Branding

Wonder Women in Business Valerie Tyson

Valerie Tyson

Valerie Tyson

In 2018, Tyson founded the marketing agency, Strategic Playground where she served as the Chief Executive Officer and converted into Unrivaled Group in 2021. She is a proven brand strategy expert who has worked with several Fortune 1000 companies, sports leagues, teams, professional athletes, entertainment properties, including the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats and the Arena Football League’s Los Angeles Avengers.

Prior to starting her own agency, Tyson served as Vice President of Digital at IMG, Vice President of Marketing & Digital Performance at BRANDTHINK and Director of Client Services at Tocquigny.

Now, Valerie Tyson serves as Unrivaled Group’s Head of Strategy, overseeing the development, communication, and execution of strategic initiatives of the consultancy and clients.

Valerie Tyson

Connect with Valerie:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerietyson/



Wonder Woman in Business, Cynthia McCollough

Cynthia McCollough

Cyndy McCollough is the founder of McCollough Consulting, a digital marketing agency specifically focused on professional services organizations. On a project basis, Cyndy manages rebrands, leads website redesigns, produces corporate video, and offers soup-to-nuts martech strategy and implementation.

Cyndy's understanding of the importance of customer journeys and user experience was forged early in her career in enterprise software sales, and she spent the next 20 years applying these best practices in-house for law firms. Now she is a leading voice in the legal marketing industry, a prolific marketing technology blogger, and a member of University of Richmond’s Customer Experience (CX) Advisory Board.

Cyndy lives with her husband, pup, and cats in Great Falls, VA.


Cynthia McCollough


A Couple of Cyndy’s Favorite Books

Bird by Bird

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author: An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come.

For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”


How We Fight for Our Lives

From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives—winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award—is a “moving, bracingly honest memoir” (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.

One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar; Elle; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; and many more.

“People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.’”

Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence—into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another—and to one another—as we fight to become ourselves.

An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is powerful—a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.


Connect with Cyndy

Blog: mccollough.consulting/digitalmarketingblog/

 Mobile: 202.569.1675

Email: cyndy@mccollough.consulting