Marshall Schurtz
Professional Experience
- Built Merakiva Travel from the ground up, generating over $250,000 in customer bookings with a 100% 5-star guest rating.
- Lead group trips to extraordinary destinations, blending high-end travel with unique archaeological experiences.
- Plan bespoke 'once-in-a-lifetime' itineraries ranging from expedition cruises to Italian honeymoons.
- Developed 3 dynamic websites, 2 social channels, and a complete brand identity.
Head of Ops
Jan 2025 – Present- Oversee day-to-day operations across memberships, content systems, and digital platforms for a global theorist community.
- Coordinate 20+ global annual events, streamlining digital processes and managing cross-functional launch teams.
- Ensure seamless member experience and performance for the company's website and platforms.
Learning Product & eCommerce
Mar 2021 – Mar 2022- Repositioned the business around an annual membership product, driving an 11.8% growth in monthly recurring revenue.
- Increased eCommerce sales by 23% by automating acquisition and fulfillment via Shopify, Zapier, and Mailchimp.
- Designed the pedagogy framework and content structure for the 6-week Strategy Accelerator boot camp.
- Created Philadelphia's only tour of filming locations for the cult-favorite show 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'.
- Lead hundreds of guests on 'The Gang Goes to South Philly,' maintaining a 100% 5-Star rating on every platform.
- Featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer, KYW Philadelphia, Visit Philly, and Discover PHL.
- Manage all research, public relations, and business operations.
- Help 20+ clients build marketing technology stacks and optimize revenue through data-driven digital strategy.
- Implement and audit Google Analytics 4 (GA4) using GTM, notably increasing one client's lead generation by 4x.
- Build custom Looker Studio dashboards for real-time KPI access and multi-source reporting.
- Automate email systems and marketing workflows using APIs, Zapier, and Hubspot.
- Validated new product ideas and executed strategies for 2U's portfolio of online degrees and boot camps, driving growth in the education sector.
- Led market sizing and competitive intelligence efforts to provide critical insights, resulting in a 25% price increase for key product lines.
- Designed data-driven dashboards in Looker Studio to track and optimize product performance and enrollment metrics.
- Developed financial models to validate hypotheses and determine optimal pricing strategies.
- Analyzed marketing data for 60,000+ monthly users, providing reports on target personas across a portfolio of educational offerings.
- Monitored front-end analytics and provided optimization recommendations for email and advertising campaigns.
- Created custom dashboards in Google Data Studio to track relevant conversion metrics.
- Acted as liaison between internal marketing teams and external advertising agencies.
- Managed customer acquisition metrics and SEO, leading to a 97% increase in primary keyword position.
- Maintained course data on Salesforce and tracked analytics via GTM, Looker Studio, and GA.
- Created an automated offering submission process, decreasing time-to-list new degrees and courses by over 80%.
- Rearchitected internal MOOC financial and enrollment data into a consolidated system.
Project Manager
Jan 2019 – May 2019- Directed a team of 6 consulting for a Top 30 global pharmaceutical firm to determine possible licensing targets.
- Guided research strategy and presented recommendations to the client's leadership team.
Team Member
Sep 2018 – Dec 2018- Consulted for a medical imaging startup, conducting market research on a ~$500M niche market.
- Named 'Best Team Member' by the Project Manager for contributions to monetization and implementation strategy.
- Designed and implemented a full marketing analytics stack using Google Analytics, Segment, and Hubspot.
- Hired and managed a new sales program and developed outbound automated workflows, leading to significant growth in leads.
- Managed multi-platform advertising campaigns (Facebook and Google Ads) to promote startup app downloads.
- Created a GIS map of ~200 sites for the post-war reconstruction of Mosul, adding 800+ new verified sites used to track heritage destruction.
- Developed proximity analysis workflows to eliminate duplicative spatial data from collaborating projects.
- Compiled bi-weekly reports for the US Department of State on cultural property damage in Syria and Iraq.
- Curated customized audio environments for hospitality clients, contributing to an average 10% revenue increase.
- Developed music database classification systems during the startup phase, scaling to over 1M assets.
- Analyzed and classified acoustic characteristics to improve algorithmic music delivery.
Education
Dissertation: 'Like a Snake in Difficult Mountains.' Served as a teaching assistant for 4 courses, including 'Deals: The Structure of Transactions & Contracts' (Wharton MBA / Penn Law).
Focus on geospatial modeling and cartographic analysis in archaeology.
Senior Office Assistant for the Wiseman Archival Project, digitizing 10,000+ data sources. Admissions Ambassador. President of Habitat for Humanity BU.
Fieldwork
Rowanduz Archaeological Program
2013 – 2017Head of Survey • NE Iraq
Led the survey component of RAP for 3 seasons, discovering over 100 new sites in a previously unexplored region of the Zagros Mountains. Managed all geospatial data and excavation recording at Gund-i Topzawa.
VIEW DETAILS ↗Skills & Languages
Analytics & Tech
Looker Studio Google Analytics 4 GTM SQL RegEx ArcGIS Airtable Excel (Advanced) Tableau
Digital Marketing
Hubspot Salesforce Mailchimp Shopify Zapier SEO Facebook Ads Google Ads
Languages
Akkadian (Proficient) German (Basic) French (Reading) Spanish (Intermediate)
Certifications
Google Analytics IQ Penn CTL Teaching Certificate SEO Fundamentals