I help you find what's next, then build it with you: strategy, content, community, and AI woven into how you actually work. A few careers later, I'm still in the most creative chapter of my life.
Check out what I'm doing now, some of my past accomplishments,
and where you can catch me live.
Four things with my full attention right now.
I spend my days inside VS Code, building systems, and spinning up skills in Claude Code for everything I do. I don't chase tools or hype cycles. They change too much. AI is deeply woven into how I actually work, as a collaborator, not bolted on top. If you're looking to adopt AI into your own work, or for your team, reach out for an audit.
I run community here for James Dickerson (The Boring Marketer), as well as lead the programming and live events. Thousands of engaged founders, builders, and marketers, learning the new playbook together in real time. Join the community here.
I'm a Creative Lead & AI Orchestrator at Sageworx, overseeing a team and systems for First Horizon Bank. In financial content, AI is our edge: research, fact-checking, SEO, topic optimization. The humans bring the vision. Many of us go back 15 years. If you have a larger project, or need more than I can offer as an independent, SGWX is my crew. Meet them here.
I work with founders, entrepreneurs, SMB owners, and other independents on strategy, branding, content, coaching... whatever the work needs, at whatever frequency it needs it. Building the exact solution a specific need calls for is my thing. Reach out for a chat.
Each one has an est. date and the proof of work to match. Open one and you're standing in the year it started.
AI recycles what already exists. The unexpected idea, the judgment call, the eye that knows when it's right: that's the human moat, and it's the part of the work I protect.
I led Samsung's global digital presence as Creative Director at Cheil, and the work picked up hardware along the way: a Cannes Lions finalist, Webbys, ADDYs. Long before any of it, I was designing album covers for punk and metal bands during the CBGB days. The eye came first. Everything else got built on it.
"She is a convincing presenter in client-facing situations, but also in the studio sweating pixels."
The awards stage at Cannes Lions 2007I started in direct marketing, where every idea lived or died by measured response. Then my mentor gave me "a taste of the web" and I never went back: live webcasts for Lucent in '98, ecommerce for Lillian Vernon in '99, sites designed in Quark on a 56K modem.
What it gave me: a creative eye welded to measurable results, before those two things were supposed to mix.
Webcasting in 1998-99: Lucent@Supercomm, live in RealPlayer.Five years of internet firsts for very big brands: Xbox Live's beta launch, Coca-Cola.com, Kohl's, Nikon [ography], and the Addy-winning Good to Be Square for Wendy's.
What it gave me: big-brand craft at internet speed, and my first reps building the plane mid-flight.
Wendy's Good to Be Square · Smart-Square, the Beadies, and an Addy.Led Samsung's digital presence across electronics, mobile, and IT. Upstage pulled 1M+ views in days, with my sister lip-syncing in banner ads. The WOW Challenge, launched with Ze Frank, put its shadow alphabet into the 3D typography books.
What it gave me: proof that participation beats interruption, years before "engagement" was a KPI.
UpStage's PixlChix on YouTube · 1.25M views by day 2 of the contest.
The WOW Challenge with Ze Frank · crowd-sourcing the Shadow Alphabet and other collaborative challenges.Ozzy Osbourne sold Samsung phones by texting, because nobody could understand him otherwise. The "Ozzy Said What?" subtitler game won ad:tech Best Social and a Gold Addy.
What it gave me: personality-led interactive before "social campaign" was a line item.
Ozzy Said What? · put words in his mouth, or guess what he actually said.An AR-style scavenger hunt built from movie clues and Samsung products, where users solved the puzzle with tools they found along the way. Horizon Gold, IAC Outstanding Microsite.
What it gave me: the puzzle instinct. Make people play, and they'll stay.
The Samsung Superman Returns Challenge · a puzzle hunt through the Daily Planet.Cannes Lions finalist, Webby honoree, ad:tech Best Social winner, Gold Addy, ECHO, GRAPHIS, London International, IAC.
