Speakers | Digital Media North America 2019

Digital Media North America 2019

24 Jun 2019
New York City
United States of America (the)

Speakers | Digital Media North America 2019

Speakers

Speakers

Director of Newsroom Product, The Washington Post, USA

Education: College of William & Mary, BA in English; American University, MA in Journalism and Public Affairs

Greg Barber is the Post newsroom's director of product. He manages the newsroom's suite of software tools and leads the groups of reporters, editors, product managers and engineers who create them. He joined The Post in 2003 as one of the founding editors of Express, was managing editor of the WaPo Labs R&D group and co-founded The Coral Project.

President of Digital Media, Hearst Newspapers, USA

Robertson Barrett is president of Hearst Newspapers Digital Media, where he is responsible for product innovation in news, information and entertainment across Hearst’s local markets. Previously, Rob ran Yahoo News, where he launched new programming featuring Katie Couric and a cross-platform integration with ABC News, and Yahoo Finance, where he created a similar partnership with CNBC. His roots are in newspapers - first as a staff writer for The Raleigh News & Observer, then as the digital leader of The Los Angeles Times and EVP of Tribune Interactive. Since he joined in 2016, Hearst Newspapers has invested in consumer data and begun a transformation into a consumer-focused media and product company.

Chief Product Officer, Bloomberg Media Group, USA

Julia Beizer is the chief product officer of Bloomberg Media, Bloomberg L.P.'s global multi-platform media organization, shaping the company's consumer-facing experiences across all platforms and devices. She is responsible for overseeing Bloomberg Media's digital product portfolio of web, mobile, video, over-the-top platforms and distributed content partnerships, working across the newsroom, design, engineering, media distribution, and commercial organization. Prior to taking on this role, she was head of product, design and engineering for HuffPost, driving its first-ever redesign. Before that, she spent a decade at The Washington Post, working on both the news and product sides of the company. She currently serves on the board of Questback, an insights company, and Boolean Girl, a nonprofit that teaches girls how to code. Julia is a thought leader in digital media and is passionate about engaging user experiences and building innovative products. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University.

Chief Operating Officer, Vox Media, USA

Trei serves as the Chief Product Officer at Vox Media, Inc. He leads the highly talented team responsible for SB Nation's cutting edge publishing and community platform. Trei served as the Chief Product Officer at The Verge. He has been designing and building web applications for engaged audiences for over 12 years. As a founder of the highly regarded software development consultancy, Handwire, Trei developed enterprise internet solutions for Fortune 500 companies and large public institutions such as Microsoft, Royal Dutch Shell, and MD Anderson Cancer Center. Working with Microsoft's Xbox division, he led efforts to design, build, and scale the first web application empowering sports gamers to organize leagues and tournaments, track scores, and calculate standings. Before joining Vox media, Trei ran the internet efforts for former tech Chief Executive Officer and Virginia Governor Mark Warner in the 2008 presidential primaries. Using innovative techniques to organize and connect supporters, raise online contributions, and reach out to the political blogosphere, he helped make Gov. Warner's organization the most tech-savvy in the race before the governor bowed out to run for US Senate. His other achievements include creating a ground-breaking platform for Texas Monthly, "the national magazine of Texas," connecting Texans across the world, as well as developing technology for OzSearch, the first and largest online portal dedicated to delivering Australian web content.

Senior Director of UX and Design, Gannett | USA TODAY NETWORK, USA

Nicole Dingess is Gannett | USA TODAY NETWORK’s Senior Director of UX and Design and is a design leader with over fifteen years of experience developing digital strategies and customer experiences that matter. With an extensive background working at the intersection of tech, business, and design, she leverages human-centered design methods to identify and prioritize customer segments and new product opportunities, and deliver the highest quality design and customer experiences.

 She has over ten years of operations and management experience, growing and developing UX and Design teams, managing large cross-disciplinary delivery teams, and growing account engagements. She has created, designed and implemented internal processes and pragmatic best practices that have resulted in improved performance, and enhanced team engagement and cohesiveness. She has previously worked with brands such as AARP, Time Warner Cable, Mark Kay, and Capital One.

