Since joining Google in 2006, Drew has led the development of key advertising relationships with Fortune 500 clients including ADT, Dell, Sprint, and Target. Drew is currently the Head of Industry for Google's Local advertising sales vertical which manages clients across Home Services, Personals, Careers and Real Estate.
Prior to Google, Drew was the Director of Marketing at Hostway Corp. where he won the Business Marketing Association's Gold Tower Award for the Bob's Cube viral marketing campaign, a Project Manager at Feeding America where he helped build and market an online donation system
Jamaal has dedicated his career to improve various businesses. He’s worked as a business consultant with some the largest energy companies in the world as well as supported small-scale farmers in West Africa. Currently at FreshBooks, Jamaal works with developers and entrepreneurs to integrate the FreshBooks API into their operations making it easier than every to get paid.
Bruce Montgomery, President of Montgomery & Co. is an interactive broadband technology and IT solutions company. Montgomery is also the producer of Technology Access TV, a weekly technology focused TV show, broadcast to all cable subscribers in Chicago, as well as Director and Co-Founder of Chicago New Media Summit (CNMS08), Board Member of the Illinois Technology Association (ITA), and Member of the Mayor’s Council of Technology Advisors (MCTA)
Bruce designates himself Chicago's original Digital Opportunity Instigator! From selling music to ad agencies, promoting personal computers to corpor
Matt founded Viewpoints Network in August 2006. He spent the previous ten years at Q Interactive/CoolSavings where he joined the company as its fifth employee. He ran sales and marketing from 1996 to 2000. From 2001 to 2006 Matt served as President & CEO while CoolSavings was publicly traded, and then took the company private in a sale to Landmark Communications. Prior to CoolSavings Matt worked for Microsoft in a variety of business development and sales roles.Matt is a member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and a board member of Francis Parker School. Matt has three boys, Max, Charlie
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Maliha, a new arrival to Chicago, is co-founder of SPARK Chicago—an event that will help launch three startups from scratch (July 2011 at Merchandise Mart). Maliha enjoys everything from marketing, sales, project management, filming, crunching numbers, to doing whatever needs to get done for a startup to discover an exciting business opportunity.
Prior to SPARK Chicago, Maliha was working in a fashion accessory business, and continues to provide consulting services to local startups (e.g. Health Codex).
Though a New Yorker for many years as a former management consultant at Archsto
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Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist, the web-based classified advertising platform.Since its founding in 1995, craigslist has become one of the Internet’s 10 most-visited Englishlanguage sites.
Born December 6, 1952 in Morristown, NJ, Craig attended Case Western Reserve University. During his business career, he worked with IBM, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, and other firms. Today, he resides in San Francisco's Cole Valley.
Today Craig’s focus is on craigconnects, his initiative to link up everyone on the planet using theInternet to bear witness to good efforts and encourage th
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As the Founding Partner of Clique Studios, Ted helps introduce innovative solutions into the market. As managing director, Ted helps clients build better businesses by enhancing the way they present themselves to the world, and how to use technology and design to simplify the process of growing their business through online channels. Ted has a passion for making an impact in the lives of others and bringing excitement to the way people communicate.
Previously, Ted held a senior management position in the consulting industry, managing large-scale technology and process-focused business transfo
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Bailey O'Connell grew up outside of Chicago, graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Lake Forest College and moved to the Windy City. Having always dreamt about being a recruiters, Bailey has worked in creative environments from an art auction house to licensing imagery with Getty Images; she finally landed at Creative Circle in 2007. From meeting new talent to working with clients, Bailey has found her niche!
Adam Oliveri is the Managing Director of the Private Company Market at SecondMarket. Adam joined SecondMarket directly out of university as the third employee, and has spent his entire professional career developing and growing SecondMarket’s marketplace for trading illiquid assets. Currently, his primary responsibility is to lead the firm's efforts around creating a platform to enable capital formation and shareholder liquidity for promising private companies. Previously, Adam was Co-Head of the SecondMarket trading desk, and responsible for managing transaction execution across all of SecondMarket’s
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Co-Founder of BeyondCredentials
Andy O’Dower is a tall, curly haired Irishman with a lot of humor and a love for taking chances and making something out of nothing. He co-founded Beyond Credentials, now Introfly, in 2009 to give young professionals an exclusive place to personally market themselves with a great online presence and to get noticed. Before founding Beyond Credentials, Andy directed marketing at XIKAR before joining Crispin Porter +Bogusky, the infamous creative factory in Boulder. He's loving Chicago.
