Judges


The awards are judged by an esteemed panel of industry leaders and experts, the judging is a rigorous two-stage process including pre-scoring to determine shortlists and a judging meeting where entries are discussed and evaluated in detail to decide the winning entries.

The Global Agency Awards are one of the few awards schemes that are judged solely by in-house judges; your entry will not be viewed by any other agency.

From a transparency perspective, we may video aspects of the judging session to give entrants an insight into why a winning entry was chosen.

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Judges

Michael Bonfils | Global Managing Director | SEM International

Michael Bonfils is the CEO and Founder of Int’t Media Management with the trade name of SEM International specializing in International SEO/SEM, multilingual content marketing and display solutions. With over 30 network offices around the world, Michael has been critical to the global digital marketing successes of many of the world’s largest corporations. Michael often speaks and writes on the latest trends in global search marketing and has contributed his time to many major national publications and events. In addition to being the founder of his global advertising agency, he is currently a board member of a number of organizations in technology and advertising.

Herbert De Luca | Digital Marketing Analyst

Herbert is always in search of knowledge, working with digital marketing and studying neuromarketing, finishing a postgraduate research on the behavioral part of people in social media. Currently, he seeks to consolidate his career and tries to give his best in judgments. His last participation was in the CBMA (Craft Beer Marketing Awards).

Paris de Reuck | Content & Community strategist |

Paris has worked in social media and SEO for thirteen years, with eight years spent heading social media, influencers and editorial teams at MediaCom and OMD. Paris now works directly with companies and startups helping them find creative ways to grow through social media advertising, content and influencer marketing.

LinkedIn profile

Sara de Velasco | Head of UK Marketing | Harper

Sara is a senior marketer with experience both in B2C and B2B. She's spent time both in-house and agency side and is as comfortable creating a strategy as talking tactics. Her continuous commitment to find value for customers takes her to constantly ask questions to unearth valuable consumer behaviours.

Gemma Fontané | SEO Consultant & Founder | denadal.cat

Gemma Fontané is a trilingual SEO consultant, co-founder of Orvit digital consultancy and founder of the international ecommerces denadal.cat & tiodenadal.online. With her company, she leads strategies for B2B and Ecommerce companies to help them generate business. Gemma has knowledge and experience in international SEO as well as content and technical SEO. In the last year, as a public speaker, Gemma has spoken at conferences in different countries such as Friends of Search in Amsterdam, Search Y Paris 2022 in Paris or the International Search Summit in Barcelona and has collaborated with different industry blogs and seminars.

David Gerrard | Associate Director  | Wayfair

With over 10 years in SEO and a background of delivering big for renowned clients, David has a breadth of experience having worked in-house, agency side and even for an e-commerce platform. A specialist in refining strategic approach and scaling execution, he is currently based in Berlin and leading the SEO efforts of Wayfair in Europe.

Scott Hand, AIA | Chief Brand Officer | Urban Artifact

Scott is cofounder and head of marketing for Urban Artifact, a craft brewery specializing in Fruit Tarts. They redeveloped a historic church building into a production brewery, taproom, event hall, and outdoor gathering space. The brewery has created their own beverage styles, redefining how fruit is used in beer, wine, and seltzers. They've coined the term Midwest Fruit Tart, and currently brew the world's most expensive (and fruitiest) alcoholic beverage. Scott also co-founded and manages Radio Artifact, a regional radio station, that utilizes their own recording soundstage to capture live performances, stream, and archive for viewers and listeners around the world. He is also a practicing Architect, specializing in highly sustainable buildings and architectural acoustics.

Gareth Healey | Agency Coach and Mentor | Beyond Noise

Gareth is the founder of Beyond Noise, a strategy consultancy that works exclusively with established independent marketing agencies. He has spent most of his 25 year career in the agency sector and for 15 years was CEO and co-owner of CreativeRace. Gareth now uses his experience to help agencies grow, and agency owners to unlock their potential.

LinkedIn profile

Daryl Ho | Managing Director | WE Communications

As WE Singapore’s managing director, Daryl Ho helms the agency’s Singapore leadership team and oversees over 50 integrated communications, data, digital and social specialists. In his role, Daryl leads business growth strategy and serves an array of local, regional and global clients. With 20 years of experience, Daryl has accumulated a broad range of expertise in strategic communications and data-driven marketing across Singapore, China and Southeast Asia. In 2017, he spearheaded the creation and growth of Edelman's Singapore operation into the digital space, introducing a data-led, predictive intelligence approach to integrated communications and marketing. He's privileged to have been a consultant and has led many regional and global work for organizations such as Philips, HP, Medtronic, Singapore Tourism Board, and the Singapore Government in their push to be national-centric via technology.

