Meet our team
Melissa Sheridan
Principal
Melissa’s strength is tackling complex communications challenges, building actionable plans and delivering results that make a big impact. She has more than 20 years of experience in all aspects of public relations for technology companies, including media relations, company and product launches, acquisitions communications, crisis communications, thought leadership programs and analyst relations.
Her senior agency and in-house positions have included leading corporate public relations for Macromedia through the company’s acquisition by Adobe Systems as well as work with Vuclip, Sony PlayStation, Wind River, Unity Technologies, Mozilla, Procter & Gamble, MediaBrix, Private WiFi, EffectiveUI, Cisco (Tandberg), Sybase, Keynote Systems, Acquia, BigFix, SurfControl and many other companies.
Aaron Wessels
Senior Media Strategist
Aaron’s power lies in his ability to deliver killer media results. His more than 18 years of public relations experience includes working for companies from startups to the Fortune 100. As a senior member of the PR team at Macromedia and then Adobe, Aaron oversaw breakthrough debuts and launches of Dreamweaver, the Flash Platform and more. He began his PR career at Blanc & Otus, where he worked with numerous startups during the original tech boom.
Susan Vander May
Senior PR Strategist
Susan’s 18 years of expertise lies in her ability to craft compelling narratives and build results-driven PR programs centered around thought leadership and executive visibility, high-impact events, issues-based communications campaigns and product PR. As a senior member of HP’s corporate affairs team, Susan was responsible for driving the company’s narrative around innovation, diversity and sustainability. Prior to HP, Susan was the PR lead for Broadcom’s mobile and wireless group, responsible for creating and executing the global product PR program.
Bethany Weiss Floraday
Senior Media Strategist
For 20 years, Bethany has designed and implemented innovative, results-generating campaign strategies for a variety of organizations from early-stage technology startups to large, global corporations, such as Dell, IBM, NVIDIA, Autodesk and VeriSign. Bethany excels at media relations, placing clients into world-renowned publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and The New York Times, as well as leading technology media outlets such as Wired, CIO, InformationWeek, eWeek, Computerworld and TechTarget.
Kathleen Keating
Senior PR/AR Strategist
Kathy brings 20+ years experience with expertise in media relations, analyst relations, inbound marketing and content strategy and development. She’s written and placed more than 500 bylines in business, consumer and trade publications and edited books published by IBM Press and Pearson Education. Her corporate and client experience spans global communications, marketing communications and public relations for companies including: 33Across, AddThis, Avaya, CognitiveScale, Concord Communications, Constant Contact, Datorama, gShift, Hiveage, IBM, IRI, Kodak, PTC, SAS Institute, Sybase, Weber Shandwick, and Rakuten Marketing.
Eleanor Crow
Media Coverage Analyst & Writer
Eleanor brings more than 15 years of public relations, content, and social media marketing experience, working with a wide range of Fortune 500, SMB and start-up companies across the technology and consumer, and media sectors. Eleanor began her career in San Francisco, helping innovative clients such as Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, Siebel Systems, SKYY Vodka, Inktomi and BEA Systems build impressive brands through unique, customized campaigns. She is currently focused on helping start-ups and SMB’s like Hipcricket, BullHorn, Neolane, Localytics, FirstFuel, and iProspect increase brand awareness through measurable media relations programs.
The extended Alight family also includes experts in media training, design, digital marketing, social media training, web development, branding and internal communications.