Bill Brazell

Bill Brazell

Blogging and Grammar

Bill Brazell is The Hired Guns’ resident blogging coach. If you want to start a blog for a real purpose, he’s your man. As head of Blogger Recruiting for Federated Media he has helped nurture some of the world’s best bloggers, including Dooce, Boing Boing, Behance, and hundreds more. Bill has taught grammar to the media elite at NYU and served as the news editor at The Industry Standard. He’s on the board of the PKD Foundation, where you will occasionally see him dressed up as a giant kidney (www.kennythekidney.com). Bill teaches the Academy course “Get Your Blog On – Increase Your Visibility Through Online Publishing”. Follow @BillBrazell.

Dave Cirilli

Dave Cirilli

Publicity

Media relations veteran Dave Cirilli is The Hired Guns’ public relations coach. Whether it’s your personal brand or business, Dave’s the guy to help you gain the visibility through media and public speaking engagements. He currently works with a broad range of clients at Sunshine Sachs & Associates, including Bing, FremantleMedia Enterprises, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Public Understanding of Science and Technology Program, Brooklyn Bowl, David Allen, artist/sculptor Michael Kalish and many others that bridge the divide between technology and popular culture.  At the Academy, Dave teaches “Be Your Own Publicist: How Smart PR Can Turn You into a Thought Leader in Your Industry”. Follow @davecirilli.

Allison Hemming

Allison Hemming

Career and Personal Brand Management

A noted career authority, Allison Hemming has helped thousands of individuals assume leadership roles in organizations through effective career and personal brand management. She is the creator of the Pink Slip Party Movement, today a global phenomenon, and author of the job hunting handbook Work It! (Simon & Schuster). She currently serves as the “One Minute Mentor” for Fortune Magazine. Allison is the founder and Top Gun at The Hired Guns and has developed the curriculum and coaching methodology behind The Hired Guns Academy and hand-selected all its coaches. At The Academy, Allison teaches “Total Career Management” (with David Holloway), “Introduction to Personal Brand Management,” and “Personal Brand Management 2.0: Visibility Raising Techniques”. Follow @TheHiredGuns.

David Holloway

David Holloway

Leadership, Career Management, Portfolio Career Development

David has a dream background for The Academy: not only is he an accomplished digital strategist and an internationally qualified lawyer with an MBA, but he is also a trained and experienced executive coach. Throughout his twenty-year career, David has worked in media, technology, and entertainment companies in Sydney, Hong Kong, and New York City. Passionate about corporate strategy and the human side of organizations, David’s life work is to help individuals to develop and sustain success in their careers. David has coached individuals and teams, both inside and outside organizations, in Australia, Asia, and New York City since 2005. At the Academy, David teaches “Leadership Leap”, “How to Develop a Portfolio Career” and “Total Career Management”. Follow @Sangira.

Jim Hopkinson

Jim Hopkinson

Salary Negotiations, Social Media

Jim Hopkinson is an author, blogger, runner, and digital media guy living in New York City. Salary Tutor, his book about salary negotiation secrets, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, and the New York Post. He hosts The Hopkinson Report, a podcast about new media, technology, branding, and helping people pursue their ideal career and lifestyle. His energetic approach has been called “audible caffeine.” The former marketing director for Wired.com, Jim teaches a social media class at NYU. Jim teaches the Academy course “How to Negotiate Your Salary Like an FBI Agent”. Follow @salarytutor.

Mark Hurst

Mark Hurst

Customer Experience, Digital Productivity (“Bit Literacy”)

Mark Hurst is widely credited for popularizing the term “customer experience” and the methodology around it. In 1997, after graduate work at the MIT Media Lab and working with Seth Godin at Yoyodyne, Mark founded Creative Good, a firm devoted to helping businesses create better experiences for customers and employees. He is the author of the book “Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload” (available for free at the Apple iBookstore and on the Amazon UK Kindle store) and the creator of the online to-do list Good Todo and its associated iPhone, iPad, and Android apps – all available at http://goodtodo.com. He also founded and runs the Gel conference. At the Academy, Mark teaches “Empty Inbox, Less Stress: Stop Hoarding Email, Go on a Media Diet, and Take Back Your Life”. Follow @markhurst.

