Alec Foster

Experience

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  MMA Global

  Responsible AI Subject Matter Expert

  Sep 2023 - Present

  Comprised of over 800 member companies globally and 14 regional offices, the MMA is the only marketing trade association that brings together the full ecosystem of marketers, tech providers and sellers working collaboratively to shape the future.

  • Led the development of a comprehensive Responsible AI program for the marketing industry, setting new industry benchmarks for ethical AI use.
  • Created data-driven Responsible AI frameworks, templates, guides, and tools tailored for marketing professionals to implement AI responsibly.
  • Authored and curated extensive educational content, including research studies, webinars, blog posts, and interactive workshops, to enhance industry-wide understanding of ethical AI practices.
  • Conducted extensive interviews with over 10 executives across marketing, data, ethics, and policy roles, leveraging their insights to refine project concepts, ensuring alignment with broader strategic goals.
  • Executing a strategic initiative to evaluate and rank marketing AI use cases, optimizing for value creation, customer experience, and cost savings in the marketing domain.
  • Coordinated partnerships and membership with other responsible tech associations, such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).
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  AI Alignment, Inc.

  Head of Marketing and Public Policy

  Feb 2023 - Sep 2023

  AI Alignment, Inc. is a California public benefit corporation—a small research organization dedicated to building trust and ethical alignment within artificial intelligence. Our mission is to ensure that AI systems are aligned with human values and goals, particularly in the defense industry where the use of AI—in every advanced nation—is now a standard feature of high-tech warfare. We advocate a model-centric approach to alignment. We are partnering with defense contractors to foster maximum safety through transparency, accountability, and aligned agency. Join us in this critical mission to build a secure and ethical future for all.

  • Spearheaded the creation of initial website and policy platform, focusing on building trust and ethical alignment in AI.
  • Orchestrated outreach strategy to build partnerships with industry leaders in AI and defense.
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  Creednz

  Fractional CMO

  Oct 2022 - May 2023

  In our present day and age, fraudsters are becoming more advanced. The risks of fraud and loss of funds are becoming a daily reality that finance teams need to deal with, whether it be the external fraudsters that are pretending to be someone you work with, a vendor of yours that gets hacked, or even an employee gone rouge, your financial controls are always taking a beating, and you always need to stay ahead of the curve. Creednz was built around protecting corporations’ financial controls in treasury, account payables, and account receivables and bringing them ahead of the curve. Enabling you to ensure that the right people have the right level of access to your bank accounts, enforcing your treasury policies, and helping your people with a technology that can validate that they are transacting with the right companies.

  • Developed marketing collateral catering to clients and investors in FinTech.
  • Translated AI-based fraud detection and pattern recognition feature set into consumer use cases.
  • Recruited and managed relationships with content writers and graphic designers to execute SEO-optimized organic search strategy.
  • Collaborated cross-functionally with the product team to hone product marketing.
  • Devised growth strategies, GTM initiatives, ideal customer profiles, and marketing campaigns to convert customers at all stages of the acquisition funnel.
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  Canonic Security

  Fractional CMO

  Mar 2022 - Feb 2023

  In a world dominated by an attack surface composed of apps, non-human identities, and low code integrations built by citizen developers - SaaS application security is set to have a disruptive impact on business productivity for years to come. Acquired by Zscaler in 2023.

  • Developed all acquisition and analytics programs from scratch.
  • Transitioned company to PLG acquisition model.
  • Collaborated cross-functionally with engineering and product teams to address and resolve growth marketing problems.
  • Integrated unique expertise among employees to attain required results through unique designs, media, and technology.
  • Established and monitored marketing channel analytics to present weekly metrics reports to company leadership.
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  FairShake

  Special Projects Lead (Marketing/Product/AI/Advocacy)

  Dec 2019 - Feb 2022

  FairShake is a resource for Americans whose rights have been violated by big corporations. Our small, mission-driven team has done the research and produced droves of content about common ways that consumers get taken advantage of. We focus on some of the biggest companies across industries like telecom, personal finance, travel, and others. We’ve seen too many consumers taken for hundreds, or even thousands of dollars when companies don’t keep their promises about things like pricing, promotions, junk fees, and service quality. Often in this situation, even if you’re in the right, it can feel daunting and overwhelming if a company refuses to make things right. We help you learn about your options to fight back, and recover financially, when your rights are violated.

  • Planned multiple strategic growth campaigns in Legal Tech, such as a consumer advocacy hub through WebFlow and ActionNetwork, an automated consumer newswire through WordPress, and consumer-compliant website for addressing 25K submissions.
  • Designed/managed in-house affiliate programs to drive qualified leads and improve partnerships with nonprofits and advocacy organizations.
  • Forged partnerships with digital vendors and referral partners to deliver maximum solutions.
  • Reduced claimant waiting time by 50%, improved assignment accuracy by 70%, and saved 20 weekly moderation hours by building AI-powered machine learning models for evaluating claims.
  • Created a referral program from scratch and built it to become FairShake’s second-largest acquisition channel.
  • Managed reports in customer success operations to drive overall company health and growth.
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  Jumbo Privacy

  User Experience Consultant

  Jan 2019 - Jul 2019

  Jumbo solves privacy’s biggest design problem by providing a single, simple interface that gives you an easy way to access your settings from one place. The app can delete old Tweets and Facebook/Instagram posts, clear your Google search history regularly, clean out all of the voice recordings Amazon has stored based on your interactions with Alexa, set your Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon accounts to the most private settings possible, reduce telemarketing calls, blur your home on Google Street View, restore a stolen identity, block trackers, detect data leaks, and protect users on insecure wi-fi networks with a free VPN.