What it tells you: trophies age. The instincts they rewarded didn't.
"I'm all in on vibe marketing, but keeping the human element to direct and fine tune is so important... otherwise we're destined for mediocrity."
11:48 AM · Apr 12, 2025 · on XThe best education is participation. I've lived inside every shift before advising anyone on it, and my favorite part is walking people in behind me.
During my Cheil interview, the EVP told me they were a traditional agency and would never be digital. I told him he was wrong. He hired me anyway. (Thank you, Bob.) Five years later, every team was integrated. In between, I was building in Second Life while brands were still asking what it was: Samsung's High Tech Lofts, Cheil's office in a virtual Times Square, and later my own sim "Paris New York". Along the way, Coca-Cola ran a competition to design a virtual vending machine. I won, and that's how my avatar "Emerie May" ended up working alongside Coke's worldwide interactive team. The same instinct later took me all the way into web3: thousands of NFTs across 100+ communities, and a sold-out collection of my own metaverse photography. Now the pattern is repeating with AI.
"Ann Marie was my compass in a completely new digital terrain... she gave me the code to what had felt like an exclusive club."
The Virtual Thirst winner page, 2007 · Magic Coke Bottles, submitted by Ann Marie Mathis, AKA EmerieI rented a spot in the already-busy virtual "New New York Times Square" instead of building an empty island, because presence beats real estate. Everything from global client meetings to team member birthday parties happened inside it (sometimes in our bumper-car conference room).
What it gave me: world-building as a client service, not a stunt.
Cheil's office in virtual Times Square · the walkthrough, bumper-car meeting room and all.
One of 5,000 personalized WIRED covers, July 2007 · the issue asked "you are here." I answered with Second Life.Coke ran a public competition to design a virtual vending machine. I entered as a resident, not an agency, and won, then built it with Crayon and Millions of Us alongside Coke's worldwide interactive team.
What it gave me: the conviction that being a resident beats being a vendor. Virtual UGC crossover to real life collaboration.
Ad Age on Virtual Thirst · and the in-world unveiling of the winning entry.Built a shopping district that became a top first-date destination and a great stop for new residents who were just joining SL, with bikes to ride, freebies and how-to guides. I also ran my own in-world furniture store, LowPrim < HighStyle, with 1 prim candles that you could click to turn on and off as the best seller.
What it gave me: commerce and community inside virtual worlds, 14 years before brands called it the metaverse.
Paris New York · the sim with the Eiffel Tower to scale, top of the search by traffic, the freebie stop for new residents, and the store's one-prim mosaic candles.Initiated Cheil's social offering, then took it on the road: a cross-country Social Media Roadshow in 2008, teaching client teams city by city while the discipline was still being invented. We also started a team thought leadership channel where all team members were covering different emerging media trends in real time.
What it gave me: the teaching habit. I've never announced a new thing without walking people into it.
The Changing Face of Social Media · the deck we took city to city, May 2008. Last slide: the team channel, a trend each.Thousands of NFTs across 100+ communities, JPEG artist and collector, and my sold-out My First Metaverse collection built from my own metaverse photography, an unlockable story behind every photo.
What it gave me: native fluency the second time the virtual frontier opened.
A wall of the collection · thousands of pieces across 100+ communities.When the frontier got real, I went full-time into it: built the marketing from the ground up for a smart-wallet startup and grew the audience to 12,000 followers with zero paid spend.
What it gave me: proof I'll still bet my whole calendar on a frontier I believe in.
The Pass App site, top to bottom.
PassPeople · custom pixel avatars I created for each team member based on a CC0 collection by Steve.The platforms keep changing. What makes people stay doesn't. I'm still applying what 30,000 moms taught me in 2008 to a few thousand AI marketers today.
MomsLikeUs: a social network I built for Samsung's appliance launch that grew to 30,000 moms talking about the joys of doing laundry, back before "community manager" was a job title. The thread runs unbroken from there to running community at The Vibe Marketer now.
