About the Author:
Erika Heeren-Moon
Erika Heeren-Moon is a communications professional with nearly two decades of experience. She has worked in different areas of communications with a small business focus as an agency owner, consultant, publicist, and a freelance writer. For seven of those 20 years, Heeren-Moon ran her own marketing agency connecting military spouses and veterans with small businesses in need of marketing support.
In addition to running a boutique marketing agency, Heeren-Moon served as an instructor for SCORE and the Small Business Administration – creating and teaching a new digital marketing curriculum for small businesses for the Treasure Valley, Idaho chapters. She also served as a business mentor for SCORE and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.
In 2020, Heeren-Moon published a book of interviews, First Dollar Feeling™: Stories from the Trenches of Small Business. First Dollar Feeling™ explores the real-life stories of nine different American business owners. Each entrepreneur shares the unfiltered account of their struggles, triumphs, and what they’ve learned along the way.
In 2021, Heeren-Moon transitioned from a career in fractional marketing to a career in policy research with a business focus at Georgetown University. Heeren-Moon also serves as an editor for GNOVIS, the academic journal of the Communication, Culture and Technology program at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
In 2022, Heeren-Moon released The First Dollar Feeling™ Business Planning Workbook as a complement to First Dollar Feeling™. The workbook is designed to help entrepreneurs to gather their thoughts, identify their goals, and help them create a plan for success on their terms.
In the spring of 2023, Heeren-Moon graduates from Georgetown University with a Master of Arts in Communication, Culture and Technology and an Apprenticeship in Teaching Certificate. Her Master’s thesis project involves mixed methods research exploring hiring trends and competition policy implications of Big Tech companies in the VR sector.
Starting in the fall of 2023, Heeren-Moon will pursue a JD with Rutgers Law School and a Ph.D. from the School of Public & International Affairs (SPIA) at Virginia Tech. She has a research focus on technology policy as it relates to cybersecurity, commerce, and the future of work.
Heeren-Moon also serves as a research assistant on a National Science Foundation grant in collaboration with Virginia Tech, exploring the policy implications of spectrum sharing on the 12 GHz radio frequency band. Past projects include research associated with the development of a formula to calculate return on investment for emerging technology acquisitions for the Department of Defense.
In addition to her academic career, Heeren-Moon is the incoming President of the New Jersey chapter of the American Marketing Association. She has served as the VP of Communications for the chapter for the past three years.
Erika Heeren-Moon has been featured on Inc.com as one of the “10 Top Women in Content Marketing in 2019.” Heeren-Moon is the recipient of a Women in Content Marketing Award (2019), an Idaho Business Review Women of the Year Award (2019), a 2016 Idaho Press Award (New Release Division), and a 2011 Design Award for Best Special Section from Local Media Association (formerly Suburban Newspapers of America).
Heeren-Moon is a military spouse and a mom of two. In her spare time, she enjoys baking, painting, and is slightly obsessed with her two German Shepherds, Penny Lane and McCoy “Bones.”
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