Storytellers have stories too.
Our stories are just as “crazy creative” as we are.
Get to know us.
Olivia Joel | Chief Marketing Officer
Olivia is full of energy and personality. She runs our 24X7 email support operations and usually surprises our customers when they receive an email at 3 AM from her. She lives our 7 core values day in and day out. When you meet her, you will notice, there is something different about her. She is passionate, full of energy, funny and incredibly creative. Just the kind of people we enjoy working with. Olivia brings years of customer care experience to AppealCulture and helps us move forward in the right direction. Not only does she enjoy helping our customers, she is also involved in the creative process as well as administrative side of things. Her thinking outside the box ability is her most admired quality. Olivia also enjoys traveling and so far she has been to Germany, Japan, Australia, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Jordan, U.A.E., Malta, Austria, India, and Bulgaria.
Olivia graduated with a B.A. in Business Administration from James Madison University – School of Business. In her spare time she enjoys painting and doing volunteer work for local non-profits. She brings 10+ years of experience working for non-profits and her incredible knowledge of the industry has helped AppealCulture deliver some amazingly successful projects to various non-profits. Olivia’s passion for customer care brought her to AppealCulture and she has been an integral part of our family and our support strategy.
Olivia is very organized, hard working, and actively works with clients on their support and administrative needs. Her hands-on approach to each problem makes her really valuable to us and to our clients. Olivia loves watching old classics, black and white movies and you will often find her singing along Elvis Presley’s songs in her office.
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Nabeel Ahmed
Chief Storyteller | Co-Founder & Executive Consultant
Nabeel is an entrepreneur by heart and the fuel that fires AppealCulture each day. Nabeel launched his first business venture at 10 when he started a bookstore/library at his parents’ house and introduced the concept of “renting” books in an area where there were no libraries. His personal book collection exceeded over 5,000 books by the time he turned 16. Nabeel has a voracious appetite for knowledge and is fearless when it comes to learning something new or embarking on a new venture, which he has researched for months and months on end.
At 23, Nabeel founded a software consulting company, Innovesia which primarily focused on government contracting for state and federal agencies. He worked on contracts for the Department of Veteran Affairs and local and state agencies in District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland. For the past 15 years, Nabeel has been successfully delivering marketing and business technology solutions to clients like Siemens, Network Solutions, MCI Worldcom, Smithsonian Institute, Orbital, SunRocket, TMNG Global, and many other small and mid size businesses. Nabeel’s passion for creative work, as well as building amazing teams and helping small business owners led him to found & grow AppealCulture. He is always involved in the creative aspect of projects, but also has a keen mind for the overall strategy and vision.
At AppealCulture, Nabeel’s job entails dealing with tough issues with determination and brutal honesty and moving the company forward while living the 7 Core Values of the company. Nabeel also lives a few other lives, contributing as a father, writer, speaker, musician, volunteer and an amateur photographer.
Nabeel enjoys music, creative work, playing cricket and board games with his seven-year-old son, helping others achieve their dreams, and occasionally an order of soft chicken tacos from Chipotle. Nabeel offers strategic guidance and support on as needed basis.
Ray Van Hilst
Sr. Communications Consultant
Ray is an interesting person. When you first meet him you feel welcome. He is engaging and he is attentive. Ray brings years of solid marketing communications experience to AppealCulture family. His expertise in online communications and integrating the latest web technologies with solid business and marketing strategy are a great asset to our team.
Ray has extensive experience in strategic planning, web and content development, blogging and social media technologies, collateral development and event management. He brings a unique skill set that combines developing strategic plans with tactical implementation that gets results. Ray’s background includes marketing communications for an association technology company as well as working with a number of associations including the American Institute of Architects, CoreNet Global, NAIOP, and The Endocrine Society on membership, social media and events focused projects.
Along the way his other experience has included working with diverse for profit companies such as The Home Depot, RIDGID and Ryobi power tools and live entertainment including Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Disney On Ice.
Ray is a frequent blogger and commentator on technology and social media including all the cool things you can do with it including membership and event marketing, saving time and money, online marketing, social media, communications, and business strategy.
Jerusha Ghazanfari
Director of Advanced Services [Sr. Media Consultant]
It’s not very often that you meet someone who can talk for hours about conservation efforts in ecologically-fragile regions of the developing world and also tell you about the current sync rate for music in films and television. When you meet and talk to Jerusha though, you find just that. Jerusha brings a wealth of knowledge to the AppealCulture family as a Senior Media Consultant.After graduating from Belmont University with a bachelor’s degree in Music, Jerusha landed a highly coveted music publishing position with Gotee Records, an independent record label known for its diverse, cutting-edge artists, in Nashville in 2001. Over the next five years, she supervised a staff of songwriters, managed the publishing company’s annual budget, license requests, compilations and other copyright issues, as well as promoted and successfully secured song placements in film, television and interactive media until deciding to focus on her other passion–international development. In 2005, Jerusha moved to Washington, DC to complete her master’s degree in International Affairs at American University’s School of International Service.
Since then, Jerusha has worked with some of the most renowned international non-profit organizations in the region in various development capacities, including grant writing and reporting, foundation cultivation/relations and event planning. Jerusha’s creative background as well as her knowledge of the non-profit world – among many other things – is a major contribution to the AppealCulture family. As Senior Media Consultant, Jerusha uses her fundraising experience to advise the company on government grant opportunities and support business development efforts, as well as her background in promotion and management to provide creative insight and strategy for AppealCulture’s clients.
In her spare time, Jerusha enjoys traveling, writing music, watching cheesy Bollywood movies and pretending she can cook Persian food. And when requested, she can sing opera at high enough pitches to make small children cry and shatter single-pane windows.
Faizan Azmat
Sr. Business Developer
Faizan received his BS in Computer Science and MS in Finance from Southern New Hampshire University, NH. Faizan has worked for multinational firms in Dallas, Chicago and Boston areas before moving to Washington DC.Faizan brings a lot of seasoned perspective to our day to day chaos. In his personal time he enjoys listening to music and watching comedies.
Ladan Nekoomaram
Content Developer
Writing and developing content is a huge part of what we do here at AppealCulture. Who would be a better fit than Ladan who grew up wanting to become a journalist in the most traditional sense of the word. She loves to tell stories, she loves to write, she loves snooping around and she loves to educate others. When she was sixteen she got a “Letter to the Editor” published in TIME magazine and since then had the goal of getting a full-length story in there once again. She went on to work at three local magazines, two television stations and an array of student media at DePauw University in Indiana. She then decided to continue her education at American University’s School of Communication with hopes of becoming an international affairs reporter and uncovering important stories about women, human rights, religion and justice in the Middle East.
But just as the journalism and communications fields have evolved so drastically with innovations with the web and social media, so too has her outlook on journalism. American University introduced her to the new journalism toolkit, including content management systems, Adobe graphics programs, multimedia, personal branding and social media. She soon became enthralled and obsessed with using these tools to do her traditional work as she worked at J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. RFE/RL gave her the opportunity to write about foreign policy, interview her idol, Christiane Amanpour and help the company jumpstart their new media footprint. She brought her knowledge of social media marketing and multimedia to every project since then.
After graduation she became a stringer for The Houston Chronicle in Washington, D.C. among other web consulting and internship projects. Recently, she obtained a job at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in online communications maintaining their website, social media and daily newsletter. In her spare time, she loves to blog, explore Washington, D.C., travel, searching for good Persian food, and attend Washington-area journalism events put on by the Online News Association.