"Her coined nickname, 'The Social Media Queen,' says it all... she lives and breathes the medium."
Also, please don't call me that. It was a good thing back then. Now, super cringe.
MarketWatch, Nov. 5, 2008 · "Samsung Launches Social Networking Site for Their Washers and Dryers: Moms Like Us"Built a site for Guideposts Magazine and watched a faith community thrive on it shortly after launch. A decade before "community manager" existed, I was already tending one.
What it gave me: the early lesson that communities are tended, not managed.
Guideposts Online in Netscape · send us a prayer request, send us your photo, let's hear from you.A social network built for Samsung's washer/dryer launch: 30,000 members in months, The Pioneer Woman seeding conversations, hundreds of photos, 1,000+ comments, and a Laundry & Stain Wiki. ad:tech Best Social Media Campaign finalist.
What it gave me: proof that a brand can host belonging, not just broadcast at it.
Moms Like Us · life, laundry, and the pursuit of cleanliness. Roll over for the reel: the site as it launched, then the member directory, 29,183 deep."I pin things from tumblr, tweet to update my Facebook status and foursquare to let my husband know I'm on my way home. I'm hopeless."
Sep 27, 2011 · on TwitterPeak native.I designed a lot of my clients' first social feeds. One of them was Coca-Cola's "Happiness Is" Tumblr: curated and reblogged posts, street art to words of inspiration, wrapped in a classic Coke feel. Coke was one of the first CPG brands on Tumblr and the first brand ever featured as a radar post.
What it gave me: proof the community is the asset, not the platform. Tumblr is still there. It isn't what it was. The people moved and brought the habits with them.
"Happiness Is" · the whole feed, top to bottom.My tweet count in 2008, the most active year of my feed, ever. Inventing a social practice by day and living inside the medium by night.
What it gave me: fluency you can't fake. I wasn't studying the water, I was in it.
Web3 Discord communities kept asking moderators to work for free, so I started a community for them. To get in you answered a survey: what you make, where you live. I published the results back every month. It grew to about 125 active moderators across the globe, and the Angry Mods Mastery program where I gave them training on how and where to find the best gigs.
What it gave me: a community forms fastest around the thing nobody will say out loud.
Compensation Survey Insights, May 2023 · the numbers I published back to the community.
Angry Mods Mastery · the four-session program I built and taught for the community, July and August 2023: establishing your brand in web3 in two parts, then the web3 resume and networking. Decks, worksheets, recordings, and a POAP minted by the ten mods who finished it.Running community at The Vibe Marketer: live programming, hot seats, member referral programs, partnership events, and being one of 2,500+ active members who build in public and share how to get results using AI.
Same instincts, new stack. Seventeen years of reps between them.
The Vibe Marketer · the hub, the classroom, the announcements I post, and a mentor session in progress."Community isn't so much about one on one as it is about the collective. What you see at scale is much different from what you'll see one on one."
me · 2026 · read the Spotlight at SageworxSpin up thirty agents before bed. Wake up to the reports and insights done. Knowing which jobs to define, where to delegate, and when to step back in is the whole game, and I've been playing it for decades.
I co-managed a portfolio of 72 brands as Micro-Content Director at VaynerMedia, on Gary Vaynerchuk's early leadership team. Breaking work into clear jobs across dozens of teams at once, delegating, stepping back in where it counted. The medium changed. The muscle didn't.
"Ann Marie isn't just super creative, she knows how to get stuff done. In the marketing world, most creative minds just draw circles in the sand, but Ann Marie is always building stuff, amazing stuff."
My VaynerNet profile · Teams list at the time, and an all-hands from when Vayner was "still small"Working with a diverse team of strategists, producers, technologists, and creatives on Coca-Cola, JCPenney, Kraft, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Cracker Barrel, Alamo, and Fisher-Price. The work ranged from websites that built consumers into the experience to Facebook apps and rich media. It was the Saks Fifth Avenue of social media agencies.
