Our Leadership

Brian Grimes, President

With over 20 years of experience, Brian's passion is providing effective strategic planning for financial businesses of all types, helping them take advantage of prime opportunities when times are good and find ways to prosper when the markets could be better.

Brian has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Coast Bank from July 2006 to May 2007, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Coast Bank from December 2003 to July 2006 and Senior Vice President and Controller of Coast Bank from March 2003 to December 2003. From 1998 to 2003, Mr. Grimes served as Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Republic Bank, St. Petersburg, Florida. He held various financial positions at Republic Bank from 1986 to 1998. Mr. Grimes received his Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of South Florida.

Bryn Tindall, CEO

Mr. Tindall's commitment, drive, determination and intelligence lead him to sit in executive offices and board rooms within diverse companies. He has extensive and long-standing business relationships that span executives and management teams from companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Scooter Store, Deloitte & Touché, Timex, Time Warner, Dooney & Bourke to Chico's FAS, Cushman Wakefield, Cendant Corporation, CIGNA and many more.

Mr. Tindall is a popular speaker on the strategic marketing and technology speaking circuit. Furthermore, he regularly contributes to industry trade publications and provides marketing and e-business consulting for local and regional business publications.

Mr. Tindall has founded a number of companies and organizations, including Peer360, creator of the well-known digital ecommunications products suite; Horizon Marketing Group, a marketing consulting firm creating custom solutions for clients in the online and offline worlds; Contact Advocate, an events marketing consultancy and networking organization that is responsible for connecting thousands of business people throughout New England.

Previously, Mr. Tindall served as National Marketing Director for Homes & Land Publishing Corporation. In this position, he developed several highly successful online and traditional media promotions, as well as creating and managing their award-winning Web site. Mr. Tindall also served as National Marketing Director for Modem Media, a nationally renowned new media agency based in Connecticut. At Modem Media, Mr. Tindall developed special promotions, coordinated national product rollouts and provided marketing consultation for businesses ranging from JC Penney to Pepsi.

Bob Watson, COO

Bob Watson is a unique breed: with a ten-year tenure at Unisys, Bob combines executive management skills, sales and marketing experience with a strong understanding of technology.

It is this with this perspective that in 2000 he co-founded a powerful consumer-oriented email marketing firm, Peer 360. Bob's acumen in product development and management has helped to propel Peer360 from a small e-commerce company to a business that today integrates strategic e-marketing with customer relationship management, and handles over 1,500 clients including GE and Wrigley Corporation.

As President of Peer 360 Bob oversees the company's corporate technology asset planning and capabilities and also provides the creative vision that guides Peer360 in its continued success.

Prior to Peer 360 Bob founded, Bob Allen Watson Interactive (AWI), one of the first web site design firms in Florida that handled clients who were "early adopters" of the internet. Before starting his own company, Bob held sales management and marketing positions at Unisys. During that time, he won a number of awards for exceeding company sales goals. Bob later went on to the position of regional program manager in the Southeast United States for Unisys' left that position to pursue his passion for the internet and eventually founded.

Bob holds a Bachelor of Management Information Systems degree from the University of South Florida.

Bill Harper, CTO

As Chief Technology Officer for Vanguard, Bill Harper translates the needs of our clients into custom web-based computer systems. His experience in programming, graphic design, photography, and publishing make him a natural for the web.

Bill comes to Vanguard from a 12-year career at Homes & Land Publishing where he headed up the technical and design teams that built HOMES.COM, a real estate web site ranked by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top three on the web. His work on the site, which serves up a quarter million homes to 15-20,000 surfers every day, has prepared him to handle web sites of any size and complexity.

Bill has degrees in business, art, and humanities from University of Central Florida and advanced degrees in information science and humanities from Florida State University.

Monica Kozak, Vice President

As Vice President for Vanguard, Monica oversees the Marketing and Public Relations divisions. She joins the Vanguard team after more than a decade working in marketing, media and public relations. Her experience includes tenures with organizations such as the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Monica has provided sales, marketing and media services to nationally recognized clients including Heineken, United Airlines, AT&T, Oscar Mayer and Famous Footwear. She has worked closely with local, national and international media organizations resulting in press coverage appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Sun Times, Sports Illustrated, ESPN and CBS, to name a few.

Additionally, Monica has provided color commentary for both television and radio sports broadcasts. She also hosted a weekly television show and daily radio segments.

Prior to joining Vanguard, Monica served as Director of Marketing for Apple Health Care, Inc., recognized by Consumer Reports as the leading private provider of health care services in its field.

Monica holds Bachelors degrees in English Literature and Political Science from the University of Montana. She is a published author and is recognized in the Who's Who Registry of Executives and Professionals.

Paul Butcher, Vice President

Paul brings to Vanguard a depth of experience in relationship and partnership based sales and marketing accumulated over 15 years in sales and marketing management, and 5 years as a partner with partnership marketing specialists, Affinity Partners.

His practical understanding of how to help a company and its employees understand, develop and make best use of relationships and partnerships to drive sales has proved very valuable to many companies - small and large.

At Affinity Partners Paul provided strategy advice to a diverse range of companies. He also spearheaded the implementation of a number of successful partnership development programs on behalf of clients ranging in size from start ups to Fortune 1000.

Prior to Affinity, Paul spent twelve years with the sports and entertainment group IMG in a variety of senior business development and marketing roles. At IMG he was instrumental in the growth of several new businesses including the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, Stewart Racing (now Jaguar Formula 1 Team) and more recently mysportsguru.com (now a part of Active.com).

