Speakers

Jim Swift

President & CEO, Cortera

Jim has parlayed his boyhood fascination with sports statistics into a successful career as a data geek. As CEO of Cortera, his mission is to change the B2B information universe with long overdue insights into businesses to help organizations improve sales performance and risk management. Prior to Cortera, Jim was the COO of LexisNexis Risk Management and Executive Vice President at Seisint, which was acquired by LexisNexis.

Gordon Anderson

VP, Content, InsideView

Gordon T. Anderson has been Vice President, Content at InsideView since the inception of the company in 2005. Before joining InsideView, Gordon was a Senior Producer at CNN/Money, Time Warner's flagship business-news service. Gordon's long career in media and technology includes co-founding five companies, including Individual Investor magazine, Myway.com, and a European investment vehicle, CIR Ventures, based in Milan. Gordon also served as VP and Editor-in-Chief of Hoover's, the pioneering business information provider, during the company's most rapid growth period before and after its IPO.

Though an East Coaster by birth and inclination, Gordon enjoys life in San Francisco, where the wine and beer are both much better. With his wife Julie, he spends much of his time trying to avoid serious injury to his toddler son, Logan, and infant daughter, Tenley. Anderson graduated, with honors, from the University of Pennsylvania.

"The opportunities presented by the rise of Big Data are both vast and inexorable. But for all the chatter about zettabytes and petabytes, Hadoop and Hive, an obvious fact is often overlooked: Bad data doesn't become good just by becoming Big. As processing information becomes easier and cheaper, data accuracy will become more difficult and more valuable.

In fact, the same factors that have led to the rise of Big Data are also accelerating the pace of data decay. As the capacity of systems to process data expands, the range of data that is processed will grow in lockstep. At every point in that cycle, errors in the underlying content sets will be magnified.

The challenge of Big Data, then, is not just to harness greater processing power, but also to address the limitations and deficiencies of content creation and maintenance. The challenge of Big Data, in other words, is a question of Right and Wrong."

Vail Brown

Vice President, STR

Vail R. Brown is Vice President of Global Business Development & Marketing for STR (Smith Travel Research, Inc), the leading authority on hotel industry performance trends. STR provides clients—including hotel operators, developers, financiers, analysts and suppliers to the hotel industry—access to hotel research with regular and custom reports.

Mrs. Brown is responsible for the overall coordination, functional management and leadership of the business development and marketing departments for the STR Family of Companies - STR, STR Global, STR Analytics, HotelNewsNow.com, and RRC Associates and the Hotel Data Conference.

She is often featured as a guest speaker at international, national, regional and state conferences. Mrs. Brown currently is the Chair for the AH&LA Women In Lodging (WIL) Council and is the 2012/2013 incoming Chair for the HSMAI Foundation Board of Directors. She is also a Certified Master Hotel Supplier (CMHS).

Prior to joining STR, Mrs. Brown was the Director of Membership Development for the Tennessee Hotel & Lodging Association (now Tennessee Hospitality Association) and Greater Nashville Hotel & Lodging Association. Mrs. Brown holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Western Kentucky University in Political Science and Environment Studies.

Nancy Ciliberti

Senior Consultant, InfoCommerce Group

Nancy Ciliberti is a Senior Consultant with InfoCommerce Group focusing on engagements involving strategy development, the conversion of data assets into revenue streams and product innovation.

Ms. Ciliberti has more than fifteen years of STM and Legal publishing experience having previously worked in leadership positions in marketing, product management and editorial at Elsevier, Primedia and ALM. Her prior experience includes the launch and management of many successful online publications and mobile applications. Her areas of specialization include digital content creation, management, and monetization strategy; product development and lifecycle management; audience development and engagement and multi-channel marketing strategy and analysis.

Ms. Ciliberti contributes content and digital strategy thought leadership through research and writing including the recently published Subscription Retention Handbook: How to Raise Renewals.