What it gave me: the range that comes from a room where every discipline sits at the same table.
JCPenney's Facebook shop · a monthly-themed storefront, curated weekly and served by demographic. Mad for March, then sweet April.
KraftFoods.com · six months taking the brand from processed to fresh and seasonal. Delicious ideas never go out of season.
Huddle to Fight Hunger · a like was a meal, a touchdown was seven. Twenty million meals for Feeding America, beaten in two months.Co-led the micro-content discipline on Gary's early leadership team, across 72 brands: Mondelez, Hasbro, GE, Del Monte, SlimFast, FOX, Zappos, and so many more. We were considered "scrappy" back then, yet I had 130 community managers and 30 social leads managing our platforms. And social moved fast. Just like AI does today. We had to stay sharp, pivot, and ship all day, every day.
What it gave me: the operating system I now run agents on.
What made Vayner work was that we learned out loud, together. We tested the platforms daily to see what actually resonated, and Gary invested in teaching us: I was in the first BuzzFeed initiative, trained by BuzzFeed on how to write content that travels. I spun up a Facebook page and a newsletter of the best brand social I was seeing so the team could keep up with what was working, and built the Content 101 workflow, where teams made content to find our voice, our themes, and the thresholds for what we could and couldn't say.
What it gave me: define the voice once, and the team writes it a thousand times.
Duran Duran 'Niche' Post · an article I wrote during BuzzFeed training, June 2013. Duran Duran shared it to their FB page that December, and I got a TON of haters because of #17 + #18.
Content Workshop 101 · the questions to ask, and a real threshold: how many Chips Ahoy you are allowed to show at once.
The Micro-Content Continuum · the newsletter I sent round, so the whole team saw the best brand social I was seeing.The website you are currently exploring is a perfect example of how I orchestrate agents as I would a team. Building it, I had one rebuilding a layout from work I did years ago, one arguing with me about how the rails scroll and whether they act appropriately, and one making copy changes and syncing them into the live build. Three briefs I would have handed to three people. Same back and forth, same try-it-agains, only all at once.
What it tells you: you are reading the deliverable and the demo at the same time.
I left agency life to build a fintech startup as CEO and raised the capital myself. Skin in the game makes you a little more honest, with the client and with yourself.
Two of my first advisors tell the story better than I can. Gary Vaynerchuk, who kept pulling me out of the creative box for years and then pushed me to build my first company. And Craig Millon, the Global President from Jack Morton, who signed on as an advisor before I walked out his door. When your ex bosses bet on your next venture, that says more than any reference letter.
"Her ability to always ensure we kept the business objective in mind while developing impactful creative was a true differentiator."
Mass Innovation Nights #102, September 13, 2017 · the will-it team at District Hall, the night we walked away with the favorite company award.Relocated from New York to Boston to build the content discipline from scratch inside a global brand-experience agency: the team, the process, the platform, with Liberty Mutual as the anchor client.
What it gave me: First time outside New York, how to install a content capability, not just run one. Getting uncomfortable gave me the push I needed to leave agency world and start my company, will-it.
The Master This Content Hub helped customers at every experience level and need. Liberty is the lifeline you need when things don't go according to plan.A SaaS estate-planning product, built from zero: business plan and opportunity space, deep qualitative research with users and estate planning professionals, product requirements, UX and design, the go-to-market, the pricing, the pitch, and $45K committed on a SAFE note.
What it gave me: every hat worn at once, first-hand knowledge of running a business and launching a product, and permanent respect for anyone who signs the front of checks.
The problem · 2.6 million people a year settle an estate, 52% of the disputes are over personal items, and 60% of those are never resolved.
The homework · a 127-person survey run by Survata, prototype sessions with caregivers and attorneys, and 60 professional beta testers across 25 states. All of it before I built anything.
will-it.com · the whole site, top to bottom, including the three lines from real users that sold it better than I could.
