Claudia Batten

Claudia serves as one of three founding partners and the Chief Operating Officer of Victors & Spoils, the world’s first (ad) agency based on crowdsourcing principles. Claudia steers Victors & Spoils’ performance and business development with a sharp eye on trends and client challenges. Prior to founding V&S, Claudia was a founder of Massive - the first-ever network for video-game advertising –working as in-house counsel and on business development. After only three short years, Massive was acquired by Microsoft Corporation in 2006. Following the acquisition, Claudia served as Director of Partner Development at Microsoft for three years. Claudia has over 13 years of experience in the technology sector, including four years as a corporate attorney specializing in contract and technology law. She has advised companies across telecommunications, banking and biotechnology and has expert experience in intellectual property protection, e-commerce and privacy. Claudia has also partnered with advertising agencies at a strategic level, helping them to adapt to new models.

Bridget Brennan

Mark Addicks

As Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Mark has overall responsibility for the company’s world-class marketing function and its marketing services organization, Gcom. In his role, Mark has oversight responsibilities for the company’s global brand-building strategy, including its advertising, promotions, PR, design, packaging, online, licensing, and multicultural initiatives. He also oversees some of the industry’s most recognized equity platforms, including Box Tops for Education and the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Mark also has pioneered several cutting edge propriety marketing ventures. Since joining General Mills in 1988, Mark has held marketing positions with increasing responsibility in both the Yoplait and the Big G cereal divisions. As Vice President of Big G New Enterprises, he led highly successful new product development efforts, including Frosted Cheerios, one of the most heralded product launches in category history. He also produced ground-breaking results as leader of the venerable Cheerios franchise. Mark was named Vice President of Marketing Communications in January 2000, and led the successful integration of the General Mills and Pillsbury marketing functions in 2001. He was named Chief Marketing Officer in January 2004, and was promoted to Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer in June 2007. Before joining General Mills, he led marketing communication programs for Anderson, Clayton & Company, a diversified foods company based in Houston. During the same period, he started and managed three entrepreneurial businesses in Houston. Mark’s work has been widely recognized with numerous industry awards, both for his innovation and marketing expertise. Advertising Age named him one of the top 100 marketers in 1999, and one of the top 25 Power Brokers in both 2003 and 2004. In addition, he has been invited to guest lecture at some of the nation’s leading business programs, including Harvard, Tuck and the University of Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas in 1978 and an MBA from Harvard University in 1988.

Mark resides in Minneapolis.

Alfredo Gangotena

Alfredo Gangotena is chief marketing officer of MasterCard Worldwide, with global responsibility for the company's advertising, sponsorships, promotions, research, insights and digital marketing initiatives. He is also a member of the company’s Operating Committee. Most recently, Mr. Gangotena was the Global Products & Solutions Lead and general manager for Europe at MasterCard Worldwide. Based in the European regional head office in Waterloo, Belgium, Mr. Gangotena was responsible for developing and implementing coordinated GP&S strategies and plans for the Region, including Product Development, Product Sales, Marketing, Communications and Advisors. Working with regional management and GP&S functional leads, he defined and prioritized GP&S activities which are in alignment with the regional priorities and customers, as well as executed integrated solutions designed to deliver top line revenue growth. Mr. Gangotena came to MasterCard Europe in April 2006 and was appointed as general manager for Continental Europe and the SEPA Region, spearheading the company’s operations across the markets, focusing on strategic planning, acceleration of growth and development of innovative businesses with key Regional Banks and Merchant partners. Previously, Mr. Gangotena was the senior vice president and general manager of the MasterCard Asia/Pacific Region, where he was instrumental in developing the company's competitive advantage and expanding the brand across the region. Mr. Gangotena, a French national, brings extensive general management and marketing expertise in international markets from his previous organizations. Before joining MasterCard in January 2004, he was CEO of Hutchison/Priceline, a joint venture between Hutchison Whampoa and priceline.com in Asia/Pacific. He also served as president and executive chairman of the Asia/Pacific Region for the Henkel Group of Germany. Prior to that, Mr. Gangotena held senior management positions with the Procter & Gamble Company as managing director Europe (Laundry Detergents Division), with Universal Music-PolyGram as CEO in France, and with the Walt Disney Company as senior vice president for the Disneyland Theme Park in Paris. Mr. Gangotena holds a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the United States and is a graduate Engineer from Ecole Centrale Paris, France.