Navah Hopkins | VP of Strategic Marketing | Adzooma

Navah Hopkins is the VP of Strategic Marketing at Adzooma, a platform that makes managing your ad channels easy and fast. A veteran of the digital marketing industry, she began as an SEO in 2008, transitioning to PPC in 2012. Throughout her career, Navah has made a point to give back and loves sharing lessons learned on the international speaking circuit as well as local universities. She is a frequent contributor to SEJ, SEMrush, and WordStream blogs/webinars. In 2019, she became a founding member of the Paid Search Association, a group dedicated to empowering the next generation of PPC practitioners, as well as serving as a resource for all practitioners to learn from and share with the community.

Lidia Infante | Senior International SEO Manager | BigCommerce

Lidia is the Senior International SEO Manager at BigCommerce. Born and raised in Barcelona she's been driving organic growth internationally for ecommerce sites, media and SaaS for over 6 years.

Rachel Jacobs | Founder | Ecommerce Partnerships

Rachel Jacobs Founder of Ecommerce Agency Growth Leading authority in preparing ecommerce agencies for exit. Dedicated to enabling agency owners to get out of the day-to-day of running their agency. Specialised in implementing best practice operations, systems, and processes to scale ecommerce agencies profitably and efficiently. From building scalable retainer models to coaching high-performing leadership teams, I work with ecommerce agencies to simplify the next steps in scaling their ecommerce agency.

Jonathan Jones | VP of SEO | Forbes

Jonathan Jones is the VP of SEO at Forbes and has over 13 years working in the SEO industry. He is the co-author of the book ‘Mastering In-House SEO’ alongside 26 other brilliant co-authors. He has a computer science background, runs his own online businesses, and is an entrepreneurial mindset. Prior to working at Forbes, Jonathan worked at MoneySuperMarket, where the team won ‘Best In-House Team’ three times at the EU Search Awards in 2016, 2017, and 2018 and also at the UK Search Awards in 2015. Prior to this, he has worked on major national and international sites such as Toyota, NatWest/RBS, John Freida, Sage, Unum, & more. To get in touch with Jonathan, go to MrJonathanJones.com.

Umar Khan | Digital Marketing Consultant, Trainer & Speaker

Umar is a passionate digital marketer with over 9 years of experience in managing high budget digital marketing campaigns. With experience and expertise on all the verticals of Digital Channels including SEO, Google Ads, Social Media, Content Marketing, Programmatic, Marketing automation, CRO, UX, analytics etc. Umar has worked with top companies in UAE and currently linked with Nakheel as the Senior. Digital Strategist. He also conducts digital marketing corporate workshops & regular classes for well-known educational institutes in Dubai.

LinkedIn profile

Christopher Lehault | VP of Marketing | Other Half Brewing

Chris Lehault is a hybrid creative/marketing leader who believes that brands succeed when both work together. Currently, he is the VP of Marketing at Other Half Brewing, where he oversees the marketing function, in-house design studio, and the brand's direct-to-consumer eCommerce platform. His previous roles include serving as the Global Director of Brand Experience at ZX Ventures, the accelerator arm of Anheuser Busch InBev, as well as stints as a creative director at FCB, Sapient Razorfish, and Wunderman. Off the clock, he enjoys doing the most suburban of things with his wife and two kids across the river in New Jersey.

Trond Lyngbø | Senior SEO Consultant

Trond Lyngbø is the founder of Search Planet and a senior SEO Consultant. He has over two decades of experience in SEO, e-commerce, content strategy and digital analysis. His clients include multinational Fortune 500 corporations and major Norwegian companies. Trond has helped grow businesses through more effective search marketing and SEO strategies. He is most passionate about working with e-commerce companies and web shops to develop and expand their omni-channel marketing initiatives.

LinkedIn profile

Abdelaziz Mohammed | Head Of Marketing | Confidential

Abdelaziz has been into the eCommerce space for 15 years now. He was working at Amazon as regional head of digital Marketing. Before Amazon he was heading central performance marketing team at Souq (acquired by Amazon). He was responsible for planning and budgeting marketing spend for MENA regions in Souq.com. Marketing, Ecommerce and Customer Experience professional with a proven track record of successfully improving digital performance for major brands within a variety of sectors in MENA region, including Dubizzle (OLX group), Souq (Amazon Middle East), Najm, H&M, Mother care, Victoria Secrets, Bath and Body Works and Emaar. Extensive experience of managing ecommerce websites (inc. +$1B turnover), leading large digital teams and driving cost effective marketing programmes.

Andor Palau | International SEO Consultant

Andor is an independent international SEO consultant based in Berlin, Germany, and has started his online career back in 2009. Having worked both in-house, as well as on the agency side, he is currently advising online shops, classifiers, marketplaces, and other companies regarding international organic growth strategies as well as technical SEO issues as an independent SEO consultant. He is former Head of SEO at Peak Ace, where he was responsible for SEO and managed a 20+ people team of SEO consultants and editors. Before joining the agency side, Andor was In-house SEO for a top-3 comparison portal in highly competitive verticals such as insurance, power, and telco. Andor’s core expertise is strategic SEO as well as technical SEO, covering topics such as crawlability, indexing management, migrations, and site structure optimization. He is a lecturer at the afs Akademie in Germany, which has made it its mission to offer quality education and training in the field of SEO.