Chief Technology and Digital Officer, The Globe and Mail, Canada

Greg Doufas

Greg Doufas is the Chief Digital Officer at the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. He has spent his career building and leading high performance software and analytics teams – turning ideas and data science into products and meaningful experiences. Before joining The Globe and Mail, Greg spent most of his career leading analytics teams at Rogers Communications and Research in Motion (Blackberry) where he was the Global Director of Advanced Analytics. He also has provided professional services in the areas of advanced data analytics and related advisory boards. Under Greg’s leadership his teams have been accredited with numerous patent filings in the areas of pattern recognition, machine learning and mobile advertising. Greg resides in Toronto, Canada

Director of Product, McClatchy, USA

Leanne is the Director of Product at McClatchy where she drives strategy for the products that support local journalism across web, mobile app, and third-party distribution channels for all of McClatchy's markets. Since stepping into this role, she has reshaped and repositioned the Product group within McClatchy as a central team that breaks down silos and is leading the company through its digital transformation. Before joining McClatchy, Leanne applied her product and engineering skills to companies in healthcare, software, and data industries, include Microsoft. Leanne’s background in software development and business strategy allows her to align developers and stakeholders to create valuable, innovative and successful products.

Executive Managing Director, Styria Content Creation, Austria

In addition to his role at styria content creation gmbh, Alexis is a Behavioural Designer / Partner at FehrAdvice and Partners in Vienna. He was previously managing director of Styria Digital One, Austria’s number one digital publisher regarding reach with a portfolio of 35 general interest, lifestyle and niche portals with premium content.

The author of books and articles on online advertising started his career as a business and finance journalist. He then soon realized the potential of video and co-founded an online TV platform in 2000. Alexis later became part of the editorial board of the Austrian business paper “WirtschaftsBlatt” and reorganized the digital content activities of Styria Media Group, one of Austria’s top media companies.

His passion is journalism and he loves the new possibilities digital news and advertising offer.    

Head of Audience and New Content Strategies, The Financial Times, UK

Renée Kaplan is Head of Audience and New Content Strategies, and an assistant editor, at the Financial Times. She leads a team that helps grow the reach and engagement of FT journalism and pilots innovation in the newsroom. In addition, heads up newsletters and audio, developing content strategies that are transforming and diversifying the FT's journalism. Previously Deputy Editorial Director of news network France 24, and Chief Content Officer at Havas, she has also worked on staff at CNN, CBS and the New York Observer.

Chief Product Officer, theSkimm, USA

Dheerja Kaur Chief Product Officer at theSkimm, a company that focuses on delivering news and information into the routines of female millennials. They have an audience of millions who engage with them daily via their newsletter, app, and audio/video products. Prior to joining theSkimm, Dheerja was an engineering and product leader at ESPN, working across all of their digital products and spearheading major products like Grantland, some of their flagship apps, and a relaunch of ESPN.com.

Deputy Head of Digital, The Times & Sunday Times, UK

Nick helps leads the Times and Sunday Times digital strategy team who cover a range of specialist output for the two titles. From multimedia and podcasts through to audience development, an award winning computational data investigations team and a newsroom based development team they guide the titles forward as they expand their digital operation.    He was previously at The Telegraph and the Guardian and co-founded WannabeHacks.co.uk

Senior Director - Product, The Atlantic, USA

Andrew Phelps is the new senior director of product at The Atlantic, who oversees their forthcoming portfolio of subscriber experiences. Andrew came to them from Apple News and before that he was at The New York Times, where he led their iOS news app, messaging, and personalization efforts, among other critical roles.