Andrew Razeghi

Andrew Razeghi is a Lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he teaches popular coursework on innovation. Razeghi is also a best-selling author, adviser to the executive teams of Fortune 500 companies, and a frequent speaker at industry and corporate events. His work spans industries: from consumer packaged goods to media, technology to financial services, and entertainment to professional sports. A few of his clients include Allstate, Frito-Lay, The New York Times, Novartis, PepsiCo, Quaker, Televisa Networks, and the country of Switzerland. Professor Razeghi has also served as Vice Chairman of the Wright Centers of Innovation at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in a number of media outlets including BusinessWeek, China Daily, CNN, Investors Business Daily, and Forbes. He is also a Limited Partner in Excelerate Labs, the new venture incubator backed by leading venture capital firms and entrepreneurs to foster, promote, and accelerate innovation in the Midwest. Razeghi is also an early-stage investor in a number of new ventures in technology, nutraceuticals, entertainment, healthcare, and social networking. Among his portfolio companies are Groovebug (the music magazine for iPad), NowSpots (social media ads), Mobli (called by TechCrunch the blow-out photo-sharing app of 2011), Nutrabella (women's nutrition), Paradise4Paws (pet resorts), and Tap.Me, Inc. (mobile games). His most-recent book, THE RIDDLE: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones (Jossey-Bass/Wiley) was chosen by FAST COMPANY magazine as one of its “Smart Books”.

Alexander Chernev

Angela Lee

Angela Y. Lee joined the marketing faculty at the Kellogg School in 1995 and was named Mechthild Esser Nemmers Professor of Marketing in 2007. Professor Lee
is a consumer psychologist. Her expertise is in consumer learning, emotions and goals. Her research focuses on consumer motivation and affect, cross-cultural consumer psychology, and nonconscious influences of memory on judgment and choice. Her publications appear in both marketing and psychology journals and she is the co-editor of Kellogg on China (Northwestern University Press, 2004). She was the recipient of the 2006 Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award for her research on self-regulation and persuasion, and the 2002 Otto Klineberg Award for the best paper on international and intercultural relations. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research (Associate Editor), Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising. 

Christine Madigan

Ken Crites

Ken Crites (Kellogg ’97, McCormick ’91) is the Category Director of Specialty Beverages for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. In this role, he is responsible for all non-hot- coffee beverages. He has been with GMCR for eight years, assisting the company grow from a regional coffee roaster to a national CPG company. GMCR was a Top Ten NAS- DAQ growth stock from 2001 to 2010. Ken has also led their Consumer Direct business from seven years, growing coffee club membership from 8,000 to 195,000. Before GMCR, Ken worked for Nestle, Quaker Oats and Accenture. Ken and his wife Sharon (Mc- Cormick ’91) have two kids and absolutely love living in Vermont.and Riyaan who is 3. I am a huge Sports fan and passionately support the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, The Celtics and the Boston Bruins. 

Craig Bida

Wendy Kritt

David Rabjohns

David Rabjohns was a pioneer in Social Market Research having launched MotiveQuest in 2003. MotiveQuest is well known for their innovative work in advocacy measurement having developed, with Northwestern, the first metric to correlate Online Advocacy with Offline sales. MotiveQuest recently won the prestigious gold WOMMY award for Word Of Mouth Measurement for their work with Sprint. Prior to founding MotiveQuest, David was EVP Director Of Strategic Planning at Leo Burnett in Chicago and before that worked in Marketing at IBM and PepsiCo. MotiveQuest is headquartered in Evanston and works with leading global corporations including Microsoft, Nike, Samsung, Audi, Kraft and MTV..

