Main content

Digital Marketing Instructors



Mary Zimnik


Mary Zimnik is a creative communications subject matter expert and educator. For three decades, she has been a career creative generalist and strategist. Her projects utilize her talents as a writer, editor, graphic designer, and photographer. Mary’s portfolio includes consulting contracts in media and public relations, brand development, and digital and traditional marketing. Including 2023 work, Mary has developed more than 45 courses online and in the classroom. Her focus now in the e-learning environment is curriculum and instructional design.

Mary has taught for 19 years at Emory University’s Continuing Education (ECE). She co-founded the Digital Marketing Certificate in 2014. Before that, she founded the Graphic Design Certificate and Advanced Web Design Certificate. Recently, Mary served as the instructor-evaluator of the asynchronous Digital Marketing Certificate. She is now developing and will teach the new Digital Marketing Certificate: Building and Launching Better Multichannel Campaigns, which combines live classes, self-paced learning, and an ecosystem of 12 blended advanced specialties. 

Prior to her return to teaching in 2004, Mary worked on film industry projects. Her filmography included major feature film, documentary, and commercial projects. She created the role of a location agent representing college and university clients and supervised set filming on their behalf. She negotiated major film contracts with studios, and her location agreement would become the template for many state film departments. This contract ensures that on-location filming is a more equitable experience for locations. Mary negotiated the most lucrative on-location university contract in the history of filming at the time with the television mini-series Season in Purgatory (ref: NYT). Then she beat her own record with Scream 2. Her final project was the film Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius in 2004.

Mary remains a clicks-and-mortar career creative while living as a digital nomad. While traveling, she maintains a full workload teaching, writing, designing, and shooting photography. In her spare time, she dabbles in various art and creative writing work.