About SocialGrow™

SocialGrow was founded in 2009 by industry veterans Marsh Sutherland and Ken Herron

SocialGrow is a member of the Microsoft® BizSpark™ Startup program and sponsored by CommonAngels™ of Lexington, MA.

SocialGrow was one of 5 startups chosen internationally to participate in the Microsoft Windows 7 Incubation Week, was named one of MassHighTech Five Startups to Watch, and was named Microsoft Startup of the Day worldwide.

Management Team

Marsh Sutherland
President | Co-Founder
Favorite social network: LinkedIn ©

Living by the philosophy of “givers gain” and recognized as one of Boston’s best business networkers, Marsh is a social and business networking evangelist. The inventor of SocialGrow’s patent pending engine, Marsh has held a number of technology management roles at deNovis and Akibia, and is a former technology consultant with KPMG. Marsh founded the Boston BizSpark Meetup, co-founded the Web Executives Group on LinkedIn ©, and manages the Boston Entrepreneurs’ Network group on LinkedIn™. Marsh earned his MBA and JD degrees from Arizona State University and his Bachelor of Arts in Legal Studies, with minors in Mathematics and Philosophy, from Pacific Lutheran University. A proud Washingtonian, Marsh is a member of the Washington State Bar Association. Marsh has been appointed a Microsoft Solutions Advocate.

Ken Herron
Chief Marketing Officer | Co-Founder
Favorite social network: Twitter™

SocialGrow’s “cool hunter” for new ideas, strategies, and technologies, Ken’s passion is helping people, brands, companies, and academic and government organizations around the world to effectively participate in social media’s online networks and communities to achieve their desired goals. Ken joined SocialGrow™ from Online Buddies, where he was the Chief Marketing Officer of one of the world’s largest global social networks. Prior to that, Ken was the Vice President of Interactive Strategies for Realogy, the global parent company of a family of consumer and commercial franchise real estate brands. Ken spent his early career in a series of marketing, strategy, and operations leadership roles with telecommunications giants Avaya, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T. Along with being selected to participate in the Marketing Management Program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in Stanford, California; Ken earned his Masters of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona, and his Bachelors in International Economics and German from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. A native Californian, Ken currently lives in the epicenter of marketing innovation, Boston, Massachusetts.

Ken has been appointed a Microsoft Solutions Advocate. Ken was ranked the #2 CMO on Twitter worldwide in June 2010 by Social Media Marketing Magazine.

Advisors

Dean Harris is the Managing Partner of Silvermine Marketing serving emerging companies and brands with go to market strategies. As a serial CMO he has held a number of senior marketing roles as the CMO at Kayak; the CMO and Chief Brand Officer at Vonage, the CMO at kgb and the SVP-Marketing at HotJobs. In 2005, he was named a Brandweek Marketer of the Year and won an EFFIE (for advertising effectiveness) in 2006. Dean was educated at Horace Mann, Carleton College, the Columbia School of International Affairs and Columbia Business School. He advises SocialGrow in defining and executing the marketing and sales strategy.

Michael Troiano is the president of Holland-Mark Digital, an online strategy and digital marketing consultancy in Boston. He spent his early career at top advertising agencies including McCann-Erickson and Foote, Cone & Belding, and became the founding CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Interactive in 1995. Mike co-founded New York-based strategic Internet services firm Brandscape in 1996, and merged it with NASDAQ-listed Primix Solutions in late 1998. After the sale of Primix in 2002 he joined venture-funded mobile content pioneer m-Qube, serving as a member of the executive team until the company was bought by VeriSign (Nasdaq: VRSN) in one of the largest Boston-based venture capital exits of 2006. Mike serves as a board advisor to several Boston area technology startups, including Celtra, Unbound Commerce, Butterfly Publisher, Crimson Hexagon, and SocialGrow. His blog, Scalable Intimacy , is listed on both the AdAge Power150 and Alltop, and he is ranked in the top 2% of the most influential people on Twitter. Mike is a graduate of Cornell University and the Harvard Business School.

Raju Matta is the Senior Director of Engineering for TripAdvisor®, the world's largest online travel community. With an unbroken record of delivering global consumer SaaS websites on time and on budget, Raju brings SocialGrow his proven success in building and optimizing startup and multinational R&D organizations. Raju's previous roles have included in-country engineering and live site operations. More recently, Raju has led TripAdvisor's search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts for their network of hyperlocal websites around the world. Raju earned his BE from Manipal Institute of Technology, and his MS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Charbel Elkhoury is the Director of Technology at Koko Fitclub. Charbel co-founded his first startup -- Human Micro Processing -- in 1991, and has helped companies around the world to leverage IT to accelerate their growth. Charbel has held senior positions with Greenfield Online, Eleven Technology, Trimble Mobile Solutions, and Siebel Systems. Charbel earned his Ph.D. from Capella University, his MBA from Concordia University, and his BS from the Lebanese American University. Charbel is also a frequent lecturer at universities across North America.