Summary
Max Spiegel is a senior consultant and digital strategist with 11+ years of professional experience and three decades of hands-on web and community-building expertise, currently advising at Align Consulting Group. He founded and runs mudcat.org, a 25-year-old online community and 20,000-song archive recognized by the Library of Congress, demonstrating rare ability to scale and sustain global, high-traffic grassroots platforms. His background blends practical engineering (Ruby on Rails, Python, NLP) with marketing, social media strategy, and reputation management across higher education, healthcare, and non-profit sectors. Max pairs a philosopher’s curiosity and a teacher’s patience with a maker’s toolkit, having built custom forums, e-commerce, pay-per-view media, and collaborative scholarship platforms like Zebrapedia. Known for creative problem-solving and “Plan B” pivots, he also produces an NPR blues show, reflecting an unusual mix of technical leadership and cultural stewardship.
11 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
BA, Philosophy, BA, Philosophy at Penn State University