The product · catalog the things, someone asks for one, they leave a note saying why, you decide. That loop is the whole company.
The numbers · a $172B trust and estates market, three products staged across four years, subscription pricing, and a $200K ask I got $45K of the way to.
@WhoGetsWhat · Humans of New York for your stuff. Real objects, real stories, built to earn trust before the product needed it.The pattern was there long before I could name it. 2008: I made laundry a community. 2016: I made estate planning a product. 2017: I joined a company obsessed with making other companies run leaner. 2025: I joined a movement literally named The Boring Marketer. Running my own company is what taught me to see it, and no other path would have.
What it tells you: I keep choosing the unglamorous thing and making it human. Shiny gets the attention. Boring gets the returns.
Vibe marketing before anyone had a name for it. I was wiring up automations in 2017 for a team obsessed with making other companies run leaner. Same instinct, better tools.
Close to five years as the fractional marketing lead at Leverage, pointing hundreds of founders and small businesses at whatever actually moved their number, and building systems with tools like Process Street, Hubspot, and Zapier to get them there faster.
"She was a highly sought after marketer and strategist because of her record and reputation of driving impact and helping businesses achieve their goals."
Genius Network, Phoenix, 2018 · the Leverage team ran strategy sessions with members that week. I led the marketing ones and spent the rest of it in the room with clients and founders.A company obsessed with making other companies run leaner, and my proving ground for the fractional model: hundreds of founders, startups, and SMBs, each pointed at whatever actually moved their number, with Zapier plumbing built to get them there faster. In 2017.
What it gave me: the fractional playbook I still run, sharpened across every industry imaginable.
The Marketing Visionary Package · the fractional offering I built at Leverage, then rebuilt as my own for web3 clients. Same structure, my name on the second one. Rates redacted.Several bestselling authors. A probate real estate firm. Two social media platforms. A linens brand. And the long tail of small businesses in between, each with a different problem wearing a familiar shape. Then web3 came calling and the same model carried onto the frontier: BurnGhost, Halliday, Quantum Temple, full case files of brand, go-to-market and community work for companies inventing their categories.
What it gave me: pattern recognition, and proof the playbook is portable. The solutions change, but the methods were repeatable.
Just a sampling of a few of the hundreds of founders and small businesses I got to work with. Web2 from 2017 to 2021. Web3 from 2021 thru to my Pass App days.
The 90-Day Marketing Roadmap · the method with a price on it. It closes on “find your shortest path to ROI,” which is where this claim’s headline came from. 2022, not 2026.Discovery → marketing roadmap → prioritize by shortest path to ROI → generate workflows on whatever repeats.
The Method, still in use. 2017 me built with tools that pulled things together. Today I build in Claude Code with MCPs and APIs. Same skeleton, better bones.I've changed cities, industries, and whole technologies. People follow me when I make moves, or I follow them. Great collaborators stick together.
Read more things people say about me on LinkedIn.
We figure out where AI actually fits your work, then build it: agents, workflows, reusable skills, a second brain your whole team can run on. Upskilling included, because I'd rather teach you the system than rent it to you.
Strategy, go-to-market, roadmaps. I plug in at whatever altitude you need, from setting direction with your exec team to rolling up my sleeves alongside yours.
Naming, positioning, voice, visual identity. We find what's true about your company and make it impossible to miss.
Playbooks, content franchises, channel strategy. I've been doing this since brands needed convincing that social was real.
I built my first online community in 2008, 30,000 members strong. The platforms keep changing. What makes people stay doesn't.
Bespoke, for individuals and teams. Weekly conversations, honest feedback, and a sounding board who's probably tried the thing you're considering. The mentor sessions I coordinate and host have drawn more than 1,000 members.
If any of this feels like a fit, please reach out for a chat.
The rules I run to strip the common tells out of AI-assisted writing, built from published AI-detection research. Clone it, drop it in, keep it.
ama-zingco/anti-ai-writing-skillI genuinely hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.