Robert Coffey

CEO, The Gordian Group

Mr. Coffey co-founded The Gordian Group in 1990. Gordian pioneered the industry niche for expedited construction procurement in response to the need for time-critical, cost-effective and competitively-bid repair and alteration procurement. Gordian’s solutions process over $1.5 billion in construction orders every year by combining construction data, technology and expertise into a comprehensive system that substantially reduces procurement time and saves money for building and infrastructure owners. Gordian started as a consulting business but quickly transformed into a data, software, and services company at a time when desktop computers were rare. Mr. Coffey moved the business to a hosted solution in 2002 resulting in the collection of construction buying decisions of building and infrastructure owners across the nation over the last ten plus years.

One of the keys to Gordian’s success is their vast construction cost database. Gordian has been providing local, custom, construction cost data to building and infrastructure owners for the past two decades. This work has led to the creation of the largest most accurate construction cost database available. Gordian’s proprietary software and databases, designed by Mr. Coffey, provides the ability to produce hundreds of customized, client specific, task catalogs each year while maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the data.

Leveraging the success of Gordian’s software and construction data, Mr. Coffey designed eGordian to provide new products for the broader architectural, engineering, and construction markets. Gordian’s vast data exhaust will drive this new offering to provide vital information on construction information and trends to manufacturers, suppliers, and financial institutions.

Prior to co-founding The Gordian Group, Mr. Coffey was a project manager with CRSS, Inc. Mr. Coffey earned a Bachelor’s of Landscape Architecture degree from Kansas State University and is a licensed landscape architect in South Carolina. He is a member of several facilities associations, speaker at industry conferences, and has contributed industry articles.

Steve Connolly

Senior Product Manager, Lattice Engines

Steven Connolly is the Senior Product Manager at Lattice Engines and is responsible for the strategic acquisition of content for its salesPRISM product platform. Lattice Engines brings the power of big data to sales representatives' fingertips, allowing them to sell smarter based on the analysis and customization of detailed internal events as well as external content such as news, social media, public records and other proprietary content.

Steven has been a building and working with B2B products for over 15 years and has worked on SIIA CODIE nominated or winning products from Thomson Financial, Copyright Clearance Center and most recently, Onesource Information Service’s iSell product. A graduate of Harvard College and Boston University School of Management, Steven is a lifelong Massachusetts resident where he lives with his wife Lisa, a physician also familiar with the challenges of big data, and his two active children Caroline and Kevin who both significantly contribute to their parents' big data challenges.

Steve Davis

President, SRDS Inc.

Steve Davis, President of Kantar Media SRDS and Kantar Media Healthcare Research. Steve is a 20 year veteran of the media and marketing research industry with a record of transforming traditional media information companies into integrated, digitally-oriented data businesses.

At SRDS, Steve has helped reshape the industry’s largest and most recognized publisher of media directories into a leading online provider of media data and market intelligence. Today, thousands of advertising agency media planners use the SRDS media database and online planning platform to find, consider and better understand all relevant advertising opportunities. At Kantar Media Healthcare Research , he has helped pharmaceutical marketers optimize their advertising budgets by advancing the print, online and mobile media measurement of Healthcare Professionals and Consumer ailment sufferers.

Under his leadership both businesses have sharply increased and diversified their client base and are finding new product and data integration opportunities with leading industry partners.

Prior to Kantar Media’s acquisition of SRDS in 2008, Steve spent 9 years with the Nielsen Company/VNU holding several strategic and sales leadership roles. He also spent 7 years in business development and operational roles at BPA Worldwide where he was involved with that organization’s international business expansion and their early electronic media auditing initiatives.

A Bronx native, Steve’s a graduate of Iona College in New Rochelle, NY. He has served as Chairman of American Business Media’s Publishers Advisory Committee, has been a member of ABM’s Media Advisory Board and a guest-faculty member at New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute.

He lives in Atlantic Beach, NY with his wife and their three daughters.

Rohan Deuskar

CEO and Co-Founder, Stylitics

Rohan Deuskar is the CEO and Co-Founder of Stylitics, an information company that gives brands and retailers a real-time window into the closets, wallets, and shopping bags of their target consumers. Stylitics has a panel of tens of thousands of digital closets, maintained by users from around the world, allowing our clients to quickly answer business-relevant questions about what people are wearing, buying, and sharing right now.
Rohan was previously Director of Innovation for mobile marketing pioneer Vibes Media, where he helped create a mobile messaging platform that is used by hundreds of radio stations, TV stations, and consumer brands in the U.S. to interact with their consumers via their mobile device.
Rohan has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University.
He writes, speaks, and tweets (@RohanD) frequently about entrepreneurship and about the really interesting things happening at the convergence of technology, retail, and analytics. Rohan has lived in 7 cities in the U.S., Middle East, Africa, and Asia, but is currently (happily) based in New York City.

