Early Career Achievement Awards 2023 - 2024 Award Recipients
The Early Career Achievement Awards celebrate outstanding young alumni who have demonstrated innovative and responsible professional leadership and the potential for future distinction. The pool of nominees was especially strong this year and the College extends its congratulations to all those under consideration for their successes. We are proud of you and appreciate all you do that enhances our reputation for excellence. They return to campus to receive their award and share advice with current students through panel discussions during Homecoming Celebrations.
The Early Career Achievement Awards will be presented at a public reception in the Caterpillar Auditorium during Homecoming 2023 on Friday - October 13, 2023, in the State Farm Hall of Business from 3:15 - 4:30 pm. Please invite family, friends, former faculty, and colleagues to join us and help celebrate your success. A short reception immediately following a brief presentation celebrating their early career success.
Here is a brief look at the winners of the 2023-20234 College of Business Early Career Achievement Awards (ECAA).
Kelsey Chamberlin '16
Marketing
Kelsey is a Senior Marketing Manager at Medline, a medical supply company, where she manages and implements the go-to-market strategy for various Post-Acute market segments. Kelsey has seven years of healthcare marketing experience, and she has worked with company leadership, sales, internal teams as well as customers.
Kelsey started with Medline in the Rotational Assignment Program, and from there she received several promotions leading her to her current role as a Senior Marketing Manager.
In 2022, Kelsey was awarded the Jim Mills Excellence Award, which celebrates those that have gone above and beyond in their role. During her time at Illinois State University, Kelsey was the Vice President of the American Marketing Association, and received the James E. Cox, Jr. AMA Scholarship Award
In her free time, Kelsey volunteers for a dog rescue where she as a board member and is responsible for managing social media and the rescue’s website. Kelsey also enjoys spending time with her dog, Clover.
Keith Crow '10
B.S./M.P.A.
Keith Crow is currently the Director of Finance over AGCO Corporation’s Precision Ag businesses: Precision Planting, Headsight, Appareo, and JCA Technologies where he is responsible for Finance and IT Leadership. Keith has been with Precision Planting for the last nine years. He partnered with the local government, Economic Development Corporation, and AGCO Leadership to build a brand new distribution center in Morton, Illinois. In the last two years, he led the finance function in diligence and integration of five acquisitions for the AGCO Corporation.
Prior to joining Precision Planting, Keith was a Senior Associate at PwC Peoria office working with manufacturing clients. Keith graduated from Illinois State University in 2010 from the Bachelor of Science/Master of Professional Accountancy program and successfully passed the CPA exam upon graduating.
Keith and his wife, and ISU alum, Sislye, reside in Washington, Illinois with their boys, Nolan, Miles, Brooks, and Cole.
Scott Davis '07
Finance
Scott began his career in financial services with Thrivent Financial in 2000 and began working for CliftonLarsonAllen, in 2008. Scott became a founding member and Partner of Renaissance Wealth Management in 2019.
Scott is a Certified Financial Planner® practitioner, a Chartered Financial Analyst, and has Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Finance. His focus is individualized comprehensive financial planning and asset management services for individual clients and small business owners.
When working with clients, Scott believes that building a complete financial projection for a client helps him understand what a client is trying to accomplish and provide specific advice tailored to each client’s needs.
Scott grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago before moving to Normal to attend Illinois State University. Scott and his wife, Molly, reside in Normal with their three children. Scott has a passion to give back to Illinois State, its students, and the community where he lives.
Megan Hartley '20
B.S./M.P.A.
Megan is a senior assurance associate at RSM in Chicago, where she works with clients in the capital markets industry. She also serves on the local leadership committee for one of RSM’s employee network groups and mentor associates and interns through RSM’s navigator program.
In 2022, Megan received the Elijah Watt Sells Award from the AICPA for outstanding performance on the Uniform CPA Examination.
Daniel Ireland '16
B.S./M.P.A.
Daniel’s career began in risk management where he developed a deep connection with process improvement. As this connection evolved, Daniel saw that technology allowed his team to implement more impactful improvement efforts, and he has been working with those technologies closely ever since.
Daniel currently leads a team of process engineers, internal consultants, and solution architects who are accountable for the automation strategy at Discover.
Daniel was instrumental in designing the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Program, which has been recognized internationally as the top operating model for the Americas. Currently, Daniel and team are driving strategy for advanced automation technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and low code automation.
Daniel and his wife Nicole recently welcomed their first child and remain active in supporting various charitable foundations in their local community in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs.
Johnnie Jasper '16
Marketing - Professional Sales
Johnnie Jasper is an Enterprise Sales Leader at Amazon Web Services. With an aptitude to learn and a passion for technology, Johnnie leads a team of Account Managers focused on helping customers achieve maximum business value and innovation through AWS cloud services. Prior to joining AWS, Johnnie held sales roles at Saint-Gobain Abrasives and IBM in Boston, MA.
Presently, Johnnie resides in Seattle, Washington where he enjoys being active in the community through formal mentorship as a Big in Tech with Big Brothers Big Sisters - Seattle chapter and has offered virtual mentorship to the Off the Street Club (OTSC) - Chicago’s oldest boys and girls club which serves more than 3,000 kids in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood. As an alum of OTSC and a product of West Garfield Park, Johnnie is passionate about devoting time and mentorship to the inner-city youth.
In his free time, Johnnie enjoys remaining active and exploring all in which the Pacific Northwest outdoors has to offer.