Chris Boudreaux

Chris Boudreaux is a Senior Vice President at Converseon, where he helps leading brands achieve business objectives by transforming business processes, data integration, and governance. He leads two practice areas: Strategy and Measurement, and SEO/SEM. Prior to Converseon, Chris created and led the Social Media Management offering at Accenture, where he also advised clients in digital marketing and online product development. His work has been featured by industry researchers and journalists including Forrester and Gartner, and he founded SocialMediaGovernance.com, the foremost resource on gover- nance in social media. Chris is co-author of The Social Media Management Handbook, and he has helped leading global corporations including Boeing, Citrix, eBay, IBM, Kodak, and Microsoft. 

Mary O'Connell

Erich Marx

While many companies have achieved success with social media marketing, others struggle to measure the impact of their efforts. In such organizations, there is pressure to quantify the return on investments in social media. But traditional measures are poorly suited to the social media environment. How can we tell if our investments in social media are working? With a panel of social media experts and seasoned marketers, we will outline a new set of metrics for calculating the ROI on social media marketing. 

Kurt Vanderah

Kurt Vanderah is the General Manager of SocialMedia.org, the community for social media leaders at the world's greatest brands. He works closely with SocialMedia.org's Councils, facilitating and advancing the conversation about social media and connecting executives across the Fortune 1000. It's a great honor for him to work with more than 200 billion-dollar brands, helping them help each other to make social media a more integral and reliable part of daily business. A University of Illinois graduate, Kurt’s first life was in radio, including more than a dozen years at WGN-AM in Chicago. Kurt came to SocialMedia.org in 2008, encouraged by the company’s firm belief that doing good business can be fun - and so far, so good.

Robert Schieffer

Bob Schieffer is Senior Lecturer of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management,
where he has taught since 1997. He teaches Customer Insight Tools in the fulltime Kel- logg program, is the Academic Director of the Customer Insight Tools executive seminar, and teaches Marketing Research in the Executive MBA program. He has developed and
led Kellogg Executive Education seminars for GE, AB INBEV, Ashland, Grupo Modelo and International Paper. Schieffer also teaches Marketing Research in the McCormick School
of Engineering and teaches in the NUvention Program. Aditionally, Schieffer works with leading corporations on customer insight initiatives; recent clients have included Baxter, Abbott Laboratories, Ricoh Innovations, and St. Jude Medical. Schieffer previously held Se- nior Marketing positions at Abbott Laboratories and the Adolph Coors Company. Schief- fer is the author of Ten Key Customer Insights (2005), and is the President of Schieffer and Associates, a Marketing Consulting and Development firm. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Chicagoland Habitat for Humanity. 

Dr. Michael E. Smith

Dr. Michael E. Smith‘s career has spanned the academic, government, and corporate sectors. His research has led to key discoveries related to memory and attention, and he directed the first research projects that applied high-resolution EEG methods to the analysis of higher order cognitive functions. Prior to NeuroFocus he served as President of CorTechs Labs, where he guided the launch of the first FDA approved software for analysis of magnetic resonance images to detect brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s patients. He served as Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at the U.S. National Science Foundation, and as Principal Neuroscientist at SAM Technology, where he developed neural metrics of engagement with advertising and media. He has authored dozens of related scientific journal publications and is an inventor on several patents for advanced applications of EEG methods. Dr. Smith holds graduate degrees in cognitive psychology from UCLA and in marketing from UC Berkeley.

