Foundation Board of Directors. She was an Ernst & Young LLP Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2021 National finalist and winner of the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2021 Pacific Northwest Region Award. She also sits on the Forbes Agency Council and is a published thought leader in the marketing industry. Michelle currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and business partner, Tim O'Leary, and their yellow Lab named Lemon.
Rian leads all technology initiatives across the agency's portfolio of companies, providing leadership and direction to the Information Technology, Software Development, and Leavened Engineering departments. His goal is to maximize the agency's use of technology to meet clients' current and future needs and opportunities. He also oversees the development of the PROOF platform, a web-based application that will offer planning, buying, measurement and optimization tools for advertisers.
Rian brings over two decades of experience driving strategy, process, and culture, with hands-on coding and infrastructure architecture skills. Most recently, he was the CTO of Vadio, Inc., where he was responsible for the development of a streaming video and analytics platform that powered Shazam's video service and Pearl Travel Tech, a SaaS startup providing immigration assessments to Fortune 100 enterprise clients. Previously the Head of Labs Technology for Amazon's Zappos, Rian has also worked in digital marketing for The New York Times, Hewlett-Packard, and First Republic Bank.
He received his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Minnesota and his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. When he's not complying with SOC2 policies, Rian can be found cooking, gardening, or exercising his dog, Parker, on Portland's east side.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President of Integrated Media Investment Planning
With a deep background in strategic planning, and over 20 years of experience, Robin joined Rain the Growth Agency in 2012 to manage the media planning teams. As the Executive Vice President of Integrated Media Investment + Planning, Robin is responsible for strategic oversight of media plans across multiple categories, and manages cross-functional agency teams inclusive of national and local broadcast, video, audience, print, digital and non-traditional marketing disciplines.
At the agency, Robin has been responsible for managing some of our most successful ecommerce campaigns, including Chewy.com, Peloton, SimpliSafe, TaxACT, and Wayfair. In addition, Robin oversees the media strategy across our direct-to-consumer client base. Robin loves looking at data, and finding the story that will help clients achieve the next level of growth that they were seeking when they decided to partner with us.
During her twelve year career at GroupM, Robin was also responsible for media plan development and strategic oversight for clients such as Welch's, T. Rowe Price, Church and Dwight, Castrol Motor Oil, American Express, and Novartis.
Robin graduated Magna Cum Laude from Syracuse University with a dual degree in Political Science and Advertising. Boston is her hometown, and she is a huge fan of all Boston sports teams…in particular the Pats. She currently resides in Robbinsville, New Jersey, with her husband, 17-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son.
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner, R2C Group and President, MMSI
How are DRTV marketers using pay for performance effectively? By knowing what to watch out for. And working with the right people.
Job Titles:
- Director of Strategic Partnerships
The fourth quarter of 2020 is already shaping up to be a complicated one for advertisers. Our Director of Strategic Partnerships offers three media environments in which advertisers should rest assured that their dollars will work exceedingly hard this holiday season.
For more than two decades, Steve has created Brand, Digital and Direct advertising for world class brands of all sizes and at all stages of growth. His career focus has been on melding strategic branding with effective selling to create powerful DTC campaigns. And that pursuit continues at Rain the Growth Agency where he helps Transactional Brand Building fulfil its promise for the agency's wide variety of national clients.
Steve has held creative leadership positions at top agencies. As ECD for OgilvyOne/Ogilvy Interactive/Chicago, he built an award-winning creative department and won the $200MM Ameritrade business. At Ogilvy/New York, he won coveted awards for Jaguar Cars and American Express. At DDB, he was Global CD for ExxonMobil and all of its sub-brands. During his time with Hill Holiday/New York, he helped develop the "Reliable Network" positioning for Verizon Wireless. He joined Rapp to help transition the company into a global Digital agency. His work has won many awards, including One Show pencils (Gold), Effies (Gold), Addys (Best in Show), Clios, Caples, Echoes and Andys.
At Rain the Growth Agency, Steve leads a diverse, deeply experienced team in the pursuit of the industry's most effective creative. His collaborators include Creative Directors, Designers, Writers, Art Directors, Producers, Editors, and Canines (the agency is very dog friendly). Outside of work, Steve enjoys photography and teaching; he is on the faculty of The International Center of Photography in New York City and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland.
What's driving DTC creative trends for OTT advertising? This article explores how DTC brands are shaping their creative, evolving approaches to execution and why DTC brands need DTC creative experts.
Sue Collins heads up some of the largest and most critical groups at Rain the Growth Agency: She leads creative, account management, production and post. The company's success in providing an unmatched end-to-end solution for clients is due, in large part, to Sue. She guides an award-winning creative team, an in-house production team, a post-production facility with eight edit rooms, our duplication and distribution company and a stellar integrated account management team dedicated to success for our clients.
Sue spent the first 16 years of her career managing powerhouse clients such as Microsoft, Intel, Subway, and Oracle. She also helped fitness brands such as NordicTrack, ProForm, and The Nautilus Group develop successful transactional brand building strategies to grow their direct-to-consumer business and retail sales.
Outside of work, family and fitness are her passions. Sue is a former professional beach volleyball player, and her husband is a former NFL player. They now spend most of their spare time traveling around the country to watch their daughter play competitive soccer.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Offline Media Director
In this edition: Our media team's explanation for the shift in consumption of the Olympics, three media trends that will have lasting implications for advertisers. Plus, other media marketplace news that we're following closely.
During the week of May 17, Rain's media team attended upfront presentations by all major media networks, including the parent companies of broadcast's "Big 4" (ABC, CBC, FOX, NBC) and other network groups. Overall, networks are saying this is once again an unprecedented upfront season.
In this edition: Our media team provides a comprehensive recap of the 2021 Upfronts. Plus, an analysis of the impact Apple's iOS 14.5 rollout is having on media campaigns.
The advantage of bulk-buying media has shrunk in a world where performance measurement and near-term accountability have become more important requirements to clients. It's up to the modern media buyer to find the best ways to advantage a client on inventory commitments.
Let's take a hard look at how he's managed his brand in the past…
A year ago when Donald Trump emerged a serious political contender, I noticed how uncannily he followed the infomercial huckster bible I'd help develop two decades earlier.
Tony has been leading the Providence team for more than 25 years. His innovations in pay-per-performance media operations for TV, online, radio, print, and mobile give clients a competitive edge. In addition to adding measurable efficiency to a marketing budget, pay-per-performance media services help our clients amplify the view of their messages. As President of MMSI, he brings our clients expertise and counsel regarding media analysis, monitoring of trends, and the optimization of available media inventory. He is also a specialist regarding performance opportunities in Hispanic TV. He has worked with clients such as Gerber Life Insurance Company's Grow Up Plan, ITT Tech, ThermoSpas, and ProFlowers.
After serving in the US Navy, Tony graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in Marketing. Tony is a lifelong athlete whose adventures include scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef.