UMSL senior Irina Biedenstein (left) served as a social media intern for the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, and she helped with registration during the event held Wednesday and Thursday at the Renaissance St. Louis Airport Hotel. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)
A lot has changed in the marketing industry since Justin Lopinot earned his master’s degree in communication from the University of Missouri–St. Louis in 2006, and he said the rise of artificial intelligence has only accelerated that evolution.
“The pace of change from year to year, even month to month, is insanely fast,” said Lopinot, the director of employee communication at Spire.
Which is what Lopinot said makes the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference such an important marker on the regional marketing calendar. The 14th version of the annual conference founded by Perry Drake, the chair of UMSL’s Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, was held Wednesday and Thursday at the Renaissance St. Louis Airport Hotel. Lopinot said the event once again gave industry professionals the much-needed opportunity to share notes with colleagues regarding the latest trends as well as what’s coming down the pipeline.
“What I like about this conference is we tackle the problems of today, but we’re also looking ahead,” said Lopinot, who worked in UMSL’s Marketing and Communications Department from 2002-06 while earning his master’s degree. “There are a lot of professionals from different organizations who come here, and they’re all in this mindset of, ‘Here’s where we are today, here’s where we’re going to be tomorrow, and here’s how you need to work in today’s environment.’ You’ve got people working in agencies, people working for corporations, even plenty of students here who haven’t gotten their first job yet, and I think a conference like this really instills some basics, some advanced techniques and some mindset shifts that people need to have as they continue adapting to the changes.”
Scott Morris (left), director of UMSL’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, served as the moderator for a roundtable discussion highlighting the stories of several St. Louis innovators during the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference.
This year’s conference drew 625 attendees for the lectures, roundtables and masterclasses that featured 75 speakers, marking a significant bump up from the 2025 event. UMSL faculty members that served as speakers and moderators included Scott Morris, director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center; Jill Alexander, professor of public relations and faculty advisor to the Public Relations Student Society of America chapter at UMSL; and Tessa Garcia-Collart, assistant professor of marketing at the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship.
“We’ve been working hard on growing this event back the best we can post-COVID, and it hasn’t been easy, but we’re very pleased with how things turned out,” Drake said.
According to Cody Goodrich, the more important aspects of MDMC have not changed, such as the overall community feel of the event, as well as the drive to focus on topics that will benefit all who attend.
An UMSL graduate who received his bachelor’s degree in marketing in 2018 and a master’s in business administration in 2020, Goodrich was a graduate assistant for Drake and spent plenty of time behind the scenes putting together previous MDMC events. Now a working professional who will begin a new chapter on May 11 as director of marketing with David Mason + Associates, Goodrich said the success of MDMC is boosted by the close-knit marketing network in the St. Louis region that wants everyone, especially students, to reach their full potential.
“That’s really been the North Star of MDMC ever since I’ve been involved,” Goodrich said. “The speakers, the attendees, everyone wants the content to be good for all of us, but especially for the students.”
Sessions over the two-day event were held in six separate meeting spaces on the first floor of the hotel. A wide variety of topics were covered, such as B2B and Business Development; Brand, PR/Communication and Strategy; Content, Design and Storytelling; Entrepreneurship and Small Business; Digital Transformation and Future Trends; Data, CRM and Customer Experience; Social Media, Influencer and Community Marketing; and Search, Media and Advertising. However, the hot topic on most people’s minds continues to be the impact of AI on the marketing industry.
Vince Costa, a 2024 UMSL graduate with a bachelor’s degree in communication and media and a public relations certificate, attended this year’s MDMC hoping to learn how to better optimize AI in his day-to-day work. Now a corporate marketing and communication specialist for Flat Branch Home Loans, Costa said the rise of AI has significant implications for his career, and he was grateful that his alma mater presented him with the opportunity to hear how other professionals are using AI tools while still maintaining a level of authenticity in their content and communications.
Jill Alexander, faculty advisor to the Public Relations Student Society of America chapter at UMSL, led a masterclass on “storytelling in a digital age” during the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference.
Ahmad Houston said he learned some eye-opening information while attending the conference. On track to earn a bachelor’s degree in marketing at UMSL next May, Houston said he could not put a price on being able to listen to and learn from some of the top minds in the industry. Currently a member of UMSL’s Marketing Club, Houston, who plans to stay at UMSL and work toward a master’s degree, will be an officer in the club next year and likely take on a leadership role in the planning of the 2027 event.
“To get this kind of exposure to the world that I’m going to be entering and be a part of hosting events that involve so many people in the industry, it’s a very powerful thing, and it’s been extremely valuable,” he said.
For this year’s conference, Drake’s grad assistants Clayton Bruce, who is the president of the Marketing Club, and Cristina Fernandez Bermejo, the club treasurer, handled the bulk of the organizational duties. Fernandez Bermejo, who celebrated her birthday on Thursday, will graduate this May with a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in international business. She said the months spent planning the conference felt crazy at times, but it all proved worthwhile as the event unfolded “like a dream.”
Bruce, who worked at MDMC the previous two years, said he was very appreciative for the networking opportunities that the conference always provides. About to graduate with a master’s in marketing, Bruce said he has learned a lot from the working professionals who spoke during the event about the different strategies of marketing. After co-coordinating the 2026 event along with Fernandez Bermejo, he can add project management to the long list of skills he has gained as a student at UMSL.
“If you had asked me 10 years ago if I could be doing something like this, I probably would have told you that I wouldn’t want to be involved because at the time, I just thought that this was impossible for me,” Bruce said. “But doing stuff like this, doing the little things that you think are impossible, it always shows you that there’s a possibility.”
Lopinot, who has been a member of the UMSL Marketing & Entrepreneurship Advisory Council since it was established in 2013, said he still enjoys hearing current students talk about the lessons learned from events outside of the classroom like MDMC. Lopinot knows how important it is for future professionals to take advantage of the opportunities provided by UMSL to pick up practical ideas that they can take into that first job, and he also touted the value of the connections that can be made along the way.
“There are a lot of doors that we can open here for students at this conference,” Lopinot said. “I wish I had something like this when I was younger, that I could have had some doors opened for me. I think this is awesome, and I love doing it.”