Partner Operations Lead, News and Search, Google, US

Valerie Streit leads partner and product operations at Google where she assures high-quality, diverse news content in Search, Google News, YouTube and Assistant. Previously at YouTube, she cultivated platform growth strategies and audience insights with a focus on the news vertical. She has also led publisher outreach to help drive adoption to the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project. A graduate of NYU Steinhardt’s media ecology program, Valerie launched her career as a local news producer in San Diego and San Francisco before joining CNN to freelance as a writer/segment producer. She then turned her freelancing gig into a full-time job at CNN in Atlanta, where she piloted new editorial products and launched original content for CNN.com, iReport, CNN Video, and CNN Live. At CNN, Valerie trained colleagues on how to leverage nascent social media and video for storytelling and interaction, and managed global social media and audience participation platforms.

Director of Innovation & Leadership, Craig Newmark J-School/CUNY, USA

Anita Zielina is leading a new programme at CUNY to train the next generation of news executives to address the demand for innovation and leadership in the industry. Previous roles include visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, researching the role of leadership in times of transition and Chief Product Officer and member of the executive management team at NZZ media group in Switzerland, leading their digital operations. Before joining NZZ Anita held roles as digital editor and deputy Editor-in-Chief at Stern, the German weekly news magazine published by Gruner + Jahr in Hamburg, and the newspaper Der Standard in Vienna, Austria. In 2012, Anita was the first Austrian journalist selected for the one-year Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, dedicated to entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership in journalism. There her research focused on innovation management in the media and on audience engagement. Anita holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and a Master in Law from Vienna University. 

Moderators

Director of Product, Chartbeat, USA

Emily Ingram is the Director of Product Management at Chartbeat, where she focuses on building tools that serve the needs of digital publishers. Previously, she was a senior product manager at HuffPost where she worked with editors to develop new storytelling formats. Before that, she spent six years at The Washington Post, both in the newsroom and on their product team. While there, she launched the Post's national iOS app and digital partner program. She is an advisor with Built By Girls, a program helping young women explore careers in the tech industry.

Deputy Off-Platform Editor, The New York Times, USA

Millie Tran is Deputy Off-Platform Editor at The New York Times, which she joined in 2017 in a newly-created role as Global Growth Editor. Previously, she was Director of Global Adaptation at BuzzFeed, leading a team of editors and producers around the world to share the best of BuzzFeed across languages, platforms, and formats. She was also a founding member of the team that launched the award-winning BuzzFeed News app, as well as the creator of the BuzzFeed News newsletter. Millie’s experience in media spans editorial, product, data, marketing, and strategy at a variety of organizations such as the American Press Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and National Journal — but always rooted in journalism with an obsession on connecting audiences with great editorial content and products. She was selected as one of 92Y's Women inPower 2018 Fellows, was named to Editor & Publisher’s 25 Under 35, and participated in Poynter's Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media in 2017.

Chief Strategy Officer, Local Media Association, USA

Jed is the Chief Strategy Officer at the Local Media Association, where he leads industrywide business transformation and digital growth initiatives for newspapers, radio and TV broadcasters, digital publishers, and R&D companies. These programs include Innovation Missions, Chief Digital Club executive learning groups, and LMA’s strategic consulting practice. He also spearheads LMA’s creation of Accelerate Local, an accelerator designed to foster profitable business transformation across local media.

Previously, Jed was Vice President of Business Development and Strategy at Vendasta, where he managed partnerships with leading media companies and drove the company’s go-to-market strategy.

Jed has also held positions as Vice President of Strategic Consulting at BIA/Kelsey and Director of Business Development at Main Street Hub. He has led strategic consulting projects for AT&T, GateHouse Media, Google, NBC, Time-Warner Cable and Yahoo!.

Jed’s insights have been cited by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Bloomberg, Digiday, FOX Business, and the BBC, among others. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and corporate meetings, and has written extensively on creative destruction and disruptive media. His work has been published and taught by the Columbia Journalism School and the Yale School of Management.

Jed received his master’s in media entrepreneurship from the School of Media and Journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he was named the Outstanding M.A. Graduate by the school.

Digital Media North America 2019

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