Speakers' Bios

Amy Austin is the longtime publisher of Washington City Paper, one of the country's leading alternative weeklies. With exceptional editorial voice and a digital suaveness that makes City Paper a leader in online audience and revenue, Amy has helped City Paper cultivate an ideal combination: an audience of local young professionals who interact with the website and the print publication several times a week, and key local advertisers who depend on Washington City Paper to talk with this hard-to-reach audience. Amy understands that good journalism is the path to success: Dating back two decades and several media revolutions, she has built a market-leading print publication and a robust online platform alongside strong editors including David Carr, the recent subject of Page One, The New York Times documentary. She believes the current editorial voice is at its highest-level of excellence with the current editor, Michael Schaffer. Today City Paper's digital revenues and audience outpace online sites and comparable alternative publications. Amy is a also an active member of the community, known among the leaders in government, arts and entertainment, sports, and restaurant community for her passionate devotion to improving and participating in Washington D.C.

Blair Barna has worked in the world of alt-weeklies for 20 years and is the advertising director of the Charleston City Paper in Charleston, S. C. He founded and co-owns the paper -- now in its sixteenth year -- with his two business partners, publisher Noel Mermer and editor Stephanie Barna. One of them is also his life partner -- he'll leave it up to you to guess which. Barna has two children, three cats, two dogs, and no time to himself. Prior to blazing trails in Chucktown, he worked for Creative Loafing in Savannah and Atlanta.

Karen Borchert is the director of products for Phase2 Technology, an open source software company specializing in web tools for the publishing and government sectors. At Phase2, Karen directs product development for the company's open source products, including OpenPublish, OpenPublic, and Open Atrium. Karen's work focuses on identifying opportunities and challenges in the market, then formulating and delivering on product roadmaps to address them. That natural entrepreneurial spirit was evident when she co-founded a national nonprofit organization, The Campus Kitchens Project, and a social enterprise in the travel sector, Keen Guides, in addition to working as a consultant for several organizations worldwide. Karen earned a Master of Business Administration from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Arts in Education and English from Wake Forest University. She lives in Austin, Tex., with her husband (and high school sweetheart) Taylor, and her two little ones Ady (4) and Charlie (2), which makes her the luckiest girl on the planet.

Mark Briggs is the author of "Entrepreneurial Journalism," a book about the rise of journalism startups and how to start your own journalism business. He is also the author of "Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive in the Digital Age," which was downloaded as a PDF more than 200,000 times in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Mark is currently director of digital media for King 5 Television in Seattle and a Ford Fellow in Entrepreneurial Journalism at The Poynter Institute. Previously, he co-founded Serra Media, a Seattle-based technology company, and spent nine years running newspaper websites in Everett and Tacoma, Wash. Mark spoke at SXSW Interactive in Austin in 2010 and 2011. In May 2010 he was named one of 20 Journalists to Follow by Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Neil Chase is senior vice president for editorial at Federated Media, where he works with more than 100 of the best independent publishers on the web and oversees custom publishing projects for major clients. He has worked as an editor and page designer at a number of news organizations, including stints as managing editor at CBS MarketWatch and continuous news editor at The New York Times, and for five years he was an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Neil has also been a consultant for dozens of companies and publications.

Shahab Choudhry , co-founder and partner at Propelics is a visionary thought leader and builder of successful companies, who has been at the forefront of trying to make sense of the various technology shifts in the past two decades. He has advised several startups, early stage companies and Fortune 500 companies in making the most of these technology shifts. His focus has been on new products and platforms for the enterprise. His track record as a builder of companies includes IPOs, successful acquisitions as well as a failed startup. Shahab can be reached at shahab.choudhry@propelics.com or on twitter at @shahabchoudhry.

Matt Coen is the co-founder and president of Second Street. Second Street works with over 2,400 media, marketing and other clients to provide online, private-label contests, daily deals, user generated photo and video, e-commerce and email marketing solutions across North America. Second Street's clients include CBS, Gannett, McClatchy, Scripps, The Washington Post and Clear Channel Communications. Matt also teaches entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2006, Matt co-wrote and produced the award-winning documentary "Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?" Prior to co-founding Second Street, Matt was the co-founder and CEO of SportsHuddle Inc. a national high school sports network in partnership with over 200 of the largest newspapers in the United States. He began his career in media technology at Pulitzer Technologies as director of new business and product development. After graduating from Connecticut College in 1992 with a degree in Government, Matt spent time managing political campaigns, working for political consulting firms and for a consumer food and health advocacy organization. He and his wife Emily, and sons Will (11), Henry (8) and Noah (3), live in St. Louis. Matt is a native of Rhode Island who loves spending time with his family, sports, politics, travel and working on a number of community boards.