Peter Evans

Founder & CEO, Speakerfile

Peter has 20 years experience in software, Internet services, online media and telecommunications. An accomplished corporate speaker on strategy and marketing,he also has extensive experience as a producer of tradeshows and conferences.

In 2002, he founded Riverdale Partners, a strategy and marketing consultancy serving clients throughout North America in the media and technology sector. Since then, he has worked with many senior leadership teams with notable success including DoubleClick (Acquired by Google); Cognovision (Acquired by Intel); Digital Connexxions (Acquired by InfoUSA); Truition (Acquired by CDC Software) and XPLANE Corporation (acquired by Dacchis Group). Prior to his consulting careeer, Peter served as a CMO in a number of early-stage startups such as Platespin and FloNetwork (acquired by DoubleClick). Prior to this he founded the media research practice at MediaLinx LLP, which built Sympatico (Canada’s leading online service and Internet ISP).

Peter is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at technology and marketing events. He has addressed conferences throughout North America and Europe such as COMDEX Las Vegas, Internet World, Kauffman Foundation Charite Entrepreneurship Summit (Berlin), Software Industry & Information Association (SIIA), Boston Consulting Group E-Commerce Forum, The Association for Advancement of Relationship Marketing (AARM), and Direct Marketing Days (DMDNY) in New York and the PriceWaterHouseCoopers Emerging Software CEO conference.

Peter currently serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EiR) with the MaRS Advisory Services Group in Toronto. He holds an MBA degree from Queen’s University and is currently completing the Certificate Program in Strategic Planning & Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Hank Flores

Principal, Consilium Partners

Hank is a Principal with Consilium Partners, a retained executive search firm that specializes in recruiting executive management for clients in consumer goods & services, internet & digital media, and technology & business services. Hank concentrates on assignments for senior leaders who serve as pivotal catalysts for driving growth – CxO and strategy; marketing, product management, and innovation; and sales, business development, and account management – typically for clients seeking to improve strategic focus on their customers and consumers. His clients span Fortune 500, emerging middle-market, and early-stage companies.

A former senior operating executive, Hank enjoyed a 20+ year career leading organizations and managing P&L’s for consumer, b2b, and technology companies. Revenue under his responsibility ranged from under $5 million in start-up environments to more than $650 million in larger corporate settings. As a result of his deep familiarity with the roles he is asked to fill, Hank’s clients value the perspective and insights he brings to each search.

Immediately prior to starting his career in search, Hank held leadership roles, including CEO and COO, with several early-stage and middle-market companies. Earlier, he led key marketing and sales organizations for a number of global, Fortune 500 companies including Polaroid, NYNEX (now Verizon), Procter & Gamble, and IBM. He was honored as a “Top 100 Marketer” by Advertising Age magazine for restoring a well-known consumer brand to market share leadership while with P&G.

Hank earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in Marketing and Information Systems from Fordham University. He serves on the board of advisors of Mindcircuit, Inc., and was previously on the board of directors of the Hamilton-Wenham Youth Soccer Association. He lives on the north shore of Massachusetts with his wife and three daughters and is actively involved coaching youth sports.

Jim Fowler

Founder and CEO, InfoArmy

Jim Fowler is Founder and CEO of InfoArmy and serves on the Board of Directors of CrowdFlower. Prior to InfoArmy Jim founded Jigsaw in 2003 and was CEO until it was acquired by Salesforce in May, 2010 for $175M. Jigsaw was awarded an Infocommerce Model of Excellence in 2005, and it is best known for pioneering Crowdsourcing in the BtoB information industry and for creating the business category of Data-as-a-Service (DaaS). Before his career in technology Jim was owner and operator of Lookout Pass, a ski resort in Idaho, and served in the US Navy as a Diving and Salvage Officer. Jim is a graduate of the University of Colorado and lives in San Mateo, California with his wife and son.

