The purpose of Come Recommended’s Business Advisory Board (BAB) is to provide mentorship and feedback to the executive team. BAB members do not have a fiduciary responsibility to Come Recommended. Members serve one-year terms, with the option to be reappointed. The BAB consists of the following:
- A national Generation Y / workplace expert
- A recruiter of interns and/or entry-level professionals
- A college student or recent graduate (internship or entry-level candidate)
- A campus career center staff member
- A parent of a college student or recent graduate
- A tech-savvy professional with a higher than average understanding of how to build and utilize social networking platforms
- A professional with a strong financial background
2010 Business Advisory Board Members
Brian Batchelder
Brian Batchelder is an in-house senior recruiter for Fleishman-Hillard based out of Washington, D.C. He recruits for a wide array of PR and digital positions across the U.S. and overseas. His experience includes PR positions with Fleishman-Hillard Boston and the New England Patriots and a stint as a career advisor and employer relations director at American University.
He has a personal blog focused on networking and job search tactics: www.brianbatchelder.com. Brian speaks regularly at colleges about the job search process, strategies and tactics. You can follow his inner monologue on Boston & Syracuse sports, career advice and job opportunities on Twitter: http://twitter.com/b_batchelder.
Brian graduated from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a degree in broadcast journalism. Orange might be his favorite color.
Nicole Crimaldi
Nicole Crimaldi is the founder of mscareergirl.com, a career and self-improvement blog for ambitious young professionals. Nicole graduated from Miami University where she studied Finance and Entrepreneurship. She started her first job selling sub-prime mortgages two weeks after graduation, and has since worked in commercial banking and asset-based lending.
Nicole also incorporated her own business at age 23 while working full-time which showed her the realities of being a young entrepreneur. Nicole loves helping other ambitious young professionals get on their desired career path and excel at it. Nicole lives in Chicago with her yellow lab Giada.
Mark Cummuta
Mark Cummuta is an accomplished IT executive, author and speaker, with nearly 25 years of IT, business, startup, corporate enterprise and consulting experience, after first serving our country as a U.S. Marine. Having led a number of startup firms in CIO, CTO and VP of IT, Applications and Research & Development roles, successfully grown consulting divisions with full P&L authority, and built award-winning products and teams for over 10 years, he started his own successful CIO Advisory Services firm seven years ago specifically to assist startups and SMBs with IT and Social Media Strategy.
Mark is currently the CIO for JobAngels, a nonprofit startup organization using social media, Web 2.0 and innovative interactive technologies to link millions of U.S. job seekers with over 42,000 volunteer mentors, “Job Angels” willing to assist them in the skills and tasks in finding new employment.
Mark’s role at JobAngels fits perfectly with his passion for helping others in their job search and in improving their job search skills. He is also the co-author of the book, “Ignite Your Passion!”, tweets on Twitter as @TriumphCIO and writes an ongoing series of articles for CIO Magazine’s online resource website, CIO.com on executive job search skills and strategies. He also volunteers as a mentor and speaker on job search skills for numerous organizations, such as Marine For Life, Wounded Warriors Brigade, Pay-IT-Forward, Tech Execs, TLA, Career Renewal and others.
Mark is a frequent conference speaker on job search skills, social media, BPM (Business Process Management), Lean Six Sigma, innovation leadership, data warehousing, program / project management and numerous other technologies and methodologies, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Crain’s Chicago Business, Aberdeen Research, and others.
Mark holds a dual MBA from Loyola University of Chicago, has completed one year of law school for Intellectual Property Protection from DePaul University, and is named on several patents and patent applications in online multi-media collaboration tools and global logistics tracking systems.
Finally, Mark was introduced to Heather Huhman and Come Recommended through Twitter, and later when one of his daughters interned with Come Recommended. As a father of teenage triplets who are about to enter college, Mark and his wife use their years of experience in social networking and persuasive speech in their day-to-day survival.
(For Mark’s CIO.com Executive Job Search blog, go to: http://advice.cio.com/blogs/cio_job_search_a_real_life_chronicle.)