Janna Pugh | SEO Manager | Vintage King Audio

Janna Pugh is a SEO Manager with a history of agency and in-house work. She has recently been nationally recognized as the Industry Rising Star in Conductor's 2022 C2 Summit and regularly speaks with college classes about the essentials of organic marketing. With her passion for SEO, she knows firsthand how to make the smallest and largest websites succeed organically. Her areas of focus specialize in enterprise SEO, with scalability and automation for both small and large SEO teams. Her varied approach to SEO combines on-site content with off-site brand management. In her free time, she loves trying out new recipes and reading mystery novels.

Rafay Qureshi | Head of SEO | Seera Group

Meet Rafay Qureshi, A Result-Oriented Online Marketeer and Trainer. Rafay has been into SEO, ASO & all things that come under the organic growth field. Having worked from Start ups to Y combinator to AliBaba to Rocket Internet, Rafay currently Heads the Organic Growth Team at Seera Group. Always striving for Automations, Scalability & Product optimization, Rafay has worked on all sorts of products from e-commerce, B2B, FMCGs, SAAS & Financial Institutions. Rafay is your all-rounder organic growth geek in the e-commerce industry and when he’s not working, he’s playing video games.

Eli Schwartz | SEO expert and consultant

Eli Schwartz is an SEO expert and consultant with more than a decade of experience driving successful SEO and growth programs for leading B2B and B2C companies. He helps clients like Shutterstock, BlueNile, Quora, Getaround, Mixpanel, and Zendesk build and execute Global SEO strategies that dramatically increase their organic visibility at scale. In the past, Eli led the SEO team at SurveyMonkey, building organic search from nearly zero to one of the largest growth drivers at the company. He helped launched SurveyMonkey’s first APAC office and oversaw international SEO pre- and post-IPO. Prior to SurveyMonkey, he led user acquisition at High Gear Media, pushing the company from 500,000 new users to 6 million every month in just three years. Eli frequently speaks at marketing events across the U.S., Asia, and Europe, and he authors columns published on Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and Search Engine Journal. His work has been featured on sites ranging from Techcrunch to the Y Combinator blog. He has guest lectured at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Singapore’s Civil Service College, and the Founder’s Institute. Eli regularly appears as a guest on top industry podcasts such as Y Combinator, Everybody Hate’s Marketers, and Search Nerds.

Ulrika Viberg | CEO/Senior SEO Consultant | Unikorn

Lisa Williams | Senior Director | Growth & Loyalty for Peace Health

Lisa Williams is a 25-year veteran of digital marketing and the author of "When Everybody Clicks: Sustainable Digital Marketing". She has been featured in Kiplinger Magazine, Glamour Magazine, Boston Globe and The Oregonian. Lisa is on the SEMpdx (Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland Oregon) Advisory Board. She founded and leads a Portland Oregon LeanIn Circle and volunteers at Emerging Leaders to mentor diverse, aspiring professionals to serve in technology and health care. She speaks at regional, national and international conferences on the topics of digital strategy, marketing integration, team development and leadership. She is the Senior Director, Growth & Loyalty for Peace Health.

Lukasz Zelezny | SEO Cosultant |

Lukasz Zelezny, UK Search Awards judge, Top10 UK Social Media influencer and former director of organic performance at uSwitch / Zoopla. Currently is working as an independent SEO Consultant helping in organic traffic acquisition, technical SEO and content marketing. Lukasz started his career in 2005 and has since been responsible for the organic performance of a number of companies including HomeAway, Thomson Reuters, The Digital Property Group, Fleetway Travel, uSwitch, Zoopla. Each year Lukasz is speaking at many SEO and social media conferences. He was a speaker at ClickZ Shanghai China, ClickZ Jakarta Indonesia, SiMGA Malta, SES London as well as Marketing Festival in Brno, Brighton SEO in Brighton and UnGagged in London. Every year he is actively participating in 10 to 20 events as an SEO/Social Media keynote speaker. Additionally, he organizes workshops and meetups where he is sharing tips around SEO, Social Media and Analytics. To get in touch with Lukasz simply search “Lukasz Zelezny” or visit https://Zelezny.uk

Julia-Carolin Zeng | SEO Consultant | Charlie on the Move Ltd

Julia started her career in SEO 5 years ago in the online gambling industry working for an affiliate company. She has since worked in different industries and is a freelance SEO consultant since 2019. She specialises in international SEO and works mostly with B2B SaaS companies in Europe and the US. Her educational background is in linguistics and cultural anthropology, and she can communicate in French, Spanish and Italian, in addition to her mother tongue German. Julia is usually based in London, but she loves travelling and the digital nomad lifestyle.

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