Kyle Kaynak
Cofounder, President & Chief Meaning Officer
 Kyle is obsessed with creating 'meaning' for businesses. With over 16 years of experience, Kyle has always been a 'creative strategist' in various settings, from small companies to large conglomerates to international organizations like the World Bank. He implemented breakthrough branding, marketing, and corporate strategies for several businesses. His 'renaissance man' background provides him the kind of creative thinking toolbox essential for helping businesses grow faster and attract more funding and the best talent. Kyle has a Master’s from Carnegie Mellon University, an MBA in Marketing, and a Master's in engineering.
"We create strong brands, and strong brands can only be built on distinct ideas and strategies to become # 1 in their domain. We think brand strategy precedes all business strategies, especially the marketing strategy. It is a CEO level activity, not some marketing initiative with a little creative spicing."
Lillian Kaynak
Cofounder & Creative Director
 With a colorful career that has included stints as an artist, children's books illustrator, art director, and designer, Lillian bringsa wealth of experience to the Virtual Protein team. She has won several awards from local, national, and international creative competitions and has had her work featured in numerous publications and design magazines including Applied Arts,HOW, and others.
"The US has taught the world about branding, but it is Europe that initiated the arts. Most of our 'brandeurs' acquired their Bachelor's degrees in Europe and received further training in the US. This, along with their work experience on both continents, significantly adds to the quality of our final products.”
Melinda Sigal
Partner & Chief Marketing Evangelist
 Melinda is a dynamic classically trained senior brand management and integrated marketing professional. As a strategic businessbuilder & deal maker, her expertise includes strategic planning, marketing, branding, referral / word-of-mouth marketing, communications, and social media. Melinda has extensive experience leading top brands and companies such as Fox, NBC, Disney, Universal, Chevrolet, Honda, Dodge, Cadillac, Kraft, Hormel, Procter & Gamble, Vidal Sassoon, Neutrogena, Warner-Lambert and Bestfoods. She would rather outthink than outspend competitors, and has proven success transforming existing products and launching new products. Her demonstrated skills involve converting opportunities into results by defining objectives,creating vision, distinguishing value proposition, strengthening customer experience and brand positioning across all customer touchpoints. She is an avid networker, adept at building relationships online and in person, with special ability of being a 'connector' – knowing interests, skill sets, and needs, and being able to bring individuals together to make great things happen. She has almost 9,000 connections on LinkedIn and over 1,500 friends on FaceBook, and tweets about marketing, branding, and social media.
Mimi Davidson
Director, Client Development & Marketing Innovation
 Mimi Davidson joins Virtual Protein as the Director of Client Development and Marketing Innovation. She brings nearly 15 years of experience in digital communications to lead the companies’ business development and marketing efforts. Prior to joining Virtual Protein, Mimi held Web Director roles with The University of Maryland Medical Center (www.umm.edu), The ImageLoft, Flite Three Studios and Garrison Forest School (www.gfs.org). Mimi will promote Virtual Protein’s trademark strategic consulting services in addition to their comprehensive suite of marketing and branding programs. A believer in the efficiency of the 'virtual team', Mimi led her own team of designers, developers, and programmers through 'The Image Loft', a web design and development company she founded and operated from 2000-2006. Mimi lives in Northern Virginia with her Emmy-award winning husband John, their three-year-old son, and one fluffy cat.
"I want to help businesses leverage 'the new rules of marketing, branding, and PR' to accomplish business growth and operational efficiency through our signature Brand DiffusionTM."
Alison K. Gonzalez
Strategic Director, Market Development
 Alison has more than 15 years experience strategically targeting key business opportunities by understanding current market trends, aligning sales and marketing initiatives, and optimizing the sales pipeline todeliver bottom-line revenue. Through the development and execution of innovative,integrated marketing strategies and tactics, Alison has enabled global sales organizations to effectively develop client relationships resulting in both transactional and complex sales with government agencies and Fortune Global 500 companies in industries including information technology, software, aerospace & defense, education, retail, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, financial services, energy, entertainmentand hospitality. Alison has an MBA with a concentration in Market and Business Development from the George Mason University School of Management, and she is also certified as a Project ManagementProfessional (PMP®).
"The value of any marketing investment lies not only inflawless execution but also in appropriately analyzing the efficiency of the process and the effectiveness of the initiatives undertaken – and, having the talent and flexibility to customize the approach to deliver bottom-line results in any situation.”
Advisory Board
Arda Beskardes
 Arda is an attorney based in New York City. He specializes in a wide variety of immigration matters. Before heading on to a solo-practice, Arda was an associate with Siskind Susser, PC, one of the most prestigious immigration firms in the country. Prior to Siskind Susser, Arda was the in-house immigration specialist of The University of Memphis, where he served the immigration needs of the faculty, staff, and students. An active member of NAFSA and a member of their Trainer Corps roster, Arda frequently conducts professional development workshops, lectures, and writes on immigration issues for NAFSA and other educational organizations. Arda is also well versed in business matters and has several years teaching experience as an adjunct professor of Business Law at The University of Memphis’s Fogelman College of Business and Economics. What makes Arda so special for Virtual Protein is his expertise in marketing and advertising industries, not only from a legal perspective, but at all levels, from operations to industry trends, to business development, through years of progressive experience. Also, through his clientele, Arda has a unique insight to the marketing and advertising industries and is actually an "outsider" who, effectively, is an industry "insider", which makes his perspective extremely valuable to any client.
Arzu Birkan
 Arzu has achieved a professional career in integrated marketing communications area, having worked at director levels with global communication giants such as McCann-Erickson Worldgroup and Grey Worldwide. Her main competency is in strategic communications planning; including marketing intelligence, creative planning (in terms of both advertising and corporate identity development platforms), tactical integration of communication channels and project idea development. She has created and conducted several idea generation tools for the purpose of differentiating brands against competition. During the last 12 years she has gained broad experience in several industries; ranging from FMCG, automotive, banking & finance to services. Thus, she has developed very good cross and out of the box thinking skills. On several occasions, Arzu has lectured colleagues and advertising experts on “Experiential Marketing”, “Integrated Marketing Communications”, and trained junior colleagues on “General Principles of Marketing Communications” consecutively for four years.
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