2007 SESSION Leaders

We had a great line up of Session Leaders in 2007. The group of people that lead the discussions in 2007 included representatives of some of the most respected brands in technology - ranging from Silicon Valley pioneers like Cisco to social media brands like Technorati.

Peter Isaacson is the Vice President of Worldwide Field Marketing for Adobe Systems. Managing a team of over 175 marketing professionals that include personnel from Japan, Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, he is responsible for driving all customer outreach activities for Adobe worldwide.

Prior to his role as Vice President, Isaacson was the Sr. Director for Worldwide Brand Marketing for Adobe. His responsibilities spanned brand positioning, advertising, relationship marketing and web marketing.

Prior to Adobe, Isaacson held a Vice President position with Ammirati Puris Lintas, managing advertising and brand positioning accounts for clients such as Compaq in the enterprise, desktop, networking, portable and consumer segments, and Chesebrough Pond's for its Brut and Mentadent products. Isaacson also spent more than four years with Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, handling strategic accounts for Proctor & Gamble on such products as Spic & Span, Camay, Ivory Bar, Tide, Liquid Ivory, Comet, and Top Job.

Isaacson holds a B.S. Degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He enjoys travel and a variety of sports, including basketball, mountain biking, and golf.
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Bill Schreiner is Vice President of UnCut Video, AOL's user generated online video content offering. In this role, Bill led the development and launch of UnCut Video as it became a key offering in the AOL Video portal. Bill joined AOL in 1996 as a member of the Greenhouse, AOL's original content development group. In his first four years at the company, he led the charge to develop Love@AOL into one of the largest romance and personals sites on the web.

With the acquisition of MapQuest in 2000, Bill became Vice President of Product and Programming for MapQuest. During his eighteen months stewardship, MapQuest was completely overhauled, integrated into the AOL Service, and saw its traffic double.

In April 2001, Bill launched AOL Tickets, the first one-stop ticketing destination to combine the inventory from all major ticketing vendors for live events. During this time, Bill also served as head of Product Strategy for AOL Entertainment. In 2003, Bill transitioned to the head of Community programming and oversaw programming operations for social networking, blogs, chat, message boards, groups and AIM programming.
Before joining AOL, Bill had a career in the entertainment industry with numerous credits in both television and film. He was an early adopter of new technologies, which he put to use as creative director of the renowned Los Angeles improv group, "The Groundlings." The Groundlings were the launch pad for many of comedy's biggest stars including: Phil Hartman, Lisa Kudrow, Kathy Griffin, Julia Sweeney, Will Ferrell and others.

Bill holds degrees from Tufts University, UCLA, and is a graduate of the AFI Directing Program.
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Greg Ott is the Vice President of Global Marketing for Ask.com, an InterActive Corp. Company. Greg is responsible for all online and offline marketing, advertising and brand strategy initiatives, including the recent re-branding and re-launch from Ask Jeeves to Ask.com.

Prior to joining Ask.com in 2004, he served as VP of Marketing at Xoom Corporation, an online-to-offline international money transferring services. Ott has also served as VP/General Manager at RealNames, a Web addressing and navigation platform built to improve on the existing Domain Name System using internet keywords.

Ott began his career with Procter & Gamble as brand manager for Noxzema, Clearasil, Bar Soaps and Bounty paper towels.

Ott received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
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Mike has more than 20 years experience in marketing communications in high-technology, working with companies such as Adobe Systems, Silicon Graphics and Quantum Corporation. He has managed teams focused on advertising, public relations, channel and sales support, promotions and merchandising, tradeshows and internal communications, as well as graphic and multimedia design.

Mike's work at Cisco focuses on the creation, integration and management of the corporate brand. Current projects include the annual report, the corporate overview, brand education and training, brand alignment and consumer branding.

Mike received a Bachelor's degree in advertising, with graduate studies in Mass Communications at San Jose State University.
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Colin Decker has an extensive repertoire in Film, Television & Online Media. He is an award-winning digital media executive with documentary films, commercials, and major web properties to his credit.