Gerard J. Pannekoek joined IPXI Holdings, LLC in November, 2009, as the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Before assuming his role at IPXI Holdings, Gerard was a Teaching Professor at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, where he taught entrepreneurship and international management to MBA and undergraduate students. From 2002 to 2005, Gerard was President and Chief Operating Officer of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a start-up company that became the world's first multi-national and multi-sector market for reducing and trading greenhouse gas emissions
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Chirag Patel has unified Chicago with our own Health 2.0 group and chairs the Healthcare roundtable for the Illinois Technology Association (ITA). He is also co-founder of Halo Monitoring, which provides an advanced fall detection and vitals monitoring system for seniors with caregiver connectivity via email, text, and web.
A serial entrepreneur, Nic Perkin looks to identify big problems and build solutions. With his own successful businesses, he felt firsthand the pressures that a lack of working capital can bring to bear on a growing business. To help small businesses gain access to an affordable and flexible source of working capital, he co-founded The Receivables Exchange.
Perkin sees himself as an evangelist driven to give back and help small businesses as well as fellow entrepreneurs. Completing his undergraduate degree at Tulane University, he has long felt a deep connection to New Orleans and is set to firmly establish the city as an entrepreneurial hub. In meetings with leading executives of Fortune 500 and 100 companies and the nation’s top venture capital firms, he is known for often talking more about the amazing economic resurgence in New Orleans than even his own company. Soon after, he co-founded Startup New Orleans, a networking resource for local entrepreneurs
Jack spearheads the company’s overall strategic direction and drives Vibes’ position as one of the premier thought leaders in the mobile marketing and mobile industry. Jack has been instrumental in building mobile marketing as a strategic marketing channel by proving its value to a range of clients, from wireless carriers, to agencies, to consumer marketers.
Jack is a graduate of Boston College and received his MBA at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg School of Management. He is Vice Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association on the North American Board of Directors and is a me
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Nate is the co-founder and operator of Love Drop, an online and offline community of people who come together once a month to help out a family going through a financially hard time. They share the family's story through videos online, and at the end of the month show up on their doorstep and present everything the community did for them. Love Drop has given away nearly $50,000 in its first six months.
Pek Pongpaet is a renaissance man. An entrepreneur that combines visual design, user experience, tech and marketing skills.
Over a weekend, he and Brandon Leonardo launched Pinstagram, a mashup of Pinterest and Instagram that has since become the best way to view Instagram on the web. They've since expanded the team and launched an iPad app. Pinstagram has been featured in Wired, Forbes, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TechCocktail, Technori and more.
As the Analytics lead at OMD Chicago, Amit creates analytics infrastructures and measurement processes across various clients including Intel, H&R Block, Pier 1 and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been recognized by Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) - David Ogilvy Award 2011, Rising Star award 2011 and other International organizations like Festival of Media awards. In this role, he defines the KPIs, forecast and measure the actual results; develops actionable insights for digital campaigns. He is also actively involved in online ad operations to help define processes for correct technical
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Pat Quinn (Democrat) was sworn in as the 41st Governor of Illinois on Jan. 29, 2009. He won election to a full term on Nov. 2, 2010.
Governor Quinn has focused on restoring integrity to state government and, in his first official act, signed an executive order establishing the Illinois Reform Commission to examine ethics rules and practices in state government. He also led passage of fundamental legislation to return integrity to the state pension boards, ensure state agency compliance with Freedom of Information laws and increase transparency of state boards and commissions.