Brian Loiacono '18
Human Resources and Organizational Leadership
Brian is a Senior Compensation Analyst at CF Industries. He graduated from the College of Business in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science in Management, majoring in Human Resource Management and Organizational Leadership. Brian was very involved in student organizations while on campus.
Outside of Brian’s day-to-day work, he has been committed to growing myself as a professional. Over the last few years, Brian have received several certifications within the HR space and is currently working towards obtaining an MBA from the University of Illinois.
Brian serves on the College of Business’s MQM Advisory Council, giving his perspective as a young professional. In addition, following graduation, he worked with three recent alumni to create the Faith and Leadership scholarship.
He now resides in Buffalo Grove, Illinois with his wife Annika and puppy Trilli.
Danny Lopez '17
Business Information Systems
Daniel Lopez graduated in 2017 with a BS in Business Information Systems and a minor in Spanish. He began his career in the Business Technology space at Discover Financial Services as a Scrum Master helping build teams that continuously improve in delivering high-quality, customer-focused value. There he was awarded for being in the top 2% of contributors based on performance.
Now a Product Manager at Guaranteed Rate he is the decision maker on product/platform vision, prioritization, development, and implementation internal and external to the organization.
He has assisted in training a Certified Scrum Master course at ISU and has met with students semi-annually per the invitation from Professor Rosie Hauck. He is a decade-long volunteer of an annual Ronald McDonald House Charities event. On a more regular basis, Danny volunteers at his local Catholic church.
Recently married, he now lives in Chicago with his wife. His brother is also a Redbird currently in his second year.
Jenna Papesh '08
B.S./M.P.A.
As Head of Growth, Acquisition at DISQO, Jenna Papesh is charged with leading global consumer growth acquisition to fuel DISQO’s CX platform. Jenna has been a driver of DISQO’s growth over the past two years while improving acquisition efficiency by fifteen percent. This year she received the DISQO peer-nominated Innovation Award for her relentless pursuit to challenge the status quo and push forward innovative ideas.
Prior to DISQO, Jenna was VP of Digital Acquisition for the healthy snack food startup, HighKey. She successfully built the direct-to-consumer channel from scratch overseeing customer acquisition, retention, and channel financial performance. During this time, she generated 300% YOY channel growth while improving ROI by five hundred percent.
Prior to, she enjoyed a 10-year tenure at a performance-based agency, Digital Target Marketing. There she launched many of the first profitable direct-to-consumer programs for several Fortune 500 brands like Procter and Gamble, TTI Floorcare, and Amazon incubator brands.
Jenna has spent the past 15 years of her career tapping into innovative strategies and marketing channels to drive profitable business growth. She truly enjoys her career, which allows her to create new opportunities for businesses and people in an ever-changing environment.
Some noteworthy accomplishments include the 2015 Chicago Interactive Marketing Association award for Best Direct Response Campaign and serving as a panelist for the BrightRoll DSP Summit and FinCon Expo.
Jenna is a graduate of Illinois State University’s College of Business. She and her husband, John, reside in Orlando, Florida where they enjoy traveling and spending time with their golden retriever, Finnegan.
Nathan Steckle '18
B.S./M.P.A.
Nathan graduated in 2018 with a BS/MPA in Accounting. He started his career with PwC in the Chicago Office in the Health Industries sector performing audits for public, private and not-for-profit entities.
Nathan is currently a Trust Solutions Manager in the Consumer and Industrial Products sector working primarily with a global fortune 100 company overseeing various areas of the audit, with particular focus on international reporting. He is the primary point of contact for the Americas and Asia Pacific statutory audit teams. Nathan will be going on assignment to Switzerland in the summer of 2024 where he will lead global audit efforts.
In addition to his auditing work, Nathan assists with recruiting efforts and PwC alumni relations in Chicago. He has participated on various discussion panels offering early auditing career advice and has presented on various topics for staff training and enrichment for his sector team. Nathan is a member of the Early Career Accounting Advisory Board.
Joshua Throop '13
Marketing - Integrated Marketing Communication
As a Principal Product Manager, Josh believes that focusing on making people great makes products great. Having spent the last 14 years at State Farm, USAA, and now Home Depot, he feels truly fortunate to have partnered with so many wonderful people and organizations to solve meaningful problems and build exceptional product solutions.
With a variety of work experiences including: sales, product marketing, building lead and campaign management solutions, a variety of other MarTech experiences, organizational transformation coaching, building payments solutions, and creating delivery communications strategies, the persistent truth is that the more he emphasizes putting people first, the better the results.
Outside of work, Josh has been married to his best friend (Hayli) for over ten years, and they have three incredible children. He’s incredibly grateful that he really enjoys what he does for a living, but nothing compares to how much he loves being a husband and a dad!
Piotr WietrZak '12
Accountancy
Piotr is the Director of Accounting and Top Financial Official at the National Pork Producers Council. In his role, he is responsible for all aspects of the Organizations financial, federal election commission and year end tax reporting. Moreover, he is responsible for creating and maintaining the budget of the Organization, the consolidation of all entities, managing the investment and cash flow of the organizations assets as well as creating and maintaining internal controls throughout the organization.
Piotr spent a majority of his career in public accounting - beginning his career in KPMG’s external audit practice and then transitioning to EY’s Financial Services advisory practice.
Additionally, Piotr has spent time back on ISU’s campus in both a recruiting and mentoring aspect. He has also participated in a number of College of Business’s Business Week panels.