Sarah Cohen joined the Duke University faculty in 2009 as its Knight chair in journalism, where she runs a project called the Reporters' Lab. She spent more than a decade as a reporter at The Washington Post, mainly on investigative teams and projects. She serves on the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a 4,000-member grass-roots membership organization, and on the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which provides small grants to reporters who need travel or other funds to finish important stories. She has shared in the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize and other national and local investigative journalism awards.

David Cohn has written for Wired, Seed, Columbia Journalism Review and The New York Times among other publications. While working toward his master's degree at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Cohn worked with Jay Rosen as editor of the groundbreaking Newassignment.net in 2006, which focused on citizen journalism and ways news organizations could explore the social web. Cohn also worked with Jeff Jarvis from Buzzmachine.com to organize the first Networked Journalism Summits, which brought together the best practices of collaborative journalism three years in a row (2007-2009). David is the founder and director of Spot.Us, a nonprofit that is pioneering "community funded reporting." In academics he is a lecturer at UC Berkeley's journalism school and was a fellow at the University of Missouri's Journalism school at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. He has been a contributing editor at NewsTrust.net, a founding editor of Broowaha and an advisor to many new media projects from OffTheBus.net and Beatblogging.org to The Public Press. He is a frequent speaker on topics related to new media and beyond.

Joshua Curry    A self-described "post-modern hillbilly coder with a camera," Joshua has been the web editor at the Charleston City Paper for five years.

Grace Dolan     With nearly 10 years experience in the interactive advertising industry, Grace is the head of mobile search for telecom, software and consumer electronics at Google. In this role, Grace is responsible for helping Fortune 500 companies in the technology industries develop successful mobile and tablet advertising strategies which compliment and extend the reach of their existing campaigns. Grace joined Google in 2006 as an account manager, where she provided integrated, cross-platform advertising solutions to financial services advertisers to improve their ROI and grow their businesses. Prior to Google, Grace held an account director position at a boutique media agency where she built advertising strategies and media plans for customers across the travel, entertainment and media industries. Grace currently resides in San Francisco's Noe Valley with her husband of just over a year and fellow Googler, Matthew Dolan.

Anton Gelman is the CEO of Cont3nt.com -- a market for entrepreneurial media and video journalism that connects freelancers with media companies, media companies to each other and allows them to buy, sell, and trade breaking news. Formerly of the National Geographic where he launched online communities and collaboration systems, Anton has over a decade of technology experience that he brings to bear to develop the first free market for the free press. Always up for a coffee or a drink to chat about the future of media.

Eddie Granillo is a producer/director/writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He runs two small production companies called Keptone Filmz, where he is a producer, and Kept 1 Media, where he is an editor. Eddie has produced several feature films including the award-winning indie hit "Interstate," the upcoming drama/thriller "Sedona’s Rule" and the new horror film "The Craving." He has also produced music videos, commercials, documentaries and short films. Eddie is a skilled cinematographer and editor with over 10 years of experience, who has worked on projects for FOX, Lions Gate Films and MGM.

Eric Gundersen coordinates product development for MapBox, the platform that lets anyone make fast and beautiful maps and share them anywhere. Eric is passionate about open data and building open source data visualization tools that focus on speed and hot design. He's also the co-founder of Development Seed, a creative data visualization team based in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericg.

Jennifer Hols is director of sales and marketing for ImageX. Prior to joining the ImageX team, Jenny was director of sales and marketing for a large communications company. She brings over seven years of experience as a senior marketing and business development professional to her role, including expertise in the areas of online marketing, SEO and Web 2.0. Jenny's vision is to see ImageX and their clients succeed and thrive together as partners in online excellence.