Dedicated to in
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Dominique Raccah is the CEO & publisher of Sourcebooks, the largest woman-owned trade book publisher in the country; producing everything from bestsellers in fiction, to number one titles in children’s books and college guides, twenty-one New York Times Bestsellers and over twenty national bestsellers. Sourcebooks’ publishing culture is one of innovation. This attitude led into pioneering a line of cutting edge, bestselling mixed-media titles (MediaFusion) and resulted in an early involvement in digital book projects, iPhone and iPad apps, enhanced eBooks and several exciting digital partnerships
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Noel Rappin is a Senior Consultant at Obtiva. He is the author of “Rails Test Prescriptions" from the Pragmatic Bookshelf and “Professional Ruby on Rails” from Wrox. He has over a decade of experience in web application development and has trained developers at venues around the country.
Together with Partners John Grudnowski and Gary Allen, Aimee is forging a new style of digital marketing and media consultancy within bellwether agency start-up, FRWD. Aimee joined FRWD after nearly a decade with IPG and McCann Worldgroup, where, as SVP, Global Director of Search, she was honored with the Agency’s global award for Mentorship, launched a global search practice, championed social within Populist and helped clients and colleagues navigate the sea of opportunity through the IPG Emerging Media Lab. Prior to that, Aimee led media for Circle.com (now Euro RSCG 4D), Initio
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Jodee Rich believes Social Media is creating a global collective consciousness that is rapidly shifting the power base from Big Business, Religion and Government to the Global Consumer. Rich is a digital anthropologist and technology entrepreneur who founded PeopleBrowsr, a service provider of social media data and analytics to Fortune 500 companies.
Jodee has consistently identified major industry trends. In 1979 he wrote software for the Apple II 64k and founded Imagineering to market and distribute microcomputer software and hardware. The company went public in 1987 and was acquire
Shawn Riegsecker is the Founder and President of Centro, a digital media firm focused on developing software to improve relationships and efficiencies between buyers and sellers in the advertising industry. A strong commitment to innovation in the online media industry through technology and service has enabled Centro to receive many awards, including Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies, and Crain's List of Chicago's Largest Privately Held Companies. As a testament to Shawn’s vision and dedication to bringing the best technology to the market, Centro's Transis media
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John has been starting digital companies since his teen years. After successfully exiting out of a video game marketing firm at the end of 2006, he became an international stuard of user-centered design, and started AKTA, Chicago's leading product design studio. John is also the CEO of Digital Hope, a nonprofit organization that uses social media to crowdfund projects to support international NGOs. In what time remains, he spends it traveling the world and dabbling as an angel investor.
Adam founded Hireology (www.Hireology.com), a leading online hiring platform, with the mission to help growing companies make better hiring decisions. Previously, Adam was the co-founder and CEO of illuma, a provider of high-volume recruitment outsourcing programs to mid-market companies, and the creator of the Ionix Hiring System, a full suite of interview and assessment tools.
Adam is passionate about entrepreneurship, donating time to a number of organizations that support the entrepreneurial cause. He serves on the Regional Board of Directors for Entrepreneurs Organization, where he helpe
Michael Ross: About Michael Ross
Michael Ross is Senior Vice President/Education General Manager for Encyclopaedia Britannica.
His products have generated hundreds of millions of dollars and won numerous awards, including the Association of Educational Publisher’s Golden Lamp and Distinguished Achievement Awards; Learning Magazine’s Teacher’s Choice Award; Parent’s Choice Award; Bologna Children’s Book Fair GLI Award for Innovation; and SIIA’s Codie Award.
He has written two books, Publishing without Borders: Strategies for Successful International Publishing (2003); and Publishing
Scott Rutherford is Co-Founder and COO of UserVoice, which means he's equally at home writing scripts and poring over spreadsheets. Originally from the UK, Scott now lives in San Francisco. His path to the Bay Area was a depressingly typical one, starting as a DJ and musician before obtaining a PhD in Particle Physics while at CERN and then embarking on his 10 year (so far) adventure in the world of startups. For good measure, he also helped found a couple of open source projects, most notably ActiveScaffold for Rails.
Narimon Safavi is a Chicago based Iranian-American entrepreneur who is also a contributor and analyst for the radio program Worldview on WBEZ (Chicago Public Media).Born in Tehran to an Azari-Iranian family, he studied Chemistry & Philosophy at the Illinois State University and is now serving on the boards of organizations such as the DC based National Iranian-American Council (NIAC,the largest grass roots advocacy organization of Iranian-Americans),as well as the Pasfarda Art & Cultural Exchange whose mission is to build cultural bridges and foster dialogue between U.S. & Iran. Previously, Narimon
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Andrew Salzman is a 25+ year marketing veteran known for his innovative thinking and
work in supporting business transformations at Global 1000, mid-market, and emerging
consumer and technology firms. He has focused his career on helping organizations
re-invent business models, identify new growth venues, tap existing market potential,
and fully capitalize on consumer and market purchasing dynamics. His capabilities
include business planning and product direction, corporate and product marketing, new
product development, go-to-market programs, marketing-sales alignment, sales training
and support, al
Jill Salzman is currently growing her third entrepreneurial venture, The Founding Moms, the world’s first and only kid-friendly collective of monthly meetups for mom entrepreneurs. A graduate of Brown University and law school, she started a music management firm and then a baby jewelry company before her current venture. Jill has been featured in national media outlets including People Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Daily Candy Kids, NBC5 and WGN TV. In her spare time, Jill enjoys kloofing, baking, and erasing her daughters’ crayon artwork from the kitchen walls.
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Mike Samson is the co-founder of crowdSPRING and speaks often on crowdsourcing, industry disruption, startups, and small business issues.
Samson is also an Emmy Award® nominated Producer and Production Manager with 20 years of experience in the film and television industry. He worked on dozens of feature film and TV projects including "Wall Street," "Bull Durham," "Steven King's The Stand," "Men in Black II,"and TV series such as "New York Undercover" and "Third Watch." Numerous honors including an Emmy Award nomination, DGA awards, and a George Foster Peabody Award. He is a member of
Ed Scanlan founded Total Attorneys at the age of 25 with just a credit card, laptop, cell phone, and passion for building websites. He has since bootstrapped the company to over $20,000,000 in annual revenue. He has managed to grow the business while maintaining a company culture that seeks to reinvent the day job by providing an autonomous and exciting environment. Total Attorneys now services over 1000 law firms nationwide with an integrated product suite of cloud practice management software, performance-based marketing, and a virtual receptionist product.
Ed's unique management style ha
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Jon Schickedanz has been a business development professional for the technology and creative tech industries for over 10 years. Currently he is the Director of Business Development for Imaginary Landscape, LLC, a Chicago based Custom Web Development firm. In his previous career Jon spent 15 years as a Music Director for theaters in the US and Europe. He has since gained his composure. Jon is also the founding member of the Creative Tech Sales Group whose mission is to create and support the professional standards for creative technical professionals in Chicago. Additionally, Jon is principal
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As Managing Director and part owner, Will is responsible for the operations of this fast growing mobile strategy and app development company including recruitment and personal development. He also founded a SaaS based supply chain management company and has extensive experience in growing international businesses.
Born in Zambia, Will has lived and worked in several countries before settling in Naperville, IL with his wife and two children. He graduated from Plymouth University in the UK and has an MBA from the University of Southern California.
Jason runs Ajax Social Media, a social content strategy firm that helps B2B and professional service organizations use LinkedIn to improve business results. Ajax is the only company in North America to have been certified by LinkedIn to deliver live LinkedIn training.
Jason serves as an advisor to both the Career Advisory Board (presented by DeVry) and SmartBrief Workforce, and blogs about the new trend toward "profersonalism" at JasonSeiden.com. His third book, Beyond Social, is due out Fall 2011.
Jason holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and a BS from the
Sean Shadmand’s official title is the CSO and co-founder of PointAbout, Inc. In other words, he is the visionary behind AppMakr.com, which has altered the mobile application industry. Previously, Sean was instrumental in growing Tagged.com from a startup with 2 million users to a profitable company with 40 million users. He has experience in viral tuning, user acquisition, large scale systems, and product development. Additionally, Sean is a co-founder of FamilyOven.com, one of the largest recipe-oriented social networking sites. He oversaw its growth of half a million members as it became operationally
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Hiten started on the Internet by founding a Internet marketing consultancy, ACS. He then went on to create Crazy Egg, an analytics tool that visualizes the user experience on a website. Now with KISSmetrics he is building a data driven solution for to help online businesses make better business decisions. Hiten is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs and startup people.
