Senior Marketing executive in two companies

Michael Donahue is a pillar of the marketing and advertising community and an established presence in the Boardroom. Currently, he serves as the CEO of Connect the Dots, a boutique digital marketing and advertising consultancy. Connect the Dots is heavily involved with the Association of National Advertisers and working on a number of large projects, including the comprehensive analysis, "Demystifying the Digital Media Supply Chain". Parallel to his role at Connect the Dots, also serves on the Global Advisory Board for the VVharton Future of Advertising·Program, where he also earned his M.B.A.·

An innovator and up-to-date with trending topics, he enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience with industry up and comers. Donahue has received numerous invitations to speak over the course of his career and will be joining the faculty at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida for their Fall 2017 semester. He has been invited to instruct two courses, "Storytelling from 1920's-201 O's, From Radio Commercials to Tweets & Likes· and "Basic Digital Media 101·. The latter, will be a course based on his recent analysis "Demystifying the Digital Media Supply Chain".

Prior to founding his consultancy, Donahue served as Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for the American Association of Advertising Agencies in addition to his responsibilities as Director of the AAAA Foundation and AdWeek, Inc.

During a nearly 23 year tenure with AAAA, some of Michael's many notable achievements included starting and developing 4A's Diversity department, the initiation of 2 major research projects which were later turned over to the Advertising Research Foundation and generating a 50% profit increase by merging two of 4A's major annual conferences. Michael was also responsible for the creation of the first Digital Advertising Asset Identifier (Ad-ID), which is now accepted as the universal identifier by agencies, advertisers and media.

Donahue's notable career began with Dancer Fitzgerald New York before the company's merger with Saatchi & Saatchi. He was a key player in many of the company's major accounts, including the development of a new creative brief used by household names such as Procter & Gamble and General Mills. With Saatchi, he held a number of roles including Executive Vice President and Executive Management Director. Donahue also created Saatchi's Retail Connection and served Managing Director of the Retail Advantage. It was during this time his career in the Board space also began, following his appointment to The New York Board of Directors for the advertising behemoth.

Michael graduated from Villanova University With a B.A. in Liberal Arts and went on to receive his M.B.A. from the Wharton Graduate School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.