Carol Cone: Founder and Chairman, Cone Inc.Carol is nationally recognized as an industry leader for her work in the Cause Branding and strategic philanthropy arenas. As the Chairman of Omnicom-owned Cone Inc., she has embraced a steadfast commitment to building substantive and sustainable partnerships between companies and social issues for more than 25 years. Cone has pioneered vibrant new alliances for private/public partnerships to create signature programs for a host of Fortune 500 companies, including the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, ConAgra Foods’ Feeding Children Better, PNC Grow Up Great, the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women program, Reebok’s Human Rights Awards, Rockport’s Fitness Walking, and the Gillette Prostate Cancer Challenge, among others. Overall, Cone’s signature cause programs have raised more than $1 Billion for various social causes. Today, Cone, Inc. is acknowledged as the nation’s leading Cause Branding consultancy. To move knowledge forward and empower corporations and consumers alike in their association of doing well for themselves while doing good for the world, Cone commissioned the Cone/Roper research series, the nation’s only nine-year longitudinal studies on consumer and executive attitudes towards cause-related marketing. The studies serve as a benchmark and overwhelmingly confirm that Americans solidly support cause-related activities and that companies see benefits to their reputation, image and bottom line. Carol’s recognitions include Lifetime Achievement Award, PR News 2005; One of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Public Relations, PRWeek; Social Responsibility All-Star, Reputation Management; Distinguished Alumnus, Boston University; and Entrepreneur of the Year, Arthur Young/Venture Magazine.
Kristian Darigan: VP Cause Branding, Cone Inc.Kristian heads the Nonprofit Cause Division of the Cause Branding Group at Cone as well as heading up the Western Union, American Heart Association, PNC Bank, Make A Wish Foundation and Safe Horizon accounts. She has particular expertise in marketing strategy, corporate citizenship, change management and fundraising. As an expert on cause programs, she serves as a spokesperson for Cone on cause branding and social marketing trends, and has been a featured keynote and panel speaker at many conferences and seminars for organizations including: PRNews, American Marketing Association and the Cause Marketing Forum. She has contributed to publications including Jocelyn Daw's Marketing for Nonprofits, PR News' Top 100 Case Studies in PR, and Philip Kotler's Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life, Third Edition. Her work has been honored with more than 40 industry awards and most recently her most successful campaign, Go Red For Women, was turned into a Harvard Business School case study.
Channing Dawson: Senior Advisor, Scripps NetworksChanning has been a visionary pioneer for Scripps Networks since its 1994 inception. He was part of the founding executive team of both HGTV and DIY Network; launched both hgtv.com and diynetwork.com; developed HGTV Viewer Services; produced HGTV Ideas magazine, now a 3-million subscriber e-newsletter; created Scripps Networks first broadband channels; launched Scripps Networks On Demand, one of the most widely distributed VOD services in the country; recognized in 2006 with a CTAM Rainmaker Award for his contributions to the advancement of the on-demand platform. He is also the co-recipient of a 2005 Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Award for Living.com, and currently sits on the board of governors for that award as well as on the 2007 judging panel of the Interactive Television Primetime Emmy Awards.
Diana Wechsler Kerekes: VP of Video, Comcast CableDiana is a senior member of the Comcast team responsible for content acquisition. She joined Comcast in 2003 as Vice President and General Counsel of Programming Investments. As part of Comcast’s Programming Investment team, Diana played an instrumental role in the creation of PBS KIDS Sprout and served as interim General Manager of the network through its development and cross-platform launch. Prior to joining Comcast, Diana served as Senior Corporate Counsel for Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. and was general counsel for the Safeguard International Fund and TL Ventures. Previously, she worked as an attorney in private practice in New York City and Boston. In 2006, Diana was recognized as one of “Cable’s Most Powerful Women - the Second 50 Operators List” by CableWorld, one of the industry’s leading publications.
Chris McAndrewsChris has built and run successful consumer Internet businesses since 1997, first with online travel pioneers Preview Travel and Travelocity and most recently as President, Digital Media for National Geographic Ventures. For both content and e-commerce sites, Chris and his teams have created innovative online consumer experiences and strong business partner relationships that have generated dramatic audience growth and outstanding financial performance through transactions and advertising sales. Chris has nearly 20 years of experience in media, including sales and marketing roles at top technology publisher IDG, and currently consults to a number of digital media start-ups.
Grant Packard: VP Marketing, Indigo Books & MusicGrant is VP of Loyalty Marketing & Customer Insights at Indigo Books & Music in Canada. During his tenure at Indigo, he has been responsible for CRM strategies, loyalty and gift card programs as well as online marketing at Chapters, Indigo, Coles, SmithBooks, The Book Company and Indigo Books. Grant also oversees the company's customer and market research. Prior to joining Indigo, he was Director of Marketing for Excite Canada and Rogers Hi-Speed Internet media portal business. In 2002, Grant was profiled as one of Canada's top 30 marketers under the age of 30 in Marketing magazine.
Joe Wilson: VP of Enabling Technologies, Turner Broadcasting SystemJoe recently joined TBS after serving for several years as Chief Scientist and VP of Technical Services at Tacoda - one of the leading providers of behavioral ad targeting technology on the Internet. Tacoda distributes their technology across thousands of Web sites in order to deliver highly-targeted ads based on anonymous user information (e.g. the kinds of sites they visit, specific areas of interest, geography, etc.) and other relevant factors (e.g. time of day, seasonality, etc.). Joe’s Web trailblazing includes bringing Gannett’s USA Today online in 1992 and serving as Chief Scientist and head of the Software Development team at WashingtonPost.com. His expertise in collecting and interpreting the data from user actions across the Internet will bring critical value to the development of the Changents experience.