AMA Around Town: A Familiar Face in the Room
What can happen when you walk into a room where you do not know anyone yet?
For Atlanta marketers, AMA Atlanta’s Around Town gatherings offer a simple answer: you talk to someone.
There is no formal agenda or programming. People meet in different parts of metro Atlanta to connect, exchange ideas and get to know others in the marketing community.
The format is intentionally simple. But the stories behind it show how much can happen when people keep showing up.
It Starts With Connection
Karen Phillips, principal at Phillips & Marek, created the Around Town concept while involved with AMA in Central Florida. She had seen members attend larger chapter events without necessarily connecting with one another. Her hypothesis was straightforward: people who formed relationships were more likely to stay engaged.
So she tested smaller, informal gatherings closer to where members lived. The idea was to remove programming and give people space for organic conversation.
Karen later brought the concept to Atlanta, where it became part of AMA Atlanta’s community-building efforts. She describes Around Town as a low-barrier way for people to experience the chapter, meet peers and become more comfortable participating in the broader marketing community.
That progression is visible in the people who have become hosts themselves, like Cindy Gardiner, enterprise growth executive at Stran Promotional Solutions. Cindy raised her hand to launch an Around Town in the Roswell area. She polled prospective participants and experimented with a lunch format, which proved successful. More than a year later, the group continues to draw 20+ people each month.
Cindy went on to lead the full Around Town program, adding new structure that helped boost its growth. She continues to manage the program today, working with hosts across metro Atlanta to keep gatherings welcoming and consistent.
Abby England, an entrepreneur, podcaster, writer, comedian and founder of Abby England Wellness, first attended AMA events while establishing a life in Atlanta and looking for both social connections and employment opportunities. She kept attending, then volunteered, and eventually became host of the In Town Around Town gathering.
Abby says her gatherings typically draw 20 to 25 people, with a mix of repeat attendees and newcomers. Many arrive alone.
That matters to her because she remembers what it feels like to walk into a professional event without knowing anyone. Her goal as a host is to make others feel as welcome as she eventually felt.
“I truly enjoy meeting new people and hearing their backgrounds and experiences,” Abby said. “Most people come by themselves and I enjoy helping them make connections with others.”
One Conversation Can Lead Somewhere Unexpected
Sometimes those connections become tangible business opportunities.
Abby met a videographer who specialized in CGI work while she was leading marketing for a commercial construction company. Her company was looking for that exact capability to create a virtual reality sales tool.
She hired him.
Amy Mangan, market director for Atlanta at Robert Half Marketing & Creative and Robert Half Technology, has seen Around Town conversations lead in many directions. She says attendees have found mentors, reconnected with former colleagues, gained clients, uncovered job opportunities and built lasting professional relationships.
Amy hosts gatherings serving the Johns Creek, Alpharetta and Gwinnett area. She describes the audience as a mix of marketing leaders, digital marketers, creatives, agency professionals, brand marketers, consultants and people newer to the industry.
The variety is part of the value.
“It’s not uncommon to have someone from a Fortune 500 company sitting next to a marketer from a startup, both sharing ideas and learning from one another,” she said.
Kelli Kelley, creative director at brndMethod Media Group, who hosts the Duluth Around Town gathering, saw a similar need in North Metro Atlanta. After attending an AMA event in Roswell, she helped launch a Duluth gathering for professionals who found traveling into Atlanta for networking difficult.
Her group primarily attracts senior-level marketers, agency owners and consultants, with more job seekers attending recently.
Kelli has also seen a professional connection turn into collaboration. She met Latasia Cox, a RevOps strategist and founder and CMO of Framework Marketing Consulting, at an event. Their work is complementary, and they began planning a joint webinar focused on connecting creative marketing work to revenue outcomes.
Not Every Connection Has to Become a Transaction
Mark Miller, design director at Six House Studio, came to Around Town with a familiar expectation. He hoped it might generate new business or business leads.
So far, it has not.
And he says that is OK.
Mark says what he found instead was a casual, welcoming environment where people could talk openly about careers, entrepreneurship, technology, AI and the realities of looking for work or building something new.
For him, the value has become less about what a conversation produces and more about the sense of connection it creates.
He described the gatherings as a safe place to meet people, exchange ideas, gain exposure and feel connected to others navigating similar professional questions.
That perspective broadens what success can look like.
A connection does not have to become a client, business lead or job opportunity to matter.
Sometimes the value is simply feeling connected.
When Professional Becomes Personal
Latasia experienced that in a particularly memorable way.
At one Around Town gathering, several people at her table began talking about where their families were from. One by one, they realized they all shared Caribbean ancestry.
What started as a table of marketing professionals suddenly felt more like family.
They exchanged information and planned to reconnect.
Latasia says that kind of experience is part of what makes Around Town feel different from more traditional networking events. The conversations are approachable, and people make an effort to build genuine connections and learn from one another.
She often leaves with new ideas, useful connections and a broader perspective on the industry.
The Connection Rarely Ends at the Table
Frank Borovsky, principal of B2Beyond and an adjunct professor at Kennesaw State University, has experienced Around Town as an attendee.
His professional work spans digital transformation, marketing, customer experience and AI.
Frank says Around Town has helped him connect with practitioners willing to share their experience with his students and build ongoing mentoring relationships with younger marketers and professionals in career transitions.
Hosts such as Kelli also play an active role in helping those connections happen.
Her advice is to notice the person who seems hesitant, introduce yourself and then help that person meet someone else. Kelli says other attendees have begun picking up that same welcoming behavior.
Amy sees the same value in helping marketers get outside the demands of their own teams, companies and industries. Around Town gives people a chance to hear what others are experiencing and see more of Atlanta’s broader marketing community.
Then You Start Seeing Familiar Faces
That may be the clearest measure of what Around Town is designed to create.
People come back.
A stranger becomes someone you recognize. One conversation becomes another. Eventually, the person who once walked into the room alone may become the person welcoming someone else.
That is what happened to Abby.
It is what Karen hoped the format could encourage when she first tested smaller gatherings.
And it is what the stories from Amy, Kelli, Frank, Mark and Latasia continue to show in different ways.
A conversation at an Around Town can lead to a client, a collaboration, a mentor, a job opportunity or simply a new idea. But perhaps the most important outcome is what happens over time: strangers become familiar faces, familiar faces become trusted connections, and those connections become a community people want to return to.
Check out our Upcoming Events page for future Around Town gatherings and come join us!
We’d like to extend a special acknowledgement to Cindy Gardiner, VP of Volunteers for AMA Atlanta, for managing the Around Town program.
About the Author
Aby Varma is part of the AMA Atlanta Marketing Committee. He is the founder and CEO of Spark Novus, which helps marketing teams unlock AI for impact, and the founder of Marketing AI Pulse, where marketers learn, connect and grow.