As CEO and CTO of Ifbyphone, Irv Shapiro is responsible for overall business strategy and corporate leadership. Irv’s successful entrepreneurial experience includes founding Metamor Technologies in 1985 and Edventions in 1999. Under Irv’s leadership, Metamor was named an Inc. 500 company for two consecutive years, growing to over 500 employees and $32 million in revenues. His business success earned him inductee status with the "Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.”
Ivan manages Americas business development for NAVTEQ.
Since joining NAVTEQ in 2004 as a Product Manager, Ivan has initiated the $28.5M acquisition of a map company in South Korea, led the product integration of a Mexican acquisition, managed the development of a new map database in Australia and launched the first map product optimized for pedestrians using mobile phones and consumer electronics (Discover Cities). Products that he managed are used by Porsche, Toyota, Yahoo, AOL/Mapquest, IAC, Microsoft, Garmin, Sony, Verizon, Nokia and others.
Products that Ivan helped create
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Andrew founded kCura in February 2001 as the President and CEO. During his tenure with kCura, he has transformed the group from a consulting firm to a software company providing electronic discovery solutions for the legal community. Prior to kCura, he was a senior consultant at Lante, Inc., an e-business consulting firm. At Lante, he led development and was a project manager working with clients such as Microsoft. From 1995 to 1999, Andrew served as the Messaging System Architect for Siemens Build Technology, where he was responsible for the messaging infrastructure of the North American region. Andrew
... Read moreBlane Sims is VP of Products at BrightTag, a company focused on helping marketers create rich first-party datasets that can be instantly connected with any partner or application. Blane comes to BrightTag with 15 years e-commerce and enterprise software experience, including senior product management roles at Orbitz and Vignette.
Arvind is a serial entrepreneur with experience in building global businesses for the last 20 years. He believes in boot strapping start-ups and has done that successfully twice with no external funding. Prior to co-founding Utopia in 2003, Arvind was the CEO of Value Communications Corporation (ValuCom), a company he founded in 1996. Under his leadership, ValuCom grew to be one of the most recognized brand names in prepaid telecom in the US. The company was acquired by Rediff.com (NASDAQ: REDF) in 2001. Arvind began his corporate career in sales & marketing with IDM (an IBM spin-off) in India
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Ved leads Elance's customer acquisition and retention across online channels including paid search, SEO, affiliates, display and CRM. Prior to this role, Ved led product management for Elance, and drove the product strategy and design for the Elance user experience. Ved has been with Elance since the company's inception.
Prior to Elance, Ved was a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. Ved began his career at Oracle, where he led technical pre-sales for an Oracle business unit and developed software applications for Oracle clients.
Ved holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA with a do
Jeff is responsible for Marketing, Client Services, and Operations at Vizu, with a focus on growing revenue from both new and existing customers. Prior to joining Vizu, Jeff was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Keibi Technologies, a leading provider of social media optimization solutions for companies leveraging user generated content to drive consumer engagement, where he tripled the company's revenues and helped create a new paradigm for deriving value from and monetizing social media. Jeff's accomplishments, which range from managing new product launches into domestic and international
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Vivek is the Co-Founder of Rapleaf, a technology based consumer data company. Rapleaf supports the business-to-consumer ecosystem by empowering businesses with data on their existing consumers, enabling for more personalization in every interaction with the consumer. Rapleaf currently has demographic, lifestyle, behavioral, intent, purchase, influencer, and other data on over 500 million individuals.
Rovi Corporation, Product Manager, Rovi Cloud Services
Rahim Sonawalla is product manager at Rovi Corporation, where he is responsible for helping guide the strategic direction and development of the Rovi Cloud Services API, a suite of web-based solutions designed to help businesses build innovative new digital entertainment products, services and applications for the connected consumer. Rahim joined Rovi in 2011. Prior to this, Rahim held the position of developer evangelist at Twilio and previous to this, was a software engineer at IBM. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine, and a Master of Science degree in Informatics from University
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