Kiesha Garrison

Vice President of Business Development, Vitals

Kiesha Garrison, Vice President of Business Development for Vitals, secures and manages strategic partnerships within the healthcare vertical, including data acquisition and licensing relationships. Prior to joining Vitals, Kiesha led business development, data licensing, and ad sales for Alot.com, an online technology company specializing in browser-based consumer applications with over 7 million customers worldwide. Before working in business development, Kiesha held various strategic sales and marketing roles for publications like In Style, This Old House, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and, most notably, Time Inc’s People Magazine, where her retail marketing team harnessed the power of consumer data to drive record-breaking circulation, earning Ad Age’s “Magazine of the Year” designation in 2005.
Kiesha graduated with honors from Spelman College in Atlanta, GA with a bachelor’s degree in economics. A Louisiana native, she now calls New Jersey home with her husband and daughter. When she’s not finding new partners for Vitals, Kiesha enjoys honing her skills as a personal chef and keeping healthy through her newfound bikram yoga practice.

Sharon Gillenwater

Principal and Founder, Boardroom Insiders

Sharon is an expert in marketing strategy, account-based marketing and CXO engagement programs. For more than a decade she operated her own consulting firm, San Francisco Group, creating marketing strategies and programs for Fortune 100 technology companies. In response to her clients' increased focus on CXO engagement and strategic account marketing, she founded Boardroom Insiders, a content company that provides the most in-depth executive profiles on the market today. Boardroom Insiders customers include Dell, Citrix, Accenture, UPS, USPS, McKinsey, Juniper, Cisco, Avaya, ConAgra and more. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she worked as a freelance writer before earning a master's degree combining international relations and business from the University of California, San Diego. Today Sharon lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons and enjoys cooking, walking the hills around Dolores Park, Bikram yoga and singing in local rock bands.

Kathy Greenler Sexton

VP and General Manager, Content Division, SIIA

Kathy serves as the VP and General Manager of the SIIA Content Division, developing and delivering the many programs and initiatives of the Division.

Kathy is a dynamic, strategic and hands-on executive with deep experience serving Information, Internet and Media companies. After working in broadcast television and international marketing roles, she was a founding member, lead marketer and publisher for the web-based search engine pioneer AltaVista. She has also general-managed or marketed industry-leading online companies focused on news, small business information and general research including: ZoomInfo.com, BLR, Individual.com, Office.com and HighBeam Research. She has a BA in communications from Boston College.

Craig Harris

President & CEO, HG Data Company

Craig Harris has more than 15 years of successful entrepreneurial leadership in both the philanthropy and business intelligence sectors. Craig currently serves as President and CEO of HG Data Company.

HG Data is a business intelligence service used by leading technology companies for marketing and sales leads as well as research and investment. HG Data produces a detailed census of specific technologies utilized at an enterprise’s geographic sites. The company’s unique big data approach processes billions of documents and scans millions of websites, combining this unstructured data with 3rd party databases to result in a detailed profiling of the enterprise technology marketplace.

Prior to launching HG Data, Craig served as the Founder and CEO of NOZA, Inc. which was named an InfoCommerce Model of Excellence in 2007 and was acquired by Blackbaud, Inc. [BLKB] in October, 2010. Founded in 2005, NOZA developed technology to convert unstructured public data into searchable relational databases, and with this platform built the world’s largest research database of philanthropy data for use by the nonprofit, political and financial services markets. NOZA’s suite of lead generation and premium online subscription databases are used by thousands of leading universities, hospitals and nonprofits throughout the United States and Canada.

Before entering the business intelligence field Craig spent several years as a fundraising consultant in Santa Barbara, helping numerous charitable organizations plan and execute their capital fundraising campaigns. His nonprofit sector work began when he joined the Peace Corps in 1995 following graduation from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Craig lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and twin 10-year old boys. When not working on new databases he enjoys hiking and surfing and exploring the Sierra Nevada Mountains with his kids in search of secret fly-fishing spots.

