Shawn Hessinger - Executive Editor

Shawn Hessinger is the Executive Editor for Small Business Trends and has been with the team for 17 years. He manages Small Business Trends' global team of Staff Writers and editors directing news coverage and guiding the site's overall editorial policy.

He is a professional journalist with more than a decade of experience in the traditional newspaper business plus another 10 years of experience in digital media for various online trade publications, news sites and as head moderator for several online communities. He is also a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

During his years in the traditional newspaper business, Shawn served as a beat reporter, columnist, editorial writer, bureau chief and eventually managing editor with responsibility for nine weekly newspapers, the Berks Mont Newspapers in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Later moving to the digital world full time, Shawn founded his own firm providing blogging and social media engagement services, consulting and freelancing for online businesses, particularly Web publishers and online communities, in several industries.

An entrepreneur at heart, Shawn also operated his own independent record company just out of college.

He was the former community manager of the BizSugar community, a sister site to Small Business Trends and the former community editor at AllAnalytics.com, a site for professionals in the business intelligence and analytics communities.