(To connect with Mark on LinkedIn, go to: http://www.linkedin.com/in/MarkCummuta.)
Rachel M. Esterline
Rachel M. Esterline, a public relations senior at Central Michigan University, has already begun to transition from student to professional as an intern at AGP & Associates, a marketing communications firm in Midland, Mich. She will begin working full-time after she graduates in May.
In addition to working in public relations, Rachel is a regular writer for Vision Mid Michigan and freelances for several other publications. On her blog, ExPRessions, she writes about the public relations industry, Gen Y issues, careers and professional development, personal branding and more.
Rachel’s workplace experience includes an assistant position with Come Recommended, an internship at Fahlgren Mortine in Columbus, Ohio, rated a top 100 firm by PR Week, and at CMU’s University Communications.
GL Hoffman
GL’s parents didn’t love him enough to give him a whole name he says. It wasn’t until he learned his alphabet on the Kansas farm where he was raised that he realized his name wasn’t “Get Wood!” “In college, my friends called me ‘Snack Bar,’ so I have answered pretty much to everything and anything.”
His first entrepreneurial opportunity came when a banker friend asked if he was interested in buying a bankrupt motorcycle shop. He bought the inventory of crated up dirt bikes, promptly hired a friend to put them together, and sold them all for his first profitable venture. He then bought a Corvette.
He moved to Minneapolis, and cofounded a lettering machine company. “I was the one who said that small labeling devices would never sell.” Still, Varitronics did alright, selling its lettering machines to architects and engineers, even going public. With his winnings, he started another company that also went public, Insignia Systems.
“I had a goal to retire at 50, but soon realized that what I love is starting companies,” he says. Soon a venture capitalist brought him JobDig, which now has a broad range of products in the employment space, including LinkUp.com, the best job search engine available today. “I am excited about what the team is building,” he says. “LinkUp is a job searching tool that helps job seekers find jobs, but only off company websites.
GL likes to mentor young entrepreneurs and is almost always incubating new ideas.
He is currently chairman of LinkUp.com, the fastest growing job search engine. He sometimes writes for US NEWS and World Report and FastCompany on entrepreneurship as well as careers. His popular blog is WhatWouldDadSay.com, and he can be followed on Twitter (@GLHoffman).
Gary Alan Miller
Gary Alan Miller is a 15-year veteran of higher education in variety of student services and managerial roles at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgia State University and the University of Washington. His areas of expertise as a student services professional include dynamic group presentations, internships, and department marketing, strategy and technology utilization. He is currently assistant director for business-related internships at University Career Services at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Gary is professionally active on Twitter, 12seconds.tv, LinkedIn, and two blogs — his own and the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog. He is among the first higher education professionals in the nation to launch a social media resume. Gary has presented on the crossroads of social media and career counseling at a number of professional conferences. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communication from Middle Tennessee State University and a Master of Science in Social Foundations of Education from Georgia State University.
Lisa Orrell
Lisa Orrell is The Generation Relations Expert, and the author of the popular book, Millennials Incorporated, and of the new book, Millennials Into Leadership. She is an in-demand speaker and consultant hired by well-known companies to educate their executive and front line management teams about how to effectively recruit, manage and retain Millennial talent, as well as how to improve generational dynamics. Lisa also conducts entertaining, compelling seminars, workshops and keynotes for Millennial employees and college students on how to be effective, respected young leaders in the workforce. Twitter: @GenerationsGuru
And, as a 20-year marketing expert, Lisa has a second career as The Promote U Guru. She is passionate about working with small business owners, entrepreneurs, speakers, and authors to build their businesses through her exceptional (in-demand) publicity, marketing consultation and business coaching services. Prior to this, Lisa owned a high-tech marketing agency in Silicon Valley for 20 years, and has received over 75 national and international awards for marketing excellence. Twitter: @PromoteUGuru
Based on her marketing expertise and generations knowledge, Lisa has been interviewed by countless media, including: ABC, MSNBC, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TIME, AdWeek, AdAge, FoxBusiness.com, U.S. News & World Report, and BNET.com.