Amit Khanna

Chief Data Officer, Reachable

Amit Khanna is Chief Data Officer at Reachable, a leading provider of Social CRM solutions. He is responsible for Reachable’s database of 65 million professionals and 100 billion connections.
Khanna is a data and technology executive with over 15 years of experience in data based sales and marketing solutions. Prior to joining Reachable, Khanna worked for over ten years at Infogroup (formerly known as infoUSA), where he helped grow the company’s revenues from $200 million to over $750 million. While at Infogroup, Khanna held several leadership roles, including president of strategy and planning, president of technology and database compilation, and president of database licensing. In those roles, he was directly responsible for over a third of the company’s profits, and formed strategic licensing relationships with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, US Postal Service, and TomTom. He also led the company’s most successful Software-as-a-Service products, infoUSA.com and Salesgenie.
Khanna has a Masters in Computer Science from Creighton University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Chicago.

Edward R. Koller III

Managing Director, Howard Sloan Koller

Eddie joined The Howard-Sloan-Koller Group in January 2007 and is a Managing Director and leads HSK’s sales and marketing team. Since joining in 2007, Eddie has closed more than 80 senior and mid-level sales, marketing and business development searches at large and entrepreneurial information services, digital, mobile and multi-media companies.

Prior to joining HSK, Eddie was Director of Strategic Planning and Analysis for Action Media Holdings LLC (AMH), a Great Hill Partners portfolio company and leading provider of niche consumer exhibitions and related online communities for lifestyle and automotive enthusiasts. Primarily responsible for the company’s M&A and business development initiatives, Eddie played a key role in the launch of AMH’s digital operations and played an integral part in preparing the company for sale to Apprise Media in September 2006.

Earlier in his career, Eddie was an Associate at The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc., a leading investment banking and M&A advisory firm specializing in the media and information industries. He supported the firm’s Managing Directors in sell-side and buy-side assignments, formal valuations and detailed company and industry research.

Eddie received his BS degree in Business Administration from Bucknell University. In addition, he is on the Board of Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Scott Lubeck

Executive Vice President, Bert Davis Executive Search

Scott Lubeck was CTO at Harvard Business School Publishing and Vice President of Technology at Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional and Education. He has extensive experience in leading change in companies that are undergoing the transformation from print to digital publishing and delivery. In these initiatives, he brings both an understanding and mastery of systems evaluation and process analysis and a practical knowledge of the human resources required to enable profitable growth from technology investment.

At both Harvard and Wolters Kluwer, Scott built and managed successful teams of IT professionals who possessed the core competencies required to move legacy businesses into the future. His hallmark has been maximizing the strategic value of technology in publishing.

Scott has also started technology companies and been a leader in high-growth businesses. In this arena, he was most recently Vice President and General Manager at LibreDigital, a provider of digital publishing solutions to the information and publishing businesses.

Scott has a deep understanding of the business of publishing. During has career he has been President of Texas Monthly Press, Director of the National Academies Press, and Publisher and Managing Director at The Perseus Books Group.

Janice McCallum

Managing Director, Health Content Advisors, InfoCommerce Group Inc.

Janice is a respected thought leader in the economics of publishing and for the past six years has focused on health data and analytics. She has worked in product management and content development for several pioneering online information companies, including Dialog Information Services, Individual, Inc., and DeepCanyon, an HP company. In 1995, Janice launched a consulting practice that specialized in strategic marketing, product positioning, and channel partner strategies for B2B, scientific, and medical publishers. She joined the InfoCommerce Group in January, 2008 and serves as Managing Director of the Health Content Advisors division.

Richard Melville

Editorial Director, Source Media

Richard Melville is Editorial Director for SourceMedia’s Banking & Capital Markets Groups. In that role, he oversees editorial activities for a range of brands, including the flagships American Banker and The Bond Buyer. Since becoming Group Editorial Director in 2008, he has overseen initiatives that have redirected resources to digital media from print, increased collaboration and coverage coordination across the brands, and expanded the editorial team’s involvement in SourceMedia’s events, data and research, and other activities.

Prior to becoming Group Editorial Director, Richard was Managing Editor of American Banker, in which role he was responsible for management of the daily newspaper and its companion site, AmericanBanker.com. Before that, he worked at Reuters as Deputy Equities Editor and Wall Street Editor, managing coverage, and prior to that reporting, on a variety of beats, including technology, telecommunications, real estate, banking, airlines, and the stock market.

Before entering journalism, Richard was a senior consultant with Deloitte & Touche's Valuation practice in New York. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in philosophy and economics, and attended the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He lives in Montclair, NJ with his wife, Enid, and their three daughters.

