board of advisors

Jim Friedlich

Jim Friedlich is a partner at ZelnickMedia, focusing on investments in business information, business services and digital media. Prior to joining ZelnickMedia in 2001, he held a series of senior executive positions at The Wall Street Journal overseeing global sales, marketing, and business development for Dow Jones' online, print, event and TV properties.

Professor Panos Ipeirotis

Panos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at Leonard N. Stern School of Business of New York University. His recent research interests focus on crowdsourcing. He was an organizer of the Conference on Human Computation (HCOMP 2009 and HCOMP 2010), which focused on various variations of crowdsourcing. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Columbia University in 2004, with distinction. He has received two Microsoft Live Labs Awards, two "Best Paper" awards (IEEE ICDE 2005, ACM SIGMOD 2006), two "Best Paper Runner Up" awards (JCDL 2002, ACM KDD 2008), and is also a recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.

Geraldine Laybourne

Geraldine is the co-founder of Oxygen Media, a 24-hour cable television network for young women. She served as chairperson and CEO of Oxygen Media until she sold it to NBC Universal in 2007. She served as president of Disney/ABC Cable Networks (from 1996-1998) where she ran cable programming for the Walt Disney Company and its ABC subsidiary. She also led the team that created Nickelodeon and "Nick at Nite" in the 80s and 90s. Geraldine was ranked No. 1 among the 50 most influential women in the entertainment industry by The Hollywood Reporter in 1996 and named one of the 25 most influential people in America by Time magazine that same year.

Jon Mandel

Jon has most recently been CEO of NielsenConnect, a change-forcing unit of the Nielsen Company responsible for connecting all of the different information resources across Nielsen. Prior to this corporate role, Jon was chief of strategic solutions for GroupM, one of the world's largest media communications companies. Before GroupM, he was chairman of MediaCom US. He joined Grey Advertising in 1974 and by 1979 was promoted to vice president/director of national broadcast, where he remained until MediaCom's formation in the U.S. in 1997. During his years at MediaCom, he advised numerous accounts in various roles including co-managing director, chief negotiating officer, co-CEO, co-CEO of MediaCom Latino, chief global buying officer of MediaCom Worldwide, in addition to his role as chairman of MediaCom US.

Nishant Mani

Nishant runs online advertising for Capital One's US Card businesses, with a focus on lead generation, direct marketing and acquisitions. He has extensive experience with data-based online advertising solutions and analytics, and has partnered with many established and emerging digital firms. He is currently leading Capital One's charge to leverage varied online-offline consumer information in designing targeted advertising campaigns. Prior to his online life at Capital One, he gained rigorous expertise in the company's information-based strategy across many lending practices. He has also conducted multiple engagements in the entertainment industry in companies such as MTV Networks, Warner Music and Sony BMG, focusing on business development and digital strategy.

Marta Martinez

Marta is SVP, Operations and Business Development, at MediaMath where she focuses on helping media and data partners activate and monetize their assets across the company's platform. Prior to this role, Marta was the EVP of global business development at HAVAS, one of the top three global agency holding companies. There she worked closely with the group's executive and operational management on identifying and executing strategic development opportunities across Havas Digital. Her breadth of marketing experience grew from her work in several different business units within the Havas Media group across Europe, Latin America and the U.S. Prior to joining MPG, Marta was a management consultant for marchFIRST in the U.S. and Cluster in Europe, where her observations and insights were sought by clients including The Walt Disney Company, AT&T, Universal Studios, Aprilia, Planeta Publishing and the city of Bilbao.

Joseph Plummer

Joseph is a professor of marketing at Columbia University's School of Business. Prior to taking an academic title, Joseph was executive vice president, director of research and insight development for McCann-Erickson WorldGroup and a member of the firm's executive committee and board of directors. Before this, he was director of brand strategy on global accounts for McCann-Erickson WorldGroup. His responsibilities included helping global clients develop brand vision and values, creating growth strategies for the future and developing communication strategies to build brand equity. Prior to joining McCann-Erickson in 1997, Joseph was vice chairman and worldwide planning director at DMB&B advertising and a member of the DMB&B board of directors and the executive committee.

Professor Foster Provost

Foster is a Professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, where he holds an NEC faculty fellowship and a Paduano fellowship in business ethics. His research and teaching focuses on data mining, machine learning, network analysis, and social-network marketing. Foster is also editor-in-chief of the Journal Machine Learning. He has written over 100 technical papers, tutorials, and patents, and has applied machine learning technologies to many business and government applications, including fraud detection, counterterrorism analysis, on-line advertising, targeted marketing, network diagnosis, and customer contact management.

Julie Roehm

Julie is a marketing strategy consultant that works with all industries and segments to provide strategic insight, planning and execution particularly in the areas of marketing, new media, insight and positioning. She is a frequent contributor on Fox Business News regarding consumer insights, marketing strategies and performance results. She was most recently the senior vice president of marketing communications for Wal-Mart Stores. Prior to this, Julie was the global director of marketing communications for Chrysler Group, responsible for all branded marketing for the Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge brands.

Vivek Shah

Vivek is the former Group President, Digital at Time Warner Inc. During his 15-year tenure at Time Warner Inc., Mr. Shah oversaw some of the company's largest digital properties, including Time.com, CNNMoney.com and SI.com; served as the President of Fortune and Money magazines; and was the chief architect of CNNMoney.com, the web's largest financial publisher. Mr. Shah has been named Online Publisher of the Year by MIN and Innovator of the Year by BtoB's Media Business. He was also named to Folio magazine's Thirty under 30 list and Crain's Forty under 40 list.