Harnessing AI to Innovate Higher Ed Marketing

Allison Turcio, Ed.D., is Assistant Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing at Siena College, a marketing professor, freelance marketing consultant, host of The Application Podcast, and publisher of the Higher Education Marketer's Digest. She is known for her innovative and student-centered approach to college-wide marketing, market research, and enrollment communications efforts. The Siena team and their partners have won numerous awards, including a Best in Show Educational Advertising Award and AMA's inaugural Emerging Marketer in Higher Education Award She is a frequent presenter at industry conferences, including American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, eduWeb and others. She serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Education Advancement & Marketing. Allison was selected for the Albany Business Review 40 Under 40 and Siena College’s Excellence in Administration award in 2020. She holds a doctorate degree in higher education leadership from Northeastern University, a master’s in communications and bachelor’s in English.

RJ Thompson, MFA, is an award-winning marketing and graphic design professional. Currently, RJ is the Manager of Digital Strategy in Pitt Health Sciences. He was most recently the Director of Digital Marketing in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining Pitt, he was a tenured Assistant Professor of Graphic + Interactive Design in the Department of Art at Youngstown State University. Previous to Youngstown State, RJ taught at Carnegie Mellon University, La Roche University, and Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Continuing his career in education, RJ has been an Adjunct Professor of Graphic & Interactive Design at Point Park University since 2019 where he was responsible for writing and teaching the interactive design curriculum. In 2020, he began teaching at the Community College of Allegheny County. Outside of marketing, design, and teaching, RJ is also the Co-Principal and Creative Strategist for +Public, a Pennsylvania-based social enterprise that focuses on cultivating community and economic development impact through the creation of branded communication platforms, creative place-making, and storytelling initiatives for communities-in-revival. Throughout his career, RJ has received many accolades for his creative works: In 2015, he was one of several recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant, valued at $100,000, for the INPLACE (“Innovative Plan for Leveraging Arts & Community Engagement”) project. In 2017, RJ received a “Best of Marketing Award” from the Ohio Economic Development Association for his efforts in rebranding the City of Youngstown, Ohio. In 2018, RJ was accepted into the prestigious Cohort 2 of the National Arts Marketing Project, a program supported by Americans for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2019, RJ also received a scholarship to join the National Arts Strategies Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy through the School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, RJ was honored with the Ohio Governors Award in the Arts in Community Development, the state of Ohio’s highest recognition in the arts sector. Recently, RJ was the recipient of a certification scholarship from the National Institute for Social Media and received accolades from GDUSA and the University & College Designers Association for "Pitt Business Backstory" and "Business.Pitt.Edu" websites. RJ is presently the President of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Marketing Association.