Steve McLoughlin, Regional Vice President

Mr. McLoughlin brings more than 14 years experience creating successful traditional and interactive marketing programs in both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business arenas. His experience leading marketing initiatives as a corporate client and managing high-profile client engagements at leading agencies gives him a unique perspective that combines strategic and creative marketing insight within the rigors of corporate processes.

By combining his background in strategic marketing and 6 Sigma Quality Certification, he is able to help his clients develop innovative marketing concepts and realize these ideas through closed-loop, measurable processes.

Before joining Vanguard, Mr. McLoughlin led client engagements with GE, Mass Mutual and Genworth Financial while with email content management firm H2F Media. Previously, Mr. McLoughlin served with GE Commercial Finance as Vice President, Marketing & E-business Communications, leading projects to improve the effectiveness of high impact sales and marketing initiatives. In addition, he served as Vice President of Online Marketing for GE Financial Network, leading an award-winning guerilla marketing program, Tossed & Found, as well as other Internet marketing initiatives, including online advertising, e-mail, data-driven programs and affiliate marketing. Several of Mr. McLoughlin's projects earned recognition for best practices, including e-mail marketing, a closed-loop marketing/lead management system, a campaign management process, cross-sell programs, and several sales incentive programs.

Prior to GE, Mr. McLoughlin worked with interactive agency Organic, Inc., as an Account Director leading key accounts such as Avis, Deja.com, the U.S. Navy and First USA. He began his marketing career leading projects for clients such as Labatt USA, Nine West, Inc., and PepsiCo Foods, with marketing communications firm Zink Communications-Visual Design Group.

Michele Grimes, Regional Vice President

Michele brings many years of marketing experience to the table and has powered the company forward, contributing substantially to our growth. Michele has served as both Relationship and Project Manager for some of our largest clients such as Chico's, Nielsen Media Group, New York Life, Marriott, Cryo-Cell, and many others. She is our Real Estate and Home Builders Practice leader and banking/ financial specialist, where her prior marketing experience brings valuable insight to our clients in this vertical. Additionally, Michele has been with our email marketing company, Peer360, since its inception.

Michele's combination of experience and creativity give her the tool set and capability to develop, implement and successfully manage projects for our clients while exceeding their marketing needs.

Before joining Vanguard, Michele developed the business and personal skills our clients have come to know, respect, and rely on while working at the Republic Bank of Florida. Michele worked in their Electronic Banking department, and was responsible for their Internet Banking while overseeing numerous web sites within the company. Michele also created a web site, "Cool Bank For Kids", to help students and teachers learn about banking, while it simultaneously supported the Florida Sunshine State Standards for Education.

Michele graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences. She remains an ardent supporter and member of Gator Nation.

Keith Atchinson, Managed Services Director

As Director of Managed Services Keith develops, manages, and implements eMarketing solutions to a broad customer base across the country and throughout Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Keith has managed the development and implementation of countless successful eMarketing campaigns and continues to manage some of Vanguard's largest clients such as Diageo, Carter's, American Patriot Insurance Agency, OshKosh, Heineken USA and CARTUS.

Keith draws upon his knowledge of current industry issues, competitive analysis, and Vanguard's vision for the future to strategically market our clients' internal and external communication using our Peer360 suite of comprehensive software. As the Director of Managed Services, Keith conveys our message with integrity and demonstrates how our ingenuity helps our clients to successfully reach their short-term and long-term goals for future development. Keith has extensive experience with taking our clients global with our Peer360 suite of products. His boundaries are limitless.

Formerly, a Marketing Manager with the Connecticut based legal sevices firm, Daticon, Inc., Keith was responsible for the daily operations of their nationwide marketing campaigns. He also developed and managed the implementation of strategic marketing initiatives including brand and corporate identity creation, development of public relation opportunities and new product launches in to the market.

Keith graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Business Management and Marketing from St. Michaels College in Vermont.

Chris Uzzo, VP of Search Marketing & Analytics

Chris Uzzo is Vanguard's SEO specialist. His work with clients helps them achieve strategic and optimal search engine results. This often involves devising strategies to increase natural search engine rankings as well as crafting pay-per-click campaigns that work both with search engine placements and text ads in key online news and content sites. It's all about optimizing your online presence.

Chris looks at the web as a marketing tool, and his search strategies -- as well as his best practices for using your site as a marketing tool by including key conversion points -- all make for a very compelling case to revisit your web-site - to improve what we call your "visible" and "invisible" space.

Of course Chris has experience designing and developing internet and multimedia solutions such as; web sites, email marketing campaigns, search engine optimization and marketing campaigns, and graphic design solutions. And he's completely fluent in coding languages such as HTML, ASP, PERL, PHP, VBScript, CSS, C++, SQL, and more. Yet it is in combining his design and analytical skills, that Chris is able to help clients develop innovative web marketing programs that are both esthetically pleasing and effectively executed.

Chris was formerly the Webmaster for a state funded non-profit agency where he managed five web sites, headed up email marketing programs, and managed company databases. He has also worked as a search engine marketing specialist for eVision, a web design and search engine marketing company while successfully starting and running his own web design company.

Chris is recognized as a Qualified Google Advertising Professional.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from the University of Massachusetts and is currently completing a master's degree in computer science at Southern Connecticut State University.

Jordan Falcone, Operations Director

Jordan Falcone joined Vanguard in February of 2006 and is now the Director of Operations. Through this role Jordan oversees production timelines and project assignments for the creative team. As well, Jordan manages Vanguard's accounting team.

Her background includes an education in multimedia and Internet marketing. Jordan's experience ranges from event planning to web marketing as well as traditional marketing.