Rock Star of the Year (2015) – Jennifer Hicks and Susan Hornung

As you all undoubtedly know, our Rock Star award is typically awarded each month. However, as we are looking to close out a great 2015 and embark on a 2016 that’s full of promise, I thought that we would take a look in the rearview mirror and acknowledge a tremendous year-long effort by Jennifer Hicks and Susan Hornung to completely overhaul our old website and bring us into the modern age of online engagement.

While almost everyone at JCA had a hand in this rebuild, Jennifer and Susan went the extra mile to make this happen. Long nights and weekends were the norm for this dynamic duo. While the scope of this project was incredibly daunting, they calmly and coolly bit off pieces of this huge elephant. Creating and curating over 129 pages was no easy feat. Sorting, sifting and deciding on the myriad design choices would have driven most people crazy—but not our terrific tandem. If you take a look at the website redesign pages on our intranet site, you’ll see how much they accomplished in a relatively (by web development standards) short period.

Oh, and did I mention that they still had their regular jobs to do? After all, they didn’t just work on our website full time. They managed to do all of this web work AND excel at their regular marketing jobs, which always hit a peak in summer and fall. Coordinating everything for TLCC, our largest marketing event? Check. Making sure that everything was perfect for BBCON? Check. AASP? Blackbaud Partner Meeting? Answers campaign? CRM campaign? Check, check, check, check! They never missed a beat.

So, without further ado, please join me in congratulating Susan and Jennifer, our full-year 2015 Rock Stars!