Huggable People 10: Geoff Livingston Raising Awareness for World Food Day & a Marketer with the Heart of a Dad

Geoff Livingston Head ShotGeoff Livingston is our latest Huggable Person. From his bio: “He is an author, public speaker and marketing strategist who has dedicated his career to helping mindful companies and nonprofits achieve social change.” He’s also a husband, a dad and an all around good guy. I sat in on a talk of his at my first social media event in PodCamp Philly 2007, and he made a great impression then. He knows his stuff, and communicates it with ease. I heard him speak this fall at #PodCampEast and he’s still a dynamic speaker with a new book out, Marketing In the Round (co-authored with Gini Dietrich*), and new social change projects up his sleeve including Hunger to Hope this Tuesday, October 16, 2012.

Kathy Korman Frey and the Hot Mommas Project Helps Women & Girls Grow and Rock

Kathy Korman Frey, founder of the Hot Momma’s Project has created an award-winning process using a dynamic online site and in-person events to create a global leadership movement – linking strong women, and their stories, to mentor Generation Y and X women and girls. The results? Measurable increases in confidence and key success factors of 66 percent in three hours, and up to 200 percent in a semester/full program. I love this concept, and her passion and personality come through in the Q&A, and in Shashi Bellamkonda’s world and mine – that makes Kathy Huggable People. By the way, their new digital classroom launches Wednesday, June 13, 2012 be sure to check it out.

The Hot Mommas Project is the recipient of a National Case Award from Coleman Foundation and has been featured in The Washington Post Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Forbes, Scholastic, MariaShriver.com, NPR, among others.Continue Reading

HuggablePeople #8: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends Helps Entrepreneurs Learn and Connect

head shot of entreprenerr anita-campbellAnita Campbell, CEO and Publisher of SmallBizTrends.com, makes our huggable people list because she loves entrepreneurs and everything I have seen her do supports small business owners, usually in both a useful and creative way. Whether it is launching her Small Business Book Awards four years ago (the 2012 awards garnered 55,000 votes) to ensure that books on small business (and their authors) get a chance to shine, or writing her own tweets and speaking at conferences directly to entrepreneurs – you can tell she loves what she does. I have also seen her be generous with both praise and assistance to well-known individuals and just regular folks; she excels at building authentic relationships and win-win opportunities. Her site’s tagline is: “small business success … delivered daily,” is a promise on which I think she delivers well. To me that makes her “huggable people.”Continue Reading

Huggable People # 7 Frank Warren: Post Secrets Changing Lives

Frank Warren Post Secrets - holding a post cardFrank Warren had an interesting, off-the-wall idea in 2004…he handed out a few pre-addressed postcards asking people to mail him a secret that was true and had never been spoken before. Called the PostSecret Project*, the site he built to share those secrets has turned into the largest advertisement-free Blog in the world: PostSecret.com, and a book series, 7 Webby Awards and an upcoming play. The site is simple, no “about” page, nothing to buy, nothing but a few sentences on the home page to tell people what the site is about, a visitor count – as of May 2012 – 529,040,867; and a half a million secrets shared, with more on the way.Continue Reading

Huggable people #6 CASUDI: Designing Success One Connection or Rain Drop at a Time

Caroline Di Dieggo on a boat in ItalyI first met Caroline Di Diego AKA @CASUDI over 3 years ago when I introduced her to Twitter chats, and told her the “facts of Twitter life.” What makes CASUDI huggable people is I have seen her give back many times over; reaching out to help Social Media newbies and Entrepreneurs – and as she says, “building bridges between people, which translates into connecting approriate individuals with fruitful & lucrative endeavors and visa versa;” as she dubs it “Designing Success.”

CASUDI, CEO/Partner of esse group, is a multi-faceted Entrepreneur and is on my huggable people list for many reasons, but the one that stands out for me is her non-profit, Bank-On-Rain, which she co-founded with Mike Williamson. Bank-On-Rain is a small and nimble non-profit consultancy, which helps other larger (perhaps less efficient) organizations implement projects related to solving the shortage of drinking water in developing countries.Continue Reading