  • Examined UI elements, including CTAs, page layouts, banners, page flows, page designs, and target links for landing pages.
  • Defined product roadmaps by accumulating and analyzing users’ and researchers’ insights to increase knowledge of development team.
  • Built storyboards to design innovative project plans for clients and senior management.
  • Initiated effective brand voice across social media and email marketing as well as authored in-depth explainers for complex consumer privacy priorities.
  • Developed multi-year feature roadmap for engineering team based on research and community feedback.
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  Hustle

  Growth Marketing Manager

  Mar 2017 - Jan 2018

  Hustle empowers organizations to humanize communication, maximize engagement efforts, and build meaningful relationships with their audiences. Hustle helps organizations reach people where they are right now in the ways they want to connect. Today, that means personalized text messages and video stories that inspire and inform people to take action, bolstered by tools and analytics that maximize effectiveness.

  • Organized events and conference exhibitions to promote product expansion to new industries. Monitored conversion funnel performance to optimize marketing acquisition programs.
  • Spearheaded live-streamed events, panels, and conferences to foster strong ties with customers, resellers, and third-party vendors.
  • Managed PR and digital advertising agency relationships.
  • Successfully relaunched brand and migrated website domain by leading team during pivotal Series A growth period.
  • Oversaw performance of conversion funnel, making constant improvements to Marketo acquisition programs.
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  Google Jigsaw

  Associate Product Marketing Manager (20%)

  Jun 2015 - Mar 2017

  With so much of our world existing online, the stakes for the free exchange of information on the internet have never been higher. Jigsaw combines cutting-edge research with experimental technology to identify emerging issues—from censorship and harassment to disinformation and violent extremism—that threaten open societies.

  • Initiated multilingual search and display campaigns for Project Shield, resulting in a 200% increase in applications from independent journalists.
  • Guided marketing and SEO for "Average Mohamed" counter-radicalization video series helping Islamic youth resist ISIS recruitment, resulting in over 120,000+ additional views.
  • Executed $X,000/day paid search campaign and SEO implementation for the rebranding of Google Ideas to Jigsaw, driving X00,000 visits to new website through search and display ads.
  • Designed creative assets, wrote communications, and measured campaign performance against KPIs.
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  Google

  Public Policy and Government Relations (20%)

  Oct 2014 - Dec 2016

  Google is a global technology company that specializes in internet-related services and products including web-based search and display advertising tools, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

  • Coordinated public policy advocacy campaigns that placed regulations on government surveillance.
  • Defined positions on encryption, copyright, and surveillance reforms, achieving results through omnichannel content roadmap.
  • Liaised with different content and PR agencies to produce innovative and engaging calls to action.
  • Utilized $100,000/month advertising budget and 2M person email list to drive consumers to action.
  • Managed content roadmap, coalition partnerships, website redesign, social media strategy, and advertising campaigns while tracking campaign performance against KPI targets.
  • Enacted advocacy summits, live-streamed interviews, AMAs, and presentations to inform public about legislation.Coordinated public policy advocacy campaigns that placed regulations on government surveillance. Defined positions on encryption, copyright, and
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  Google

  Sales Support Lead, AdX Policy

  Aug 2014 - Mar 2017

  Google is a global technology company that specializes in internet-related services and products including web-based search and display advertising tools, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

  • Oversaw cross-functional meetings with engineering and product to drive changes in response to new policies and regulations.
  • Determined thousands of cases in sensitive categories such as healthcare by operating as lead policy support specialist for Ad Exchange (AdX).
  • My team was responsible for user advocacy, ensuring compliance with international laws and internal policies, and restoring trust in the digital ad ecosystem.
  • Addressed and resolved 10,000+ disputes while leading team of 6 ad policy support specialists and developing exceptional content on sensitive topics such as financial services, gambling, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals.
  • Collaborated with stakeholders in legal, engineering, and product teams to execute cross-functional projects and ensure regulatory compliance.
  • Monitored and reported on team performance, and communicated product policy updates and policy changes to stakeholders.
  • Provided advanced ad campaign optimization across the Google ad ecosystem for Google's largest clients, driving over $X00m in annual recurring revenue.
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  City of New York

  Intern, Mayor's Office of Digital Strategy

  Jan 2013 - May 2013

  The NYC Mayor's Office of Digital Strategy makes civic digital services easier to use and access, and connects with New Yorkers through a 360 omnichannel strategy.

  • Helped launch the #MadeInNY program to support NYC's startup ecosystem and coordinated events with the civic tech community.
  • Managed social media marketing across the City's 280+ social media channels, and personally wrote over 300 tweets (and 20 haikus) as @NYCgov to its 1.1M followers.
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  The White House

  Intern, Presidential Personnel Office

  Sep 2012 - Dec 2012

  The executive branch of the US government is responsible for carrying out and enforcing laws passed by Congress. The Office of Presidential Personnel helps the President recruit, vet, and nominate thousands of highly qualified appointees who work to advance the presidential agenda in federal agencies across the U.S. government.

  • Conducted comprehensive background checks on candidates for presidential appointment, including cabinet-level positions, and assessed them in interviews.
  • Acted as primary point of contact for many current and ex-presidential appointees working in science/tech/transportation.
  • Acted as secretary of the Presidential Innovation Cohort, which oversaw the Presidential Innovation Fellows and U.S. Digital Service programs.