Jessica Kleiman

Jessica Kleiman

Publicity

Jessica Kleiman is co-author of the book Be Your Own Best Publicist: How to Use PR Techniques to Get Hired, Noticed and Rewarded at Work (Career Press, January 2011). She is currently the VP-Public Relations for Hearst Magazines, has guest lectured about publicity at NYU and Columbia University, and is a blogger on Forbes.com. At the Academy, Jessica teaches “Be Your Own Publicist” with Meryl Weinsaft Cooper, her co-author. Follow @jessicakleiman and @bestpublicist.

Inna Kurbatsky

Inna Kurbatsky

Digital Marketing

Sure you have a personal brand or business. But have you thought about all the ways you could promote it using everything from Social Media to Search? Inna Kurbatsky, our digital marketing maven, will teach you how to raise your visibility online and find and reach your target audience. An expert in integrated marketing, with a specialty in Online Direct Marketing, Inna brings 15 years of experience to the table. At Datek Online and E*Trade, two of the top pioneering online brokerage firms, and at Trump University (where she did not work for The Donald), Inna drove customer acquisition, retention and loyalty. When she’s not building a multi-channel marketing plan for one of her clients, she’s working on her own business plan for the Savvy Cointessa, a company designed to help families succeed at financial planning. Watch out Suze Orman! At the Academy, Inna teaches “Using Digital Marketing to Promote Your Personal Brand and Business”. Follow @innakurbatsky.

Charlie Rogers

Charlie Rogers

Digital Reinvention and Reskilling for Journalists and Editors

Charlie Rogers has twenty years of experience launching print and interactive projects for media companies including Bertelsmann, Advance Publications, Conde Nast, Time Warner, Martha Stewart, Wiley & Sons, Ziff-Davis, and NBC. He has served as editor-in-chief, launch manager, and product visionary on dozens of digital ventures including iVillage and Bookish.com. Charlie teaches the Academy course “Digital Reinvention for Journalists: Transfer the Skills You Already Have to a Career in Digital”. Follow @charlie_rogers.

David Ronick

David Ronick

Business Planning, Entrepreneurship

Want to start a company or grow the one you have? David Ronick is the guy you want behind your next business plan. David is a serial entrepreneur with experience in most types of entrepreneurial finance. He has bootstrapped startups and raised capital from friends and family, angel investors, angel networks, venture capital firms, and corporations. Check out his blog (www.upstartbootcamp.com/blog) or his new book, Hit the Deck: Create a Business Plan in Half the Time with Twice the Impact. David learned to craft persuasive arguments as an English major at Brown University, developed consulting skills at A.T. Kearney, and got hooked on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. At The Academy, Dave teaches “Hit the Deck”, an intro to business plan organization that will get you thinking in a strategic and rigorous way, without bogging you down, so that your company can get up and running in no time flat! Follow @upstartbootcamp.

Noah Scalin

Noah Scalin

Creativity and Innovation

Noah Scalin is a Richmond, Virginia-based artist and designer. He is the creator of the Webby Award-winning art project Skull-A-Day, which was the basis of his first book, Skulls. Noah’s art has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally and including the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, the Museum of Death in Los Angeles, and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. A lifelong activist, Noah runs the socially conscious design and consulting firm Another Limited Rebellion, which he founded in 2001. Noah is also an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he teaches a course he created on socially conscious graphic design. He is the author of 365: A Daily Creativity Journal and the upcoming Unstuck, which provides 52 ways to keep your creativity flowing with projects that range from multi-hour to merely 30 seconds of commitment, both from Voyageur Press. Noah teaches “Get ‘Unstuck’: How to Get (And Keep) Your Creativity Flowing” at the Academy. Follow @NoahScalin.

Joel Schwartzberg

Joel Schwartzberg

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Joel Schwartzberg won the U.S. National Championship in After-Dinner Speaking in 1990 and was ranked among the top ten overall public speakers in America. After coaching at U. Penn and Seton Hall, he was inducted into the National Forensic Association Hall of Fame in 2002. Joel has been teaching public speaking since 2006, while holding down executive digital positions with Nickelodeon, Time Inc., and PBS. A nationally-published personal essayist, Joel authored the award-winning essay collection The 40-Year-Old Version. Joel teaches the Academy course “Nail that Presentation!: Adding Strength to Your Professional Talks, Appearances, and Job Interviews”. Follow @joeljest.