Russell Perkins

Founder & Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group Inc.

Russell Perkins, Founder and Managing Director. Russell has over 20 years experience in all facets of the database publishing industry. Most recently, Russell was President/CEO of Dorland Healthcare Information, a venture capital-backed database information company serving the healthcare industry. Prior to that, Russell was Vice President of what is now a division of Incisive Media.

Previous to that, Russell was Group President at North American Publishing Company, where he was responsible for development and launch of its of media information and graphic arts industry databases. Russell has also been a staff consultant at AT&T, and an editor at Thomas Publishing Company.

Russell is also the founder Morgan-Rand, Inc. a publishing and consultancy firm serving the yellow pages and specialty directory markets. Morgan-Rand produced the Report on Directory Publishing, a monthly newsletter, and the National Directory Conference, both of which were sold to SIMBA Information, now a unit of MarketResearch.com, and re-acquired in 2003. Russell is the author of Directory Publishing: A Practical Guide, which is now in its fifth edition, and InfoCommerce: Internet Strategies for Database Publishers.

"One of the most important opportunities -- and challenges -- for data content producers is to move up the value chain from being providers of standalone information to providing what we like to call "data that does stuff" -- content integrated with applications and workflow so that it becomes a fundamental and inextricable part of the customer's business activities."

Michael Porricelli

Director of Sales, Caplinked

Michael joined Caplinked with 12 years experience selling software and cloud solutions to private equity funds, hedge funds, fund of funds, banks and asset managers.

Most recently, Michael was head of Strategic Alliances in the Alternative Investment division and Intralinks. Over the past year Michael has created and built the fund administration business at Intralinks. He was primarily focused on building relationships with large private equity fund administrators as well as placement agents. Prior to that Michael was a Partner at Merlin Securities launching their Connecticut office.

Michael spent a large part of his career with Bloomberg in NYC where he was a Regional Specialist working with hundreds of financial institutions in New England. At Bloomberg, he was consistantly ranked as a top salesman in the Northeast region and won the sales award for most Foreign Exchange sales in 2009.

Michael lives in Wilton Connecticut with his 2 children, Christopher & Emma.

Frank Russo

CEO, Fabricating.com

Before co-founding Fabricating.com, CEO Frank Russo was instrumental in the development of web-based innovations to connect Buyers with suppliers and create vibrant market spaces, while serving on the management team at Thomas Publishing Company, McGraw-Hill Construction Information, and MFG.com. A thought leader in the manufacturing industry, Russo is regarded as an insider due to his extensive knowledge of metal manufacturing technologies, procurement and supply chain processes, and online marketing techniques.

With over 20 years of experience, Russo moves comfortably between the shop floor and the executive suite. He rose through the ranks to become General Manager at Custom Metal Manufacturing, one of New Jersey’s leading metal fabricating facilities with a large base of commercial, military, and industrial customers. Frank heads the Fabricating.com management team with a passion for delivering exceptional value to his customers. He is also responsible for on-demand lead generation, and is the driving force behind the New Generation of E-sourcing technology at Fabricating.com. Russo holds a BS degree from Stetson University and completed post graduate work at the Pennsylvania State University.

Megan St. John

Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group

A veteran of the publishing and information business, Megan has run operations for both large and small companies across a wide array of industry specialties and formats. For the last seven years she has been managing director at the InfoCommerce Group (ICG) -- www.infocommercegroup.com. While the ICG practice covers the whole range of business information, the company’s roots and legacy began in the world of data publishing, a fast growing and high value segment of today’s information world. For ICG clients, Megan leads engagements focusing on areas such as product development and evolution, market positioning, due diligence and overall corporate strategy.

In late 2012, Infocommerce Group acquired Subscription Site Insider where Megan is now publisher. Subscription Site Insider is dedicated to helping membership and subscription content sites grow profits and is built on a foundation of practical guidance and ground-breaking research.
Megan is the former president of Simba Information, Inc., once recognized as the leading authority for market intelligence and forecasts in the media and publishing industries. Simba is now a unit of Market Research Group LLC. Prior to Simba, Megan was publisher of PBI Media’s Electronic Commerce Group. PBI Media, now renamed Access Intelligence, publishes magazines, newsletters and directories for the aerospace, communications, energy and healthcare industries.

