Jason Brown - Director of Marketing, Visit Hershey & Harrisburg
Jason Brown came to Hershey as a stage manager. He interned in stage management at Juilliard, worked a season at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and stage-managed resident shows at Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Hersheypark. Hershey Entertainment & Resorts then kept him fifteen years. He managed entertainment and special events at the park, then concerts and family shows at the 30,000-seat Hersheypark Stadium and the 12,000-seat Giant Center. In 2007 he moved into marketing as promotions manager, growing value-added media promotions to $5.5 million a year across more than 75 TV and radio stations. He was part of the core team that started the company’s social media program in 2008, built the Hersheypark Facebook page from zero to 607,000 fans, and as marketing manager ran 38 Facebook ad campaigns in a single summer that returned $17.81 for every dollar spent. Visit Hershey & Harrisburg named him director of marketing in June 2014.
Ryan Albright - CMO, HRG
Ryan Albright spent nearly four years as a senior management consultant at Baker Tilly, then two years as marketing manager at NADA in Virginia, before coming home to central Pennsylvania. HRG, the Harrisburg civil engineering firm, hired him as marketing manager in 2014. He became director of marketing in 2019 and chief marketing officer in July 2025. His remit reaches well past campaigns: corporate strategy, operations planning, M&A research and pipeline development, capital planning, and analytics, presented regularly to senior executives and the board. He earned his MBA at Penn State, finishing in the top 10% of his class, and completed a CMO development program at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Rick Moran - Director of Marketing, PA Chamber of Business and Industry
Rick Moran describes himself as a digital marketing analytics nerd. His route to that started in sports. He interned in broadcasting for the Buffalo Sabres, worked at a Florida sports complex, managed a facility, then launched marketing for a new multimillion-dollar ice rink as sales and marketing manager at Canlan Ice Sports. Central Penn Business Journal hired him as a market development specialist, producing marketing for its major consumer events. The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry brought him on as digital marketing manager in 2014, and he became director of marketing in 2020. Twelve years at the statewide business association have centered on the channels he champions most: social, display, search, and email.
Matt Simon - Senior Managing Director, Marketing & Commercial Growth, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts
Matt Simon spent eight years at Ahold Delhaize’s GIANT Company in Harrisburg, first as vice president of loyalty and digital marketing and then as chief marketing and growth officer. He led e-commerce, loyalty, and new store development, launched the Choice Pass subscription program, and created the Make A Difference platform, which drove more than $22 million in annual donations. He also refreshed the brand after a merger and launched its omnichannel platform. Penn Foster Group then made him CMO, where he reversed a two-year decline in enrollment for the private equity-backed education company. After more than a year as executive vice president and CMO of The Wills Group, he returned to the Harrisburg area in September 2026 as senior managing director of marketing and commercial growth at Hershey Entertainment & Resorts. He describes himself as having a general manager’s mindset with a CMO’s vision.
Shelly Eckenroth - SVP & Chief Marketing, Communications and Branding Officer, Select Medical
Shelly Eckenroth built her career in technology and entertainment public relations on two coasts. She established the San Francisco office of CHEN PR, serving clients including Electronic Arts, Square Enix, and Atari, then co-founded Foghorn Public Relations in Boston and ran it for nearly eleven years, representing Disney, Electronic Arts, Hasbro, LucasArts, and education technology companies. Both offices were profitable from their first year. A year as vice president of marketing at the student engagement startup CampusQuad followed. Select Medical then hired her in 2016 as vice president of communications and branding. She rose to senior vice president in 2020 and became chief marketing, communications and branding officer in October 2023. She now leads corporate and crisis communications, branding, marketing, digital, creative, and events across the company’s three business lines, and won an International Communicator Award for her public relations work.
Katie Andreano - VP Marketing & Communications, LeadingAge PA
Katie Andreano started at Bethesda Mission in Harrisburg in 2009, coordinating after-school and summer programs for second through fourth graders. She stayed ten years, moving into fundraising as a development associate and then becoming manager of communications, where she ran fundraising events, appeared on camera and radio for the organization, managed a full website redesign, and wrote its appeals and newsletters. Messiah Lifeways hired her in 2019 as a marketing communications specialist, and she rose to director of communications in under three years. LeadingAge PA, the association representing aging-services providers, brought her on as senior director of marketing and communications in 2022 and promoted her to vice president in June 2025. Her career has been spent helping nonprofits tell their stories, which she calls the work she is most passionate about.
Danielle Smith - Executive Director of Integrated Marketing Communications, HACC
Danielle Smith interned at abc27 in Harrisburg, then joined the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association in membership and became its communications manager. A year as communications coordinator at the American Trauma Society’s Pennsylvania division followed. HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, hired her in 2018 as integrated marketing communications coordinator, and she became executive director of integrated marketing communications in July 2023. She now leads marketing and communications for the region’s community college across its campuses. Her favorite part of the job, she says, is seeing students’ excitement at commencement.
Michael Londre - Director of Marketing, Government Programs, Capital Blue Cross
Michael Londre came to health insurance marketing through design and production. He ran marketing for Century 21 Realty Group, led pre-press at AGI Media, and spent eight years as an art director and CAD engineer at Visual Image Systems. Humana hired him as a marketing consultant in 2015. Capital Blue Cross brought him on the next year as a marketing campaign consultant, and over nearly eleven years he has moved from campaigns to senior marketing consultant to director of marketing for government programs, the insurer’s business serving members through public coverage. His hands-on background in design and logistics gives him an unusual command of how campaigns actually get made.
Tom Kuypers - SVP Marketing & Advertising, Ollie’s Bargain Outlet
Tom Kuypers spent nine years at Samsonite in marketing and special markets, then five as director of marketing at Jo-Ann Stores. Bed Bath & Beyond kept him sixteen years, from director of marketing and advertising in 2002 through director and then vice president of digital marketing and CRM, and finally vice president of CRM. Along the way he advised the coupon startup SnipSnap. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, the Harrisburg discount retailer, hired him as senior vice president of marketing and advertising in December 2019. Nearly seven years in, he leads marketing for one of the country’s fastest-growing off-price chains, drawing on three decades of work across brand, retail, CRM, loyalty, and personalization.
Ashley Grotte - Assistant General Manager, Marketing, Harrisburg Senators
Ashley Grotte interned in ticket sales and media relations for the Florence Freedom, an independent baseball team in Kentucky. The Harrisburg Senators hired her in 2010 as director of digital and new media, where she built the team’s social media, email marketing, database, and website, and also sold tickets. She became director of marketing in 2016 and assistant general manager for marketing in January 2020. Nearly seventeen seasons with the Double-A club make her one of the longest-tenured marketers in minor league baseball, responsible for filling the ballpark on City Island every summer.
Built in Central Pennsylvania
Harrisburg’s marketers tend to grow inside the region’s institutions. Fifteen years at Hershey’s attractions, sixteen with the Senators, eleven at Capital Blue Cross, twelve at the state chamber. The ones who came from elsewhere arrived with serious credentials, from Bed Bath & Beyond, Boston’s tech PR scene, and national consultancies, and stayed. What ties them together is a market that rewards knowing its audience: families planning a day at Hersheypark, members choosing coverage, shoppers hunting a bargain, fans looking for a summer night at the ballpark. These are people who have made central Pennsylvania their career.