Gary I. Singer

Gary I. Singer is the founding partner and CEO of BUYOLOGY INC, a leading neuro-insight firm based in New York City, focused on understanding the non-conscious. Gary previously founded and served as CEO of Redline Results, an independent brand consultancy firm. Prior to his entrepreneurial ventures, Gary served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Interbrand, where he also co-led the development of Interbrand’s global intellectual property. Prior to joining Interbrand, Gary was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he was a leader of the Branding Center of the Marketing & Sales Practice. Before that, he spent twenty-three years at two global advertising agencies, as the Managing Director (CEO) of D’Arcy St. Louis and the Senior Vice President, World Wide Head of Kraft Foods at Leo Burnett in Chicago. Gary holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Jonathan Copulsky

For more than 30 years, Jonathan Copulsky’s career has been dedicated to developing and growing profitable customer relationships. Jonathan has helped clients design their “go-to-market” strategies; revise their channel strategies; create new market-based segmentation frameworks; establish analytically based customer loyalty programs; revamp their sales forces, call centers and database marketing efforts; rethink their service operations to take advantage of new technology-enabled capabilities; and integrate customer-facing organization forces in conjunction with mergers and acquisitions. More recently, his client work has focused on the impact of new technologies on collaboration and customer relationship management. In addition to his work with clients, Jonathan chairs Deloitte Consulting's Marketing Council and leads the firm's eminence efforts. Jonathan speaks and writes frequently on issues related to sales and marketing management . In addition to more than 30 bylined articles in top-tier publications, Jonathan is the author of “Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High-Speed World.” Jonathan received a BA in History from Haverford College. He received his MBA from Stanford University. He has worked extensively as a volunteer with numerous not-for-profit organizations and currently serves on the Board of Chicago Public Radio.

Roger Dooley

Roger Dooley is a marketing speaker, author of Brainfluence, and publisher of the blog Neuromarketing. He is the founder of Dooley Direct, a marketing consultancy, and co-founded College Confidential, the highest-traffic college-bound website. That business was acquired by Hobsons, a unit of UK-based DMGT, where Dooley served as VP Digital Marketing and continues in a consulting role. Dooley spent years in direct marketing as the co-founder of a successful catalog firm and also was director of corporate planning for a Fortune 1000 company. He has an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the University of Tennessee.

Brian Sternthal

Brian Sternthal holds the Kraft Professorship in Marketing

Professor Sternthal has published widely in marketing journals. His work focuses on under- standing how people process the information presented in advertising messages, and the consequences of this processing for brand judgments. He also investigates the strategies consumers use to self-regulate their behavior and how they might modify these strategies to enhance the attainment of their goals.
Professor Sternthal is past editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and serves on the editorial board of this journal and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. He received his PhD from The Ohio State University. 

Claudia Batten

Claudia serves as one of three founding partners and the Chief Operating Officer of Victors & Spoils, the world’s first (ad) agency based on crowdsourcing principles. Claudia steers Victors & Spoils’ performance and business development with a sharp eye on trends and client challenges. Prior to founding V&S, Claudia was a founder of Massive - the first-ever network for video-game advertising –working as in-house counsel and on business development. After only three short years, Massive was acquired by Microsoft Corporation in 2006. Following the acquisition, Claudia served as Director of Partner Development at Microsoft for three years. Claudia has over 13 years of experience in the technology sector, including four years as a corporate attorney specializing in contract and technology law. She has advised companies across telecommunications, banking and biotechnology and has expert experience in intellectual property protection, e-commerce and privacy. Claudia has also partnered with advertising agencies at a strategic level, helping them to adapt to new models.

Jared Drinkwater

Jared Drinkwater – Director of Marketing at PepsiCo, Doritos Brand Team Jared has over 13 years of marketing experience within the CPG, Sports and Entertainment industries. In his current role as Director of Marketing for Doritos, Jared oversees all media strategy and marketing initiatives for the $2B brand. Additionally, he is responsible for leading promotions and partnerships on behalf of the brand with the NFL, Microsoft, Activision, EA Sports and SXSW. Most recently, Jared helped ink a deal with the creators of now famous SNL Digital Shorts, The Lonely Island, in conjunction with the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl promotion. The program brought the first ever consumer generated commercial to the Super Bowl back in 2006. Prior to his role on Doritos, Jared managed Frito-Lay’s marketing efforts across the grocery channel and has also held roles in product innovation and on the Lay’s brand team. Before Joining PepsiCo, Jared ran the retail marketing division of an independent home entertainment company called Genius Products, owned by The Weinstein Brothers. The company represented brands such as ESPN, WWE, Sesame Street and Discovery Channel, among others. Jared grew up in Boston, earned a BA from the University of Michigan and his MBA from The Kellogg School of Management (Class of 2004).

