Program Leads | LATAM Cultural Change Ignition Program 2020

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LATAM Cultural Change Ignition Program 2020

Program Leads | LATAM Cultural Change Ignition Program 2020

Program Leads

Academic Coordinator, LATAM Cultural Change Ignition Program

Diego is a Digital Growth & Transformation Expert. He has vast experience in designing, structuring and leading Operations and Content teams and a proven track record of tangible audience and income uplift, both in the U.S. Hispanic market as well as in Latin America.

He is currently Regional Digital Director for Discovery LATAM & US Hispanics.

In the US, he led the Product and Strategy for Discovery DLA: tudiscovery.com and Discoverybrasil.com. Previously, he was VP of Product and Digital Operations for UNIVISION (Noticias, Deportes & Entretenimiento), Univision Connecta & UFORIA APP.

In Latin America, he was Digital Managing Director for ICCK (Digital arm of Grupo Santo Domingo), Colombia's largest and most diverse media holding, with brands such as EL ESPECTADOR, CARACOL TELEVISIÓN, BLU RADIO, GOL CARACOL, CINECOLOMBIA, SHOCK, CROMOS.

Prior to that, he was Digital Managing Director for EL TIEMPO Casa Editorial, covering the strategies of media brands EL TIEMPO, PORTAFOLIO, CITYTV, VIVEIN, ALO, MUJERES, MOTOR, REVISTA DON JUAN ABC DEL BEBÉ.

He worked in content marketing as Head of Innovation, content and operations at pioneer digital agency Indexcol for regional clients such as Coca-Cola Latin Center Division & Warner Bros Theatrical.

He has spoken at several WAN-IFRA events in Latin America and Europe, as well as INMA, SIP, Hispanicsize Miami, Silicon Beach Fest, Digital Futuro Forum Miami, and many more. 

Regional Director for Latin America, Facebook, Argentina

Joao Adao is Facebook’s Managing Director for Spanish-speaking South America. Based in the company’s regional offices in Buenos Aires, Joao leads a team working with brands and agencies to connect advertisers with their audiences.  Prior to joining Facebook, Joao was CEO for Latin America at Hibu.

He was previously regional vice president for Avery Dennison and worked at Procter & Gamble, Boston Consulting Group, and Liberty Global. Joao has a mechanical engineering degree from the Ohio State University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

VP, Audience Development and Analytics, The Washington Post, USA

Beth Diaz is the Vice President of Audience Development and Analytics at The Washington Post.  In this role, she oversees research, analytics, testing and optimization, and email marketing. She develops pricing, platform and content strategies to grow and engage The Post’s digital audience, optimize the user experience and maximize company revenue.

In Beth’s 15 years at The Washington Post, she has served across a wide variety of departments and functions, including sales, circulation, and product development. Prior to her tenure at The Post, she was a management consultant with the Monitor Group, working primarily with large retailers and consumer goods companies on consumer marketing strategies. 

She earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, a MPP in Press, Politics, and Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

 

Media analyst & Newsonomics author, USA

Ken Doctor’s work centers on the disruption and transformation of the news business in the digital age. For 15 years, he has covered both the great successes of digital transformation and democracy-crippling losses of local news across the Western World.  He speaks, writes and consults with companies and associations on four continents, and has become a go-to source, much quoted in media across the globe, on the landscape and the road ahead.

Newsonomics is the word he coined to describe this new discipline of understanding the money flow within the print and broadcast transition to digital. His Newsonomics site collects his broadcast appearances, and his work, including his columns for Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab. 

That career followed a 21-year one with Knight Ridder, then the country’s second-largest newspaper company, where he served in a number of top newsroom and digital strategy roles.  

Ken has been at work on his new local news model, Lookout Local, with the announcement of its launch time and place out in 2020 – and of its strategic partnership with the L.A. Times. 

Managing Editor, El País, Spain

A forerunner of digital journalism in Spanish, he has led several of the major online information projects in Spanish.

He studied Information Sciences at  Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In 1995 he began working at El Mundo as an editor. Later he went to the society section, also as editor, until 1999 when he was appointed head of the Sports section and, nine months later, editor-in-chief. From there, in 2001, he planned the integration of the sports sections of the paper and the Internet. During a season he also served as editor-in-chief of the international section. Between 2002 and 2006 he was deputy director of elmundo.es.

In 2007 he left El Mundo with Gumersindo Lafuente to participate in the launch of soitu.es, a digital outlet that won two awards from the Online News Association (ONA) as the best non-English media during its two years of existence.

After the closure of soitu.es in 2009, he was appointed deputy director of El País to promote digital publishing.

In 2013, he was awarded the Nieman-Berkman Fellow in Journalistic Innovation, thanks to which he spent a year at Harvard and MIT studying how technological innovation is changing traditional media companies.

In 2014, he was hired by the US network Univision as vice president of the digital area of ​​Univision Noticias, a team that under his direction won numerous awards and recognitions, including three Ortega y Gasset Awards.

In June 2018, he was appointed deputy director of El País as part of the management team of the new director Soledad Gallego-Díaz.

Professor, Columbia Business School, USA

Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed. She is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive corporate events around the globe, such as the Global Peter Drucker Forum.

She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

Follow Rita on Twitter @rgmcgrath. For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.

Digital transformation, content strategy and innovation consultant, WEF Board Member, UK

Dmitry is an expert in digital transformation, content strategy, and innovation. He worked for 21 years at the BBC in London where he was responsible for developing and implementing the BBC’s digital editorial offer for 40 non-English foreign language new services. Originally from Moscow, Russia, Dmitry worked in various editorial-development roles for the digital section of BBC News. These roles required liaison between editorial, product and strategy teams in order to drive innovation and develop new ways of reaching audiences, increasing engagement across the world and, crucially, driving culture change is newsrooms. He is an experienced digital leader in content creation, specialising in growing audiences across the world, driving editorial changes in newsrooms and adapting the way organisations work in digital space, especially around content innovation and audience engagement.
After his years at the BBC, he joined Culture Trip, a startup operating at the intersection of media and travel. He is now pursuing new adventures. Dmitry's main area of expertise is on the intersection between Editorial, Organisational, Strategy and Product sectors.

CEO, Eyam Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, Canada

Ryan M. Thomas has a diverse international business and media background having lived and worked for several years in Latin America, Europe and North America. His varied career includes work in news and media, finance, biotech, environmental services, and strategic consulting.    Before becoming the CEO of Eyam Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, Ryan was the Director of News Operations for EWTN News (Catholic News Agency, ACI Prensa, ACI Digital, ACI Stampa, CNA Deutsche and the Church Pop properties) and oversaw the global news operations for the world's largest religious media company. 

Fluent in Spanish and studying Italian, Ryan also studied Economics and Finance at Regis University, attended Georgetown University’s Fund for American Studies and is a graduate of the IESE Business School’s Advanced Management Program (AMP) in Media and Entertainment.

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. 

LATAM Cultural Change Ignition Program 2020

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