Sarah Kotlova is an account director at Digitaria and a specialist in interactive marketing. She seeks to create a user-centric culture for her agency and clients, bringing the voice of the customer in impactful ways into each marketing and advertising initiative. Sarah's experience includes building brands and business online for clients such as BumbleBee Foods, WD-40, Webster Bank, Intel Classmate PC, Covad, OAG (Official Airline Guide), and Philosophy. Prior to joining Digitaria, Sarah was the Vice-President of Strategy and Account Services for Geary Interactive, and Account Director for Whittmanhart in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where her clients included Anheuser-Busch, Kellogg’s Special K, Johnson & Johnson (REMICADE (infliximab) and K-Y), Epson, Avery, Guidant and Kashi. When she can drag herself away from the computer, she also enjoys travel.

Jack Krawczyk   As senior product marketing manager at StumbleUpon, Jack oversees product marketing development of Paid Discovery, StumbleUpon's social media advertising platform. Since the launch of Paid Discovery, Jack has been working closely with marketers to understand how to better encourage brand loyalty with consumers in the mindset of discovery. Prior to StumbleUpon, Jack was at Google where he worked on social initiatives and industry marketing management of Fortune 500 advertising relationships in the media and entertainment, financial services, travel and local services sectors. Earlier, he worked as an analyst at Banc of America Securities. Jack holds a bachelor of science in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University.

Joe Larkin is senior vice president of sales operations for Voice Media Group. After earning a bachelor of science in Marketing at Arizona State (go Sun Devils!), Joe's background was working with Good Earth Restaurants, and Bank One (now Chase Bank) before launching his local ad-selling career at the Phoenix New Times. From retail sales Joe was promoted to Phoenix New Times sales director, then ad director. In 1999, he moved over to Ruxton Group to help launch new sales territories as Ruxton expanded to 28 papers from 18, and added college papers to its mix. The Ruxton Group was rebranded in Fall of 2009 as Voice Media Group.

Yvonne Leow is a multimedia journalist with a passion for visual storytelling. She is currently the west regional video producer at The Associated Press where she helps coordinate video coverage across 13 states. She has also worked for organizations, such as ABC, NBC, Shanghai Daily and the Seattle Times. She is fascinated with the intersection of digital media and storytelling, and is excited for the future of online video.

Shea McKinney , technical lead at ImageX, had the good fortune to be born and raised in Vancouver. He's fluent in html, php, javascript and actionscript, skills he picked up during his interactive design diploma at Capilano University (where he graduated with distinction with a GPA of 3.91, by the way) and while working as a developer with a Vancouver creative firm. Shea's work has been featured on the Drupal.com showcase. He successfully holds down a day job, freelance work and the occasional class to make sure he's on top of the latest trends. He also drinks a lot of coffee.

Jerry Monti is an award-winning multimedia producer with more than 20 years experience in the digital media industry. He is currently a technology education architect & trainer with the Knight Digital Media Center. Jerry has served as executive producer at AOL and as coordinator for the largest computer training program in Washington state. He was a founder of one of the first VC-funded video sites on the web and he has consulted for Adobe and Corbis. Jerry holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from California State University at Northridge and a Master of Education from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and was Apple Certified Consultant with Server Certification. Jerry lives at the beach in Pacifica and enjoys trail hikes in the fog, watching storms and listening to Miles Davis.

Ian Moray is director of strategic development at ValueClick Media (NAS: VCLK), where he oversees publisher acquisitions and online inventory monetization for one of the industry's largest digital media companies. Ian has extensive experience developing turnkey revenue and representation solutions delivering high CPMs and inventory fill rates for online publishers. Prior to Valueclick, Ian was vice president of business development at AdECN (acquired by Microsoft in 2007), the first exchange for online advertising, where he orchestrated building and strengthening the company's cross-divisional publisher relationships. Ian has more than eight years of experience in online advertising and business development.

Pete Mortensen has a particular talent for articulating and expressing social, design and business questions in surprising forms -- and answering them, too. A journalist by training, he has written and edited for numerous publications, including Wired, BusinessWeek, Design Mind, Spin, FastCoDesign, Huffington Post, and the Windsor Times. He has blogged for Cult of Mac for the past seven years, where his insight into design, strategy, and Silicon Valley lore coalesce into a few minutes a day of outrage, news and humor in the world of Apple. Pete is the co-author of "Wired to Care," a critically acclaimed book about the connection between empathy and business growth. Pete holds a dual bachelor's degree in journalism and English literature from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Irakli Nadareishvili is director of engineering in the digital media division of NPR. He leads the software team behind npr.org, NPR API and NPR mobile apps, and is responsible for the strategy and architecture of NPR’s public-facing software systems. Irakli has been a loyal user, contributor and avid advocate of open-source software for most of his professional career, spanning last 10 plus years.