Michael Holland

Michael is Executive Vice President and Group Head of Corporate Social Responsibility in Edelman’s New York office, and a member of the firm’s Global Citizenship Advisory Committee. He is an expert in corporate social responsibility, cause marketing, corporate communications and branding. The programs and campaigns that he has created and led have received more than 85 awards since 2005, including: 4 Gold SABRE’s, 2010 Platinum SABRE Award, 2007 Foreign Policy Association CSR Award, 2006 Yahoo! Big Idea Award, 2006 BrandWeek’s Gold Reggie for Best Community Outreach Campaign, and the 2005 U.S. Department of Justice Corporate Leadership Award. Previously, Michael led Honeywell’s corporate social responsibility initiative, Honeywell Hometown Solutions, to support overall brand-building as well as business development, government relations and employee engagement efforts across the company’s four business units and 130,000 employees in more than 100 countries. He directed the company’s partnerships and signature programs with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, NASA, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Nobel Foundation, Operation USA, Presidential Classroom, Rebuilding Together, Safe Kids, and the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. He also served as the Executive Director of the Honeywell Humanitarian Relief Fund. For his work, he was named the 2006 Communications Executive of the Year by the American Business Awards and the 2005 Community Relations Executive of the Year by PRNews. Michael began his career with the American Chamber of Commerce (UK), where he managed the Chamber’s efforts to support the Irish Peace Process and worked with high-level government officials and diplomats from the United States and United Kingdom following the IRA’s ceasefire. Michael also served as the Chief of Staff at McCann Erickson’s Fourteenth Floor Brand Strategy firm where his clients included Johnson & Johnson, Exxon, AT&T and MasterCard. Michael is a dual citizen of the United States and the Republic of Ireland. He holds a Master of Arts degree from King’s College of the University of London and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College. Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce.

Rich Nanda

Rich is a Principal in Deloitte Consulting’s Consumer Products (CP) practice where he leads the Commercial Leadership market offering. Rich has significant expertise in helping his clients win with retail customers and the consumer. He routinely advises CP executives across Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain and Finance with expertise spanning Customer Segmentation and Strategy, Pricing and Profitability Management, Marketing and Trade Spend Effectiveness, Sales and Marketing Organization and Capability Design, and Product Portfolio Optimization. Rich has a track record of delivering significant top line and bottom line value to a blue chip roster of clients. His cumulative work has delivered $250M in profit growth and $500M in working capital benefit to industry leaders including: Alberto Culver, Beam Global Spirits & Wine, Brown-Forman, Kraft Foods, Miller-Coors, Moen, Nestle, PepsiCo, Schawn Food Co., Whirlpool, and Wrigley. Rich is passionate about the relationship and interworking that lies between the consumer product manufacturer, the retailer and the consumer. He researches and has written studies on consumer and retail trends and the impact that they have on the consumer products landscape. He has collaborated with the faculty at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business on a variety of research and routinely lectures at leading business schools on the same topics. Rich earned his undergraduate degree in engineering from Kettering University and his MBA from Columbia Business School. Rich resides in Chicago with his wife Maya and son Devan. In his personal time Rich enjoys wine, cooking, reading, travel and is an enthusiastic fan of Chicago’s professional sports teams.

Alice Tybout

Alice M. Tybout joined the Kellogg faculty in 1975 and became the Harold T. Martin Profes- sor of Marketing in 1988. At Kellogg, she teaches in the MBA, Ph.D., and Executive Masters Programs. In addition, she is the academic director and faculty for the Kellogg on Consumer Marketing Strategy Program and the Kellogg on Branding Program at Northwestern’s execu- tive education facility, the Allen Center. She also has taught at the University of Chicago, INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Tybout received the Sidney J. Levy Award for Teaching Excellence in 1996 and the Chairper- sons’ Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Core in 1999. 

