Joan McGeough ’80

Many business school students dream of starting their own companies or holding executive positions in their fields. Joan McGeough ’80 has done both and been nationally recognized for her success.

After a successful 15+ year corporate career in a variety of executive marketing roles for international companies, she founded and ran Marketing for Results, Unltd. Her own marketing consulting firm that provided high level, marketing strategies to business of all sizes, after nine successful years she was looking to make a change and in 2013 was tapped by The DAK Group, a leading Investment Bank to be their Chief Marketing Officer.

McGeough has been named a 2017 Brand Builder Honoree, by Leading Women Entrepreneurs, an organization that focuses on the advancement of professional women. She along with other honorees will be recognized at an awards dinner in September. McGeough is honored and humbled by the recognition.

At The DAK Group, McGeough leads marketing, branding and business development. Middle- Market business owners and their stakeholders are the target audience for her company’s services. She uses Thought Leadership and education about Mergers & Acquisitions as a marketing and branding platform, to target her audience. She develops marketing strategies that educates business owners about the options they have to maximize the value of their business and shares information on the steps of making acquisitions, raising capital or exiting out.

McGeough attributes much of her learning about the business field to her time at Montclair State as a business administration major. She says she loved that all of her professors were business practitioners and had real world experience to share with the class.

In particular, she remembers John Turner, a professor of a management class who McGeough says expanded his teaching of management theories outside of the classroom, giving applicable business examples.

Of her fondest memories on campus, she remembers being one of the first women allowed to pledge and join Alpha Kappa Psi a business fraternity. Balancing this and other extra-curricular, as well as classes and working, McGeough appreciates the flexibility that Montclair State allowed her.

McGeough says if a marketing student asked for her advice today she would jump up and down on her desk screaming, “Marketing is more than just social media , make sure you understand how it ALL integrates!”