Ben Pashman , Centro’s VP of business development, leads the company’s strategic partnerships with emerging media technology companies in the areas of video, social, mobile and digital out-of-home among others. Ben is also responsible for evaluating strategic investment opportunities for Centro. Ben has 15 years of digital media marketing experience, including 10 years focused on internet advertising sales and business development. Most recently as the first business executive at Gigya a leading social media SaaS technology company. Previous positions include senior sales and product management roles at Doubleclick, Conde Nast and Travelzoo.

Laura Rich is the Co-founder & CEO of Street Fight. Laura has covered bubbles and busts at Condé Nast Portfolio.com, The Industry Standard and Recessionwire, which she co-founded in 2009. She featured brand-name CEOs in her Sunday Interview column in The New York Times; authored the Paul Allen biography The Accidental Zillionaire; and led coverage of startups for Inc.com and FastCompany.com. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Sondra Russell joined NPR in 2008, where she is a web metrics analyst. After working as a web developer for ten years in San Francisco, London, Paris, and Norman, Oklahoma, she got her Master of Business Administration at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. She enjoys all aspects of web metrics analysis, from going "under the hood" to perfect collection methods, to writing customized dashboards using APIs, PHP, and MySQL, to writing a weekly newsletter for NPR staff analyzing recent trends in traffic across all of NPR's platforms. She is also a published short story writer.

Greg Stuart is a recognized leader in digital media & advertising and was selected by Ad Age as one of "10 Who Made Their Mark" in 2006, alongside Chad Hurley and Jay-Z.  He is the Global CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, a worldwide group of brands, agencies, media and carriers who are working together to build the Mobile Marketing channel. Greg is also former CEO of the U.S. based Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade group for the interactive advertising & marketing industry. Greg has more than two decades of hands-on operating experience as a proven business builder in the digital media and technology arenas since 1993.  He has extensive experience as CEO/director/senior executive roles with Y&R, Sony Online Ventures, Cars.com, Flycast Ad Network and other venture-backed businesses. Ad Age identified his book, "What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds," as the "Number one of 10 books you should have read." He lives happily outside of New York City in Bridgehampton, N.Y., with his wife Pamela, twin daughters and son.

Kirk Thornby    Serial entrepreneur and brand builder, Kirk Thornby has spent the last 30 years building successful brands for himself and for others including The Sundance Channel, Nike & Miller Brewing. His latest venture, Acme Made, was purchased by a private equity group and its products are sold in 40 countries around the world including Apple's retail stores. Kirk launched Poachedjobs.com with Peter Bro in the fall of 2011. Poached is a new job site dedicated to the food and drink industry and is expanding into new cities across the US in 2012.

Stacy Volhein is the director of digital operations for Voice Media Group. At VMG, Stacy is in charge of all digital advertising operations across 11 of the top U.S. markets. Stacy's main focus is internal sales process and success reporting metrics, as well as product development, testing, rollout and marketing. Throughout her 10-year career at VMG, she has been a key member in growing the digital and local marketing elements of the business.

Will White helps lead development at MapBox, playing a key role in building open source map design tools like TileMill and managing MapBox's cloud hosting infrastructure. He's active in many open source communities, spearheads the monthly Node.js meetups in Washington, D.C, and has experience programming in Node.js, JavaScript, Python, Objective-C, and Drupal. You can follow him on Twitter at @willwhitedc.

Molly Willmott is director of new media for The Memphis Flyer. She is the Electronic Publishing Chair on the AAN Board of Directors.

Fran Zankowski

Anita Zielina is currently on a Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford, where she does research on the question of how to enhance user engagement in media and make better use of online communities. In the last seven years, she has worked as an editor at Austria’s largest online news platform derStandard.at. She conducts seminars about online journalism and the use of social media and has spoken at various digital media conferences. She is teaching media convergence at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna.