When real-world marketing expertise meets the next generation of talent, incredible things happen.

Go Do Good is thrilled to share that our founder, Michelle Sulzer, was recently invited to serve as a guest judge for the IPRA Capstone Campaign Presentations at the University of South Florida’s prestigious Zimmerman School of Advertising, right here in Tampa.

The invitation came from Professor Ronda Clement, MBA, a longtime friend, colleague, and past client of Go Do Good who teaches advertising at USF. Ronda has spent the semester guiding her students through a full-service agency experience and the results? Nothing short of impressive.

What Made This Capstone So Special

This wasn’t a classroom exercise. This was the real deal.

Four student teams were tasked with developing complete advertising campaigns from discovery and research through strategy and final execution for two real nonprofit partners:

iMPACT Greater Good™ and Peirano Family Foundation, Inc.

The students operated like a professional agency from day one. They conducted research, developed strategy, built creative, and delivered campaigns that their nonprofit partners can actually publish and put into market. That is the kind of education that translates directly into careers.

Michelle joined an esteemed panel of judges, including Joey Colarulo, Almon Gunter, Michelle Darr, and Myles Madden, all accomplished marketing and advertising professionals. Together, they evaluated each team’s presentations, scored their work, and provided direct, meaningful feedback.

One Overall Winning Team was recognized, along with several individual awards — a testament to the high level of talent in the room.

Why This Matters — For Students AND the Industry

At Go Do Good, we believe deeply in investing in the next generation of mission-driven marketing professionals. Nonprofit organizations are doing critical work in communities across the country and they need skilled, passionate marketers who understand both the craft and the cause.

Watching these students present campaigns built specifically for nonprofit partners was exactly the kind of work we champion every single day. They didn’t just understand marketing strategy; they understood impact.

As Professor Clement shared about her students: they showed up with confidence, clarity, and strong execution.

We couldn’t agree more. The growth, the coachability, and the commitment these students demonstrated throughout the semester is precisely the kind of mindset that makes a great nonprofit marketer. They took feedback, kept improving, and showed up on presentation day ready to deliver.

A Huge Honor — And a Reminder of Why Community Matters

For Michelle, being asked to step into the room as a judge to represent the professional marketing community and offer real feedback to students on the cusp of launching their careers was a genuine honor.

“These students are going to do incredible things,” Michelle shared. “It was inspiring to see how deeply they engaged with their nonprofit clients, how seriously they took the work, and how well they executed under pressure. That’s exactly the mindset we look for.”

We are grateful to Professor Ronda Clement for the invitation, for her dedication to her students, and for building a program that bridges the gap between education and real-world impact. And we applaud the nonprofit partners — iMPACT Greater Good™ and the Peirano Family Foundation for trusting students with their missions and investing in the next generation of talent.

This is exactly the kind of collaboration that makes communities stronger and the marketing industry better.

Paint splatters. A skull with a bow. A font choice that probably should have disqualified me immediately.

That was the resume I showed up with when I knocked on the door of a small agency a few streets over, hoping they might take a chance on an intern.

Somehow, they did.

Before that moment, I was on a completely different path. I had even considered switching my major to theater stagecraft and set design. But everything changed during a trip to Chicago, when I had the chance to shadow at an ad agency my cousin worked at. The second I stepped inside, I knew. The energy, the creativity, the pace of the work, it just clicked.

I went home, changed direction, and started pursuing a degree in mass communications with a focus on advertising at the University of South Florida. Not long after, that very questionable resume landed me my start with Go Do Good (previously Sulzer Agency) and the beginning of what would become a 12-year journey.

In the early days, I was helping with simple design tasks, updating copy, placing images, supporting wherever I could. I didn’t have formal creative training, but I was eager and pretty tech-savvy. One of my first projects was designing a logo for Women in Philanthropy. I came up with the idea of a dandelion, with seeds blowing in the wind to represent the spread of generosity and impact. They loved it. That was my first real taste of creative ownership, and it was invigorating.

As time went on, I realized that while I enjoyed design, my strengths were leading me somewhere else. I found my place in account management and project management. I’ve always been a list person. I love organization, clarity, and the satisfaction of checking things off. What started as notebooks filled with color-coded pens eventually evolved into building systems that helped our entire team stay aligned as we grew.

Over the years, I stepped into roles as a project manager, account manager, and senior account manager, even exploring people and culture along the way. But at the core, I found my passion in helping teams and clients move work forward in a clear, thoughtful way.

There are so many moments that stand out, but one that always makes me smile is when we turned our conference room into a full fulfillment center for a client project with Accelerate Learning. We had an assembly line going, building boxes, wrapping iPads, and inserting materials. It was one of those moments where you could see all the strategy, design, and effort come to life in something tangible. And of course, there are the everyday moments too, like Michelle’s voice-to-text messages that somehow manage to turn everyone’s name into something completely unrecognizable.

What has made this journey so meaningful, though, is the people behind it all. Michelle and Rob have built something that truly reflects who they are. The shift to Go Do Good feels like a natural evolution of that. They genuinely want to do good for others, and that intention shows up in the work, the clients we choose, and the way we operate as a team.

Being part of that has shaped me in more ways than I expected. It’s given me a space to bring both my creativity and my love for structure together. It’s helped me grow into a role where I can support meaningful work while also building the systems that make it possible.

Now, 12 years in, what excites me most is where we’re headed. The continued focus on nonprofit organizations has made the work even more meaningful. You can see the impact. You can feel the purpose behind what you’re building. And being part of helping those organizations show up more clearly and connect more deeply with the people they serve is incredibly fulfilling.

Twelve years later, I’m still just as excited about the work and even more confident in the impact we can make.

Marissa Wilkins
Senior Account Manager