Will Yoder

Head the Leagues and Teams group, overseeing business development and strategy for league and team partners across Meta’s full portfolio of apps (Instagram, Facebook, Threads and WhatsApp), AI, and wearables.

Oversee Sports Partnerships for Instagram across league and team partners. Manage partnerships and go-to-market strategy across verticals to help make Instagram the best place both for sports organizations to put their content and the best place on the internet to be a sports fan. Accomplishments: - Developed and oversaw the execution and implementation of the Instagram Shopping go-to-market strategy for sports. Developed a framework for "Shoppable Moments" partnerships, including partnering with the NFL and NBA to bring exclusive shopping experiences to the NFL Draft and the NBA Finals. - Oversaw the launch of IGTV for Instagram Sports with over two dozen partners uploading content on launch day. Coordinated communication with partners across verticals effectively despite having to juggle constantly changing confidential information. - Launched the Instagram Student Section, a program aimed at facilitating the creation of Instagram Stories content amongst our top university sports partners at major college football and basketball games. Scaled the program from 8 schools to well over 100 while partnering directly with the NCAA and the CFP around the Final Four and the College Football Championship. - Oversaw the development and launch of the first ever third party Instagram A/R effect for the 2018 NBA Finals. The “NBA Dunk Cam” effect was featured as part of Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at Facebook’s F8 Conference. - Spearheaded and managed Instagram’s initiatives around the 2018 World Cup. Coordinated global efforts across athlete, team, league, and media partners as well as internal initiatives around product and editorial. Highlights included developing a first party “GOAL” A/R effect, launching Geo-Gating, and coordinating this moment with the launch of IGTV. Our efforts helped contribute to the World Cup being the largest moment ever measured on Instagram, with 272 million people generating 3 billion interactions around the games.

Served as the Sports Lead for Instagram's Community Team. Ran editorial strategy for sports across all of Instagram's editorial channels, including the official @Instagram account (instagram.com/instagram) as well as video channels in the Search and Explore section. Collaborated with both mainstream sports partners as well as community members to highlight the creative aspects of the sports community. Worked closely with the product team to help land product roll outs like Instagram Stories and Event Channels around major sports moments. Projects and Accomplishments: - Established Instagram’s first sports editorial strategy for Explore and the @Instagram account, reaching hundreds of millions of people each day. - Oversaw Editorial and Community initiatives on Instagram for the 2016 Rio Olympics. This ended up being the largest event ever captured on the platform, with over 916 million interactions. - Launched Instagram Stories to the sports world, helping drive the transformational product from 0 to 400 million users. Pioneered programs like @Instagram takeovers at major moments like NFL kickoff and the Rio Olympics to incentivize adoption and drive awareness.

Global head of strategy and business development for the digital initiatives of Octagon Talent and Properties. Worked with brand partners, league entities, and professional athletes to forge strategic relationships and leverage digital properties. Oversaw the digital and social media strategy of Octagon’s stable of over 1000 professional athletes, including kickstarting the digital presence of athletes like Stephen Curry, Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and many many more. Projects and Accomplishments: - Developed Playbook, a proprietary technology designed to help leverage Octagon’s relationship and assets to better recruit athletes. Playbook utilized millions of data points to automatically uncover ways that Octagon could better build relationships and sign elite athletes. - Launched and oversaw Octagon En8age, a social media management platform designed to provide white glove service to top athlete clients. Worked with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube to create new organic and paid opportunities for Octagon clients. - Ran Octagon Talent’s digital consulting business, focusing specifically on helping startups tap into our agencies resources to scale.

Developed and utilized Octagon's proprietary "Twackle Engine,"​ a publisher dashboard built to identify trending sports stories using the Twitter API. Partnered with Sports Illustrated to lead a team of writers who contributed 30 posts per day to the SI.com Tracking Blog, powered by the Twackle Engine. By using trending data to identify viral story topics, we generated over 35 million visits in seven months after the blog's launch.

Digital Marketing Professor for Georgetown University's Sports Industry Management (SIM) graduate program. SIM recognized as sixth best postgrad program in the world by SportBusiness International

Founded TheNatsBlog.com, a credentialed news source devoted to providing analysis and an online community to fans of Washington Nationals baseball. Write and edit original content, publishing as many as three posts per day. Content has been published or linked to major news outlets including USAToday.com, CBSSports.com, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com, NBCSports.com, Washington Post.com, and SI.com. Built an audience reaching as many as 25,000 unique visitors and 40,000 page views a month. Developed search engine optimization techniques and social media strategy to drive readership and support advertising.

Oversaw a team that designed and built websites/applications for small businesses with the goals of improved SEO, improved conversion, and a seamless user interface. Personally provisioned, edited, and designed websites based on WordPress platforms. Edited CSS and HTML to customize themes and provide the perfect layout for the customer's business needs. Managed social media efforts for clients.

Worked with communications department to assure that the Columbus Blue Jackets organization, as well as its athletes, were represented in the best possible light in the media. Interacted with local and national media outlets both in locker room and front office settings. Wrote feature stories about the Columbus Blue Jackets and the National Hockey League for publication on BlueJackets.com and NHL.com. Wrote weekly prospect reports providing fans with an update on various Blue Jackets talents within the clubs farm system. Coordinated media appearances, interviews, and player appearance events. Served as a liaison between local media and the players.

Served as promotional manager for 97.1 Wash FM and Sports Talk 980. Made sure all sponsorship activations were set up and executed correctly, interacted with fans, supported athletes and station personalities, and maintained customer/client relationships.

Gilson Wright Award Winner for Journalistic Enterprise School's first online play-by-play broadcaster for Football and Basketball, helping to launch the school's inaugural "Stream-OWU" platform. First Online Editor for the Ohio Wesleyan Transcript, the oldest continually run independent student newspaper in the nation. Captain of the Ohio Wesleyan Ultimate Frisbee team, the Firedogs.