Larry Smith

Larry Smith

Personal Pitch, Elevator Pitch, Six-Word Memoir

If honing the story of you has been your greatest challenge, Larry Smith is the coach for you. He is the founder and editor of SMITH Magazine, the online community known for mastering the art of personal storytelling. Editor of the bestselling Six-Word Memoir book series, Larry has led storytelling workshops for audiences from the Hewlett Foundation to ESPN to second-grade classes. So, who better than Larry to mentor Guns in creating the perfect “Elevator Pitch” to use in networking events and interviews? At The Academy, Larry teaches “What’s Your Story?”, a class devoted to helping you refine your story so it’s told and retold again. Follow @smithmag.

Jacqui Stafford

Jacqui Stafford

Dressing for Success, Brand Style

Jacqui Stafford is The Hired Guns’ Brand Style coach. Her coaching, devoted to elevating professional women, will help you assemble a wardrobe that complements your body shape and conveys the image you want. Executive Style Director of Shape magazine, Jacqui pens a popular monthly fashion advice column with over 7 million readers. Jacqui’s break-through insights prove that you don’t have to follow the latest trend, spend a ton of money, or be a certain size in order to look great. A fluent French and Spanish speaker now based in Manhattan, she has also lived and worked in London, Paris and the Canary Islands. At the Academy, Jacqui teaches “Identify your BrandStyle (for Women)”, a class designed to transform yourself from Ho-Hum to Headturner in the workplace. Follow @jacqui_stafford.

Beth Temple

Beth Temple

Business Management for Freelancers

There is no better evangelist for solopreneurialism than Beth Temple, a business builder who thrives on ambiguity and chaos. A role model for what it means to be a true Hired Gun, she lives and breathes free agency on a daily basis and has helped countless individuals strike out on their own. Peek inside her brain at www.bethtemple4u.com. Beth has built tried-and-true methods for thriving in just about every type of client engagement and has collected priceless tricks for building a great reputation. In particular she can help you think about how to price and market your services. At the Academy, Beth teaches “Freelancing Success: Independence, Not Insecurity”. Follow @bethtemple4u.

Meryl Weinsaft Cooper

Meryl Weinsaft Cooper

Publicity

Meryl Weinsaft Cooper is co-author of the book Be Your Own Best Publicist: How to Use PR Techniques to Get Hired, Noticed and Rewarded at Work (Career Press, January 2011) and founder of Allen/Cooper Enterprises, an arts and lifestyle events/marketing Company. She lectures at conferences, corporations, and universities and is a blogger on Forbes.com. At the Academy, Meryl teaches “Be Your Own Publicist” with Jessica Kleiman, her co-author. Follow @grape and @bestpublicist.

Stay tuned for our 2013 schedule of courses!

Tuesday January 1, 2013

Instructor // The Hired Guns

A brand-new schedule of courses for the creative class is coming soon!

More Details »

Corporate Training and Development with The Hired Guns Academy

“The Hired Guns Academy crafted a unique training experience that helped our first-time managers with everything from how to manage your former peers to how to build a personal brand. Our people loved it and we loved the post-training results!”

- Barbara Creagh, Executive Vice President and Talent Officer, MDC Partners

Want to energize and empower your workforce to reach new heights? Let The Hired Guns Academy create a custom curriculum for your organization. Our breakthrough courses on personal brand management, marketing, social media, and more will get your people armed, dangerous, geared up for excellence, and ready to become thought leaders for your company. The instructors at The Hired Guns Academy – all best-in-class subject matter experts – offer a teaching approach that is hands-on, reality-based, fresh, and extremely effective.

Some of our course offerings that can be tailored for your company:

  • Digital Marketing and Social Media
  • Get Your Blog On
  • What’s Your Story
  • Personal Brand Management

… or we can build a curriculum for you, from scratch. Reach out to us at academy@thehiredguns.com and find out how we can give your in-house training a shot in the arm.

The Hired Guns Academy: Be brave. Come learn. Have fun.

Product Management, User Experience, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability Testing

Project Management, Program Management, Production, Content Production

Animation, Art Direction, Creative Direction, Corporate Identity, Flash Design/Dev, Graphic Design, Web Design

Content Strategy, Editorial, Copywriting, Copy Editing, Research, Blog Outreach

Brand Management, Business Development, Sales, Product Marketing, Event/Conference Planning, Promotions, Marcomms, Corporate Comms, Direct Marketing, E-Marketing, Public Relations, Market Research

Account Management, Account/Brand Planning, Media Strategy, Communications Planning, Media Planning/Buying, Social Media, Search (SEM, SEO), Web Metrics & Analytics

Web Development, Front End Development

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