Stoking the fire.

Mike has spent most of his career on both client side and agencies in B2B, B2C, international and export marketing. After graduating Dalhousie University, Mike left for greener pastures in London, England where he worked at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency on such great brands as NatWest Bank, Teacher’s Whisky, Kraft/ General Foods, Rolex, Unilever and Pizza Hut. Upon his return to Canada, he led the transformation of CCL (now Colour) on brand building work for Atlantic Lottery, Keith’s, Sobeys, Aliant and the Province of Nova Scotia.

After several years in the IT and technology fields, where he built strategic vendor relationships with Microsoft, IBM, Novell, HP and Cisco, Mike started Charcoal Marketing to help small and medium sized enterprises access the web to grow their businesses.

Mike is a self professed "marketing guy", who loves to combine creativity and clever marketing to leverage business success. In his 25+ years in the marketing field, he has co-authored one book, took a company public and proudly registered his name on a Canadian patent.

A graduate of Saint Mary’s University with a degree in Marketing, Mike has pursued his passions by helping entrepreneurs, small businesses and startups grow and flourish. His quest lead him to Charcoal where he has honed his marketing and technical skills the past 3 years.

He enjoys helping businesses realize their dreams using proven marketing fundamentals and techniques. Mike’s strong organizational skills allows him to manage a variety of complex projects that involve multiple teams or individuals.

When he’s not learning or leading, you’ll find him on the water pursuing his other passion - sailing.

With a background in both marketing and entrepreneurship, Nancy excels in the creative-services world with a panache for style and design. Her internal chronometer for efficient resource management and effective communication inherently align her with project management and account director roles.

Adept at managing multiple high-impact projects at once, Nancy's capacity for adaptability in the face of unpredictable and ever-present shifts in deadlines and expectations is rivalled only by her unfalteringly pleasant demeanour.

As an Account Director at Charcoal Marketing, the typical scope of Nancy's responsibilities includes engaging with clients on planning, problem solving, development, and overall execution.

Lauren received her Bachelor of Public Relations and Certificate in Marketing from Mount Saint Vincent University, before heading to Oakfield and then Ashburn Golf Courses as a Communications Manager.

Calm under fire, she’s a great Project Manager with a zest for details, multi-tasking and timeliness. Lauren is a great ‘high concept’ visual storyteller, as well as an accomplished photographer. But our greater excitement comes from her PR and communications skills, and her persuasive writing abilities.

After hours, Lauren can be found standup paddle boarding on a lake somewhere (she always has one in the back of her car) or finding new hiking trails and amazing sunsets to photograph.

Max Sinnis is a social media and email marketing specialist with a penchant for new technologies and using digital hubs to enhance the human experience.

A marketing major with a Business Administration diploma, Max has spent much of his career adding layers of knowledge to his marketing strategies, pursuing certifications with Hubspot, CPSA (Canadian Professional Sales Association), and Google Partners respectively.

In 2013, Max worked alongside the team of directors responsible for the Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference of the same year, which hosted Scott Stratten of UnMarketing, and Gary Vaynerchuk of VaynerMedia – major players in the digital marketing space.

More recently, Max has been mentoring NSCC students on social media and marketing alike, speaking at colleges on inbound-marketing related topics, and lending his insight to those who would follow in his footsteps.

Peter is a front-end design specialist, working in the web development industry for close to 15 years. A background in freelancing and graphic design has afforded Peter a portfolio spanning multiple clients and organizations with needs ranging from minor tweaks and consultation to full website development or redesign.

Working with Coda and Adobe's suite of tools, Peter participates in a site's execution from conceptualization to launch - presenting visualized design strategies and crafting wireframes for an optimized UX early in a site's life cycle, to writing by clean, semantic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or developing code in multiple CMSs to bring a site to life.

When he's not building cutting edge websites, Peter can be found on his potter's wheel, producing beautiful hand crafted porcelain ceramics.