Jonathan Allen is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of EQ, a St. Louis media startup he founded in 2019 to explore the local innovation and creator economy. After receiving an Arch Grant Jonathan opened an office in St. Louis in 2016 as co-founder of Longneck & Thunderfoot (L&T), a 2x Inc 5000 listed (2019-2020) digital marketing agency incubated at the Columbia University Startup Lab in New York. Spanning a 20-year career in online publishing, Jonathan has played advisor to dozens of traditional media companies transitioning their business online and was previously the director of Search Engine Watch (2010-13), the oldest b2b blog on SEO and 2012 winner of the Gold AZBEE National Award for “Online Excellence, New or Relaunched Website” from the American Society of Business Press Editors. A self-taught SEO expert and conference organizer, Jonathan has shared original perspectives and cutting edge growth hacking strategies at some of the largest marketing conferences in the world, including Search Engine Strategies, where he also served on the advisory board and provided industry commentary for the BBC, the Boston Globe and Deutsche Welle. Before moving to the USA, Jonathan was heavily involved in the startup scene in London, UK. His first startup was a web analytics company. Later he joined the founding team behind Moblog, a social network for mobile phone photography that was momentarily world famous for pioneering citizen journalism, which went on to win Webby, MEGAS, Royal Television Society awards and was nominated for a BAFTA. Starting Fall 2021, Jonathan is currently pursuing an MA in Journalism at Mizzou where he hopes to formally improve upon his expertise and experience in new media ventures and digital content creation.