Authors

Ryan Wynia

Virtuoso of Visioneering
Ryan has two y’s in his name, appropriately symbolic for the balanced and strategically symmetrical insight he provides to every project by thoughtfully asking “why.” He has a great grasp of brand strategy, holding it firmly in his well-manicured fingers. Ryan has a strong competitive streak, so don’t be surprised if he posts the most thoughts. Whoever posts the most thoughts wins. … more »

Michael VanDerAa

Create'v Director
Michael leads our creative team. He is better known as Michael Michael Motorcycle. He has Pedal Power, which keeps the team spinnin’, grinnin’ and winnin’. He keeps track of expression projects on two giant whiteboards, covered with multi-colored circular magnets. Only he truly understands what his system means. Also a photographer at heart, he enjoys shooting his sons. With his camera. … more »

Tim Ellens

Senior Partner, President, Strategic Creative Guy
Tim is one of the founders of CHANGEffect. He’s been designing and strategically communicating for a long time. A really long time. Which equals lots of wisdom and lots of great stories. He also has abnormally long legs, which causes problems for him on airplanes but makes him a great teammate in pick up basketball games and random long jump competitions. … more »

Joe Dascenzo

Partner, Vice President, Mayor of Ideatown
Joe is your typical founder/owner type—always cracking the whip and making people cry. Actually, that’s not true at all. Usually if you’re with Joe and you’re crying, it’s because you’re both laughing so hard. With four kids and one wife, Joe keeps busy. But he’s always available as entertainment for birthdays, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries and other rites of passage. The balloon animals are impressive. … more »

Brian Kagan

Brand Catalyst, Wizard of Wonder[ing]
Brian is our ideation guru. He always finds a way to draw out the goodness from every group he works with. Brian likes to write sentences that contain ellipses (that what these ... are called), to lend ... let’s just say ... emphasis to his statements. When he’s not writing sentences that contain ellipses, he’s most likely spending time with his Bentley. No, that’s not a car. Bentley’s his dog. … more »

Steve Finkill

Strategerizational Architect
Steve is a writer and generally creative guy on our team. He is not creative in what he eats, however. His taste in food is very bland and very plain. But don’t bother him about it. He can be mean. He also wrote this bio, so it’s a little strange that it’s written in third person, but that’s how these things are done. Steve thinks this bio was extremely well written … finely crafted even. … more »

Jon Klinepeter

Account Manager, Señor Rock Star
Jon is one of our account managers. He has tattoos and earrings and plays the guitar in a band when he’s not at the office. But don’t mistake him for a true bad boy, though. He drives a Toyota Camry. A bad boy would ride in on a Harley. Not Jon. He rocks the slightly used blue Camry. And some of his tattoos are about his adorable young sons, which also clashes with the whole bad boy thing. … more »

Melissa Groot

Web Director
Melissa is our web director. One of her greatest strengths is that she brings out the best in the people around her—so we like to call her Mel the Maximizer. When she’s not maximizing, she takes cool pictures with her camera (which is basically bringing out the best in the things she sees). For fun, she watches the white squirrels in the courtyard outside her condo. Seriously.  … more »