Executive Team
Jake is the President of Intertwine Interactive. A born entrepreneur, he founded the business in 2006 with a vision of providing an industry leading online marketing solution combined with an unparalleled company culture. Since inception, his passionate approach to the business has been contagious to businesses and online marketing experts alike, quickly fueling growth and turning his vision into a reality.
Before founding Intertwine, Jake’s professional background includes working for Top 100 Internet Retailer Netshops.com (n.k.a Hayneedle.com) where he gained a vast amount of invaluable experience working in several key roles. His primary responsibility included spending millions of ad dollars annually managing the PPC accounts for Netshops’ several hundred online retail stores. Jake was a key catalyst in developing an algorithm for a best-in-class bidding model that provided the scalability needed to manage ad cost and profitability targets for hundreds of thousands of keywords across Netshops’ many sites. Jake was also a member of an elite information management team for which he was responsible for championing the launch and management of Adobe Web Analytics (formerly Omniture) for Netshops. Jake received his B.S. in Marketing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2004.
Karissa is the VP of Business Development at Intertwine. Karissa spearheads business development initiatives and drives business expansion/collaboration opportunities for the company. She combines the best thought leadership of the consulting world with the leading capabilities of the online marketing services industry to support our clients’ business needs, such as launching new products, repositioning a brand or participating in the social world. Karissa helps clients build better brands by delivering business results through customer experiences.
Before joining Intertwine, Karissa was Partner in Charge of Media at Bozell working on numerous national & regional accounts. She was responsible for ensuring digital media strategies and deliverables met or exceeded the strategic requirements of the client’s quality standards. She also provided industry expertise and thought leadership on new media venues, trends, opportunities and resources. Karissa has an established track record of delivering go-to-market and strategic digital strategies that drive sales revenue, awareness / loyalty, and market share. Karissa is a strategic thinker and problem-solver known for out of the box thinking.
Karissa graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln with a B.A in Broadcast Journalism & Mass Communications.
Nate is the Director of SEO at Intertwine. With over 12 years of SEO experience one could say he was doing SEO work back when it only cost a nickel. Nate is responsible for performing all site audits for new clients, generating monthly reports, and creating inbound links on a monthly basis. Nate has the challenging responsibility of staying abreast of changes in the amorphous SEO industry in order to help his clients maintain their competitive edge.
Before joining Intertwine, Nate was the Senior Marketing Manager at Internet Retailer Top 100 Hayneedle.com where he built a world-class ecommerce marketing team from the ground up including in-house SEO, affiliate, and comparison shopping teams. He has worked on literally hundreds of websites in his career, and has overseen the achievement of #1 rankings for over 100 websites. Under his watch, Hayneedle was recognized by Internet Retailer as the #1 SEO online player in the home living category, and the #4 player in all of e-commerce. Nate has an expert’s grasp of the business metrics that make a company successful and profitable, and has time and again helped companies successfully launch new marketing channels.
Steve Manes is the Director of Affiliate Marketing for Intertwine. Steve specializes in the management of affiliate programs in a wide variety of industries driving an impressive total of over $12 million annually in affiliate sales for our clients. Leveraging his relationships with many top tier affiliate partners, he’s able to quickly build and expand on a program that drives new revenue and customers to his clients’ websites.
Before working at Intertwine, Steve has worked for 11 years in online marketing and business development positions for multiple companies. With significant experience in affiliate marketing, Steve focuses on developing great relationships with advertisers and publishers while growing visits, conversions and revenue. As one of the affiliate marketing managers for Sears Holdings Corporation, he ran the Kmart.com affiliate program and worked on the Sears.com program. Before that, he worked at LinkShare Corporation as an account manager. At LinkShare, he helped grow multiple affiliate programs including six of the top 50 companies in the Internet Retailer top 100. Steve graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in Communication Arts.
Jordan is the Director of Social Media at Intertwine and reigning Miss Web 2.0. She oversees our clients’ Social Media needs, and manages Intertwine’s Social Media channels. Her channel expertise includes, but is not limited to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Blog and Blogger management. She offers clients a fresh perspective, enthusiasm for Social Media and internal motivation that effectively increases brand engagement.
Her professional background includes working for Top 100 Retailer Hayneedle.com, as well as public relations firm, Vic Gutman & Associates. At Hayneedle, she managed client relationships, product distribution decisions, and verbal and visual branding with several high profile media contacts. Her work has been seen on Ellen, Extreme Home Makeover, The Price is Right, Today Show, Wheel of Fortune, and countless others. Jordan has experience coordinating high profile events including the Kathie Lee Gifford Childhelp Hammocks event. Jordan executed the strategic marketing plan for all of Hayneedle’s social media outlets and created multiple high-level social media campaigns to extensively grow Hayneedle’s online presence. Prior to her professional experience, Jordan received her B.S. degree in Marketing from Creighton University in Omaha, NE while playing Division I soccer. During her time at Creighton, she also made time for several philanthropic and extra-curricular activities.
Officially, Jake is Intertwine’s Director of PPC, but he’s better known around here as the PPC Yoda. He holds an impressive list of certifications in Google, Yahoo and Bing’s advertising programs. He oversees the PPC department where he’s responsible for the development and execution of our clients’ comprehensive PPC strategies. Jake specializes in creating optimal PPC account structures, facilitating on-going bid management, and writing compelling ad copy. He has a successful track record in a vast array of verticals. Jake is in constant contact with our agency reps at all major search engines to give our clients the inside track on upcoming product features and information on the latest industry trends.
Before joining Intertwine, Jake was employed by ConAgra Foods where his ambition and hard work earned him 4 promotions in his 8 years of service. In 2007 he was nominated for ConAgra’s CEO award for his role in an initiative that is now saving the company close to one million dollars annually. Jake received his B.S. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2005.
Andy Stappert is the Director of Technical Services at Intertwine; or as we like to call it, the Director of Geekness. He’s responsible for providing technical assistance throughout all of our marketing channels. He also heads up the development of our best in class proprietary tools and services that give our clients a competitive edge in the world of online marketing.
Before joining Intertwine, Andy worked for 10 years as a web designer and developer. His work included creating custom CMS-driven websites and e-commerce stores and developing logos and brand identities for his clients. His jack-of-all-trades skill-set, which includes everything from graphic design to programming to IT, allows him to see projects from all angles and quickly implement the best strategy to move forward.