Christina Hennington

Christina Hennington is the Divisional Merchandising Manager for Beauty at Target, the second largest discount retailer in the United States. Hennington’s areas of responsibility include managing Target’s skin care, bath, fragrance, cosmetics, and hair care businesses. In 2003, Hennington began her career with Target as a toys buyer, and has since held several merchandising positions throughout the organization, including household commodities and consumer electronics. Her previous position was as Director of a Merchandise Planning team. She was promoted to her current position in March 2011. Hennington received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Cornell University in 1997 and earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in 2003. Before joining Target, she spent several years as a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers and served as a product manager for two dot-com start-up businesses in Boston. Hennington is a native of Norway and has lived in several countries and U.S. cities. She and her family enjoy skiing, golfing, traveling and entertaining.

Jim Vurpillat

Jim Vurpillat was named Director of Global Marketing for Cadillac Division, General Motors Corporation, effective April 1, 2004. Jim is responsible for brand positioning, launch planning, pricing development, and financial performance for Cadillac. He is also responsible for the development of the Cadillac brand in China, Russia and the Middle East. Vurpillat began his General Motors career in 1989 working as a Marketing Specialist at the Inland Division in Dayton, Ohio. In 1993, he moved to the Pontiac Division as a Market Research Manager. He was named Assistant Brand Manager - Marketing for the Pontiac Grand Prix in 1996 and has held numerous marketing and brand management positions within GM since. In that space he has worked on joint ventures with Toyota and Subaru, led major promotional platforms such as the Ryder Cup and the Indy racing league and successfully launched many new vehicles. Vurpillat has a bachelor-of-science degree in marketing and MBA from the University of Dayton, Ohio. He is a native of Flossmoor, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

Kim Kadlec

Rishi Dhingra

Rishi is currently the Marketing Director for Male Personal Care – Old Spice and Gillette Body Care Global business for the Procter & Gamble Company. He has been with Gillette and Procter & Gamble for more than 13 years starting with Gillette in India, where he worked for over 4 years before moving to the Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe (AMEE) headquarters based on London. After working on Male and Female Shaving Business in London for a couple of years, Rishi moved to the then Gillette Global HQ in Boston to work on Global Emerging Markets. Following the acquisition by Procter & Gamble, he continued working on Global Emerging Markets, followed by leading the Global Sports Marketing Program – “Gillette Champions” featuring Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter and 16 other world class athletes. Rishi led the First Moment of Truth Reinvention with the creation of the “Guy Aisle” - a superior shopping environment for Men’s Grooming products designed to encourage more engagement and purchase. In 2009, Rishi moved to Cincinnati to work on Male Personal Care for Old Spice and Gillette Body Care. Rishi is from India and has lived and worked on 3 continents in the past 8 years, and considers himself a Global citizen. Rishi is married and has two boys – Raahil who is 7 years old and Riyaan who is 3. Rishi is a huge Sports fan and passionately supports the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, The Celtics and the Boston Bruins.

Tim McIntyre

Vice President of Communications for Domino’s Pizza since 1997, Tim McIntyre is responsible for internal communications, public and media relations, event management, crisis communications, community involvement and charitable giving for the international brand. Tim joined Domino’s in 1985. Tim is Domino’s chief spokesperson and has represented the company in major national and international media. He has been a speaker on communication and public relations topics throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. Tim is co-author of the book Hire the American Dream: How to Build Your Minimum-Wage Workforce into a High-Performance, Customer-Focused Team, published in 2009. In 2009, he was named “Crisis Manager of the Year” by PR News for his handling of an unauthorized employee video posted on YouTube. In 2010, he was named “Communicator of the Year” by the Detroit chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

Mohan Sawhney

Professor Sawhney is a globally recognized scholar, teacher, consultant and speaker in strategic marketing, innovation and new media. His research and teaching interests include marketing and media in the digital world, process-centric marketing, collaborative marketing, organic growth and network-centric innovation. He has been widely recognized as a thought leader. Business Week named him as one of the 25 most influential people in e-Business. Crain’s Chicago Business named him a member of “40 under 40”, a select group of young business leaders in the Chicago area. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. 