Heidi Sullivan

VP, Global Media Research, Cision, Inc.

One of PRWeek’s 40 Under 40 in 2012, Heidi Sullivan is currently Vice President of Global Media Research for Cision and a self-proclaimed social media metrics nerd. She oversees Cision’s Social Media Community team, manages the enhancement and maintenance of Cision’s influencer database of over a million media outlets, journalists and influencers and serves as a member of Cision’s executive management team. Heidi was formerly an editorial manager and creative director for a firm that produced regional business magazines, an account executive at a PR agency and an editor and media researcher for a major newswire service. She is a host of the popular Cision Social Media Webinar Series, a blogger for Cision Blog and frequently speaks at industry conferences and events on best practices in social media, communications and the changing media landscape.

Scott Taylor

Director, New Business Development, The Path to Purchase Institute

Scott Taylor is Director, New Business Development for The Path to Purchase Institute, a global association serving the needs of retailers, brands and the entire ecosystem of solution providers along the path to purchase.

Scott has over 15 years of experience creating and selling information solutions. His particular expertise is in DaaS (data as a service) and master data management as well as developing successful go-to-market approaches that build businesses. As a Managing Director for ICG, he helped clients identify opportunities to commercialize existing data assets and create new revenue streams. Scott’s consulting clients included: Microsoft, Nielsen, NPD, Kantar, Capstone Research, Spiceworks and Sparefoot.com.

Scott spent fourteen years at Nielsen (formerly VNU) where he led the creation and execution of the TDLinx business. TDLinx became the defacto standard for location information management, customer master coding, data integration, and seamless communications for consumer packaged goods manufacturers, beverage alcohol suppliers and the companies that serve them. In his role as General Manager he was responsible for strategy, marketing, sales, account management, alliances and technical relations. He also led Nielsen’s exploration into MDM business opportunities.

Prior to TDLinx, he worked at Progressive Grocer magazine and at a variety of in-store media start-ups including VideOcart (the first computer on a shopping cart).

He is a regular participant and speaker at industry conferences, seminars and user groups focusing on data integration, master data management, CDI and retail consolidation. Scott recently began speaking on ways to increase sales effectiveness through a session called Selling IS Everything. Most recently, Scott published a White Paper sponsored by Microsoft entitled: MDM for Media - A Call to Action for Business Leaders.

Gretchen Teichgraeber

Chief Executive Officer, Leadership Directories, Inc.

Gretchen Teichgraeber is the President and CEO of Leadership Directories, Inc., the premier publisher of biographical and contact information for the leaders in the most important government, business, professional, and nonprofit organizations in the United States. LDI's extensive product line offers current, accurate, and searchable information online and in print.

Previously, Gretchen served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Scientific American, Inc., a global media business which publishes Scientific American in eighteen local languages throughout the world. During her tenure they launched Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Reports.

Before joining Scientific American Inc., Ms. Teichgraeber held positions at CMP Media, The New York Times Company and Time Warner, Inc.

Jill P. Whalen

Vice President, Effie Worldwide

Jill currently serves as VP of Effie Worldwide, a worldwide leader in recognizing effective marketing communications. As part of Effie’s senior management team, Jill primarily focuses on expanding the organization’s global footprint. She oversees the development and execution of global initiatives, including the Effie Effectiveness Index, the Global Effie competition and worldwide communication strategies.
In 2011, she spearheaded the launch of the Effie Effectiveness Index – the first and only global ranking of marketing effectiveness. The Effie Index identifies and ranks the marketing communications industry’s most effective agencies, advertisers and brands by analyzing finalist and winner data from more than forty worldwide Effie Award competitions. With the introduction of the Index, a new benchmark for measuring industry performance was established.
Previously, Jill worked at Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate services firm, where she was the marketing manager for Grand Central Terminal. There she focused on developing marketing strategies for Grand Central Terminal’s 100+ retail and food tenants. Additionally, she oversaw management and execution of client produced events in Grand Central’s signature event spaces.
Jill has more than 15 years experience with managing marketing communication programs, large scale events and developing new strategic program initiatives.
Jill is a graduate of George Mason University and currently resides in New York City with her partner.