About
Jeff MacDonald
I build agentic tools for the people who have to live with them, and teach the same thing to students who will inherit them.
- Now
- Director of Innovation & Technology, Movers+Shakers
- Teaching
- VCU Brandcenter; AI in communications, VCU
- Based
- Richmond, Virginia
- Before
- Mekanism; The Martin Agency
Bio
I am Director of Innovation and Technology at Movers+Shakers, where the agency itself is my client. I partner with senior leadership to raise its AI IQ: I run the education and upskilling, decide which AI tools are worth operationalizing, and build the in-house products creative teams use day to day. Before this I worked directly with brand teams at Adobe, AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Q-tips and Lenovo, on digital work that had no precedent to copy. That client-side rigor is still how I judge an internal tool.
Outside the agency I build interactive installations out of light, sensors and software, so a room of strangers ends up sharing one moment. I teach for the same reason I build: the people who will inherit these systems should know what to ask of them. Content and technology earn their keep when they bring people together, and that is the test I put my own work through.
The reel
How I work
I ask bigger questions than the tool suggests
It shows up in the products: each one stops and asks me at the moment guessing would have been cheaper.
I ship the unglamorous part
The signed receipt, the printer driver, the end-of-week ledger. The infrastructure that keeps a loop honest is never the demo.
I keep the human gate non-negotiable
The vault is read-only by default. Scan-back lets my handwriting overrule the model. Nothing proceeds without approval.
I write like a person
I rewrote my own product's site copy to strip the machine-as-hero framing: short sentences, first person, no hype.
Resume
- 2025-present
Movers+Shakers, Richmond VA
Director, Innovation and Technology. The agency itself is the client: I partner with senior leadership to raise its AI IQ, run the upskilling, decide which tools are worth operationalizing, and build the in-house products where people already work.
- 2015-2025
Mekanism, Chicago
I went from digital innovation strategist on MillerCoors to Social Strategy Director, and ended up leading AI adoption across the holding group.
- 2011-2015
The Martin Agency, Richmond VA
I started as a creative technologist in the Maker Lab era, building physical and digital prototypes.
The last year, in commits
Teaching
I have taught on and off since 2011, starting with the first-years' creative technology boot camp at Brandcenter, where I am now an adjunct professor teaching product design, AI, and human-centered creativity. I also teach an async undergraduate course on AI in communications at VCU, and I am developing Course 3, Strategic Co-Creation, with VCU continuing education. I treat all of it as training in what to ask for, not which buttons to press.
People under-ask AI, because human thinking limits what they believe an agentic system can do.
My teaching premise, in one line