Kent Lewis

Lewis is a digital pioneer and entrepreneur who regularly speaks, writes and is frequently quoted by industry media. As Founder of pdxMindShare, Portland’s premier professional networking group and online career community, he specialize in connecting area businesses with job candidates and build careers via education. Previously Chief Marketing Officer at Deksia, Lewis was responsible for the overall strategic direction of marketing and thought leadership. As President & Founder of Anvil Media, Inc., his responsibilities included managing operations, marketing and sales. Under his leadership over 22 years, Anvil accumulated the following awards and recognition:

• Inc. 5000: Fastest growing private companies in America

• Oregon Business Magazine: 100 Best Places to Work

• Portland Business Journal: Oregon’s Most Admired Companies

• Portland Business Journal: Fastest Growing Private 100 Companies 

• Portland Business Journal: Corporate Philanthropy Awards winner 

With a background in integrated marketing, Lewis left a Portland-area public relations agency in 1996 to start his digital marketing career at a sister web development firm. In 1997, he built and managed his first search engine marketing (SEM) team at a full-service marketing agency. Lewis departed in 1999 to co-found the first of two agencies, Wave Rock and emailROI. In 2006, he co-founded SEMpdx, a trade organization for SEM professionals. In 2008. Lewis created Formic Media, Anvil’s sister digital marketing agency designed to support small business and grew it to over $1 million in revenue before merging it with Anvil. Although he’s worked at 10 agencies, he did take brief corporate roles as Director of Marketing and Business Development at goodguys.com, an online electronics retailer, and Chief Marketing Officer for ToneCommand. Since 2000, Lewis was an adjunct professor at Portland State University, where he most  recently taught an SEM workshop. That same year, he joined SMART Reading as a volunteer reader, then sat on the marketing committee, where he created and hosted a fundraiser event known as SMART Gala that raised over $65,000 for the nonprofit.

For ten years, Lewis was a member of the board at SMART and continues to be a volunteer reader today. In 2007, he joined the Portland chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), where he was Membership Chair for five years and earned Membership Chair of the Year from EO Global. Lewis regularly advise startups and sits on advisory boards for companies like Maury’s Hive Tea, CareSpace.AI and PacificWRO. As a thought leader, he speaks regularly at industry events, is quoted in the press and contributes to publications including Portland Business Journal Leadership Trust, Inc and SmartBrief.

Past industry awards and recognition include Portland Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 Award, American Marketing Association’s Marketer of the Year, PPC Hero’s Top 25 Most Influential Pay-per-Click Experts, BuzzSumo’s Top 100 Digital Marketing Influencers & Top 20 Digital Strategists by Digital Strategy Institute.