Zak Dabbas

Zak Dabbas is the Co-Founder and President of Punchkick Interactive, a full-service mobile marketing firm that provides strategic consulting to Fortune-level clients, and creates industry-leading mobile Web sites, SMS campaigns, custom mobile apps, and more. A self-described mobile evangelist, Zak has played a key role in the launch of integrated mobile campaigns for brands including Harley-Davidson, UPS, Microsoft, Allstate Insurance Co., and Pearson Education. Zak has overseen mobile strategy for Punchkick since its founding in 2006, and has helped the company experience over 200% year-over-year organic growth for the past two years. In 2009, Zak was the co-creator of a mobile campaign for UPS that won a Forrester Groundswell award and two Mobile Marketing Association awards--including one for best mobile campaign globally. Zak received his J.D. from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and today serves as a judge for the Web Marketing Association’s WebAward competition, and speaks at events including the nation’s largest e-retailing conference, the Internet Retailer Conference and Expo. Zak’s personal theory on mobile marketing is simple: content is king. Only by creating engaging mobile campaigns which provide something of true value to an end user, can the mobile marketing medium emerge as the unstoppable force it is destined to be.

Tim McCauley

Tim McCauley is the primary mobile advocate for Walgreens and is responsible for all mobile consumer initiatives. He leads the building and execution of a mobile strategy in support of the nation’s largest drugstore chain and leading multichannel retailer serving more than 6 million customers every day. Walgreens mobile applications & text messaging solutions have been widely recognized as leading the drugstore industry.

Jack Philbin '07

Jack spearheads the company’s overall strategic direction and drives Vibes’ position as one of the premier thought leaders in the mobile marketing and wireless 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. An entrepreneur and builder, Jack has specific expertise in business development, strategic client management, and consumer marketing. Jack is a graduate of Boston College and received his MBA at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg School of Management. He is extremely active in the mobile marketing industry serving as the Vice Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association on the North American Board of Directors and is also a member of the CTIA Wireless Internet Caucus. Jack regularly addresses industry experts by moderating and speaking on panels CTIA, MMA, CES, and AdTech. Jack was honored with the MMA’s “Outstanding Individual Achievement” award in 2005. Under Jack’s leadership, Vibes was ranked #92 on the 2007 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing US companies and has received numerous awards for their innovation. Jack serves on the Board of Directors for the National Runaway Switchboard, the Illinois Technology Association, and served on the Mayor’s Council of Technology Advisors for Mayor Daley in Chicago.

John Owens

John joined ING DIRECT in March of 2001 and has held various marketing and salespositions in the organization including the last five years in his current role as Head of Marketing.

John’s work experience prior to joining ING DIRECT USA included a stint in sales with The Coca-Cola Company’s Fountain Division, and marketing roles with Johnson & Johnson, Mattel Inc., and Vlasic Foods International where he worked on brands such as Pepcid AC, Motrin, Matchbox Toys and Vlasic Pickles.

John graduated in 1991 from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a concentration in Entrepreneurial Management. He attended Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and graduated with a Masters in Business Administration with majors in Marketing, Finance and Statistics.

He and his wife live in Villanova, PA with their three children. In the littlespare time John has, he coaches Little League baseball and basketball, teaches Junior Achievement, serves on alumni advisory boards for two U of P organizations, serves on the non-profit boards of The Athletic Advantage Fund and Light Up the Queen Theater, has been a panelist and featured speaker at a NetFinance conference, Financial Communications Society event and several PhiladelphiaChapter American Marketing Association events. He plays basketball, platform tennis, skis (On both frozen and thawed H2O) and maintains a single digit golf handicap.