In 2004, Colin joined Current TV with the goal to revolutionize online and broadcast media by inviting average citizens to create the programming. There, he worked to develop a first-to-market user-participation model comprised of expansive online and on-air offerings. As Creative Director, he supervises all aspects of advertiser integration and UGC helping brands engage an audience in meaningful, unprecedented ways. At the center of his oversight is VCAM (Viewer-Created Advertising), a breakthrough in consumer engagement that has garnered coverage from The New York Times, USA Today and ABC World News Tonight.

Colin is also an educator and passionate evangelist for experimental media. He has lectured extensively on the topics of new media and user-generated content and has held teaching appointments at Boston University and Harvard. His speaking engagements have included Yahoo!, Promax/BDA, Harvard University, The Clio Awards, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the Firefox Flix UGC Ad Contest, The San Francisco UGC Ad Show and the Virginia Commonwealth University Adcenter. He holds an BA in Fine Art from Bowdoin College and an MFA in Film from Boston University.
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Kurt Apen is director of Marketing Strategy and Planning for eBay North America. Specifically, Apen is responsible for overseeing the U.S. marketing strategy for eBay.com, eBay Motors, eBay Express, and Half.com.

Over the last two years in this position, Apen has played a leading role in the development of several integrated marketing campaigns for eBay, including the 2005 launch of the "IT" campaign and the 2006 launch campaign for eBay Express.

Apen joined eBay in February 2001 as the first eBay Motors marketing hire. In addition to helping build the eBay Motors team, he was responsible for developing and executing marketing plans that helped grow the eBay Motors business extensively. Apen spent four years helping move eBay Motors from an outside entrant to the web¹s most visited automotive web site according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Before joining eBay, Apen worked in business development at Greenlight.com, an Internet start-up focused on new car sales. Prior to Greenlight, he created and led the e-commerce and internet marketing team for SAAB in the U.S. Apen started his career with Andersen Consulting's Strategic Services practice, where he focused on marketing and sales strategy and process.
He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania¹s Wharton School. Apen resides in San Jose with his wife and two kids.
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As Director of Marketing for Linden Lab, Catherine Smith is responsible for the communications and promotional activities for the virtual world Second Life. With daily responsibilities that might rival those of the press secretary of a rapidly developing nation, Smith surveys the virtual landscape to identify those residents who are developing the economic, social and creative aspects of Second Life to promote their stories and develop ways to attract others to join the Second Life community.

Prior to joining Linden Lab in 2003, Smith was the Director of Marketing for foolsFURY, an avant garde theater company based in San Francisco. In addition to foolsFURY and Linden Lab, Smith has held senior marketing positions at Uplister (playlist sharing community) and at ActionAce (ecommerce) and Cartoon Network where she was the Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast Brand Manager and online marketing devotee. She moved to San Francisco in 1996 to help start Turner New Media whose first project, oddly enough, was a 3D Virtual World featuring Cartoon Network characters.
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Laurie Probst is the Senior Director of Global Enterprise Marketing Communications for Symantec. She is responsible for leading the strategy and development of the integrated marketing communications plans and development of materials. She manages a team of 20 marketing communications professionals who work in all areas of communications from Global Advertising, End User and Channel Materials, interactive and online marketing, and Direct Mail.

Prior to joining Symantec, Probst held the position of Vice President of Marketing for Cable and Wireless in the US where she managed Product Marketing, Marketing Operations, Public Relations and Analysts Relations. Previous to C&W she was VP of Marketing Communications for Exodus Communications where she led the brand and message development and marketing communications.

Probst holds a B.A. Degree from San Jose State University, and is a member of the Ad Council representing Symantec.
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Derek is responsible for marketing, communications and product marketing/development strategies at Technorati, the first and leading portal the Live Web and universe of social media. With nearly 20 years experience in the field of marketing, DJ has worked with The Thomson Corporation, VaxGen, DigitalThink and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation prior to joining the Technorati team.  
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Cammie Dunaway joined Yahoo! in June 2003 as chief marketing officer, responsible for leading Yahoo!'s worldwide branding efforts and driving the company's product marketing initiatives. A seasoned executive with over 20 years of marketing experience, Dunaway oversees all of Yahoo!'s consumer, enterprise and partnership marketing initiatives, from brand and marketing communications to product planning and positioning to execution of customer acquisition and retention strategies.

In 2005, Dunaway oversaw Yahoo!'s tremendously successful 10th year anniversary campaign, including a massive global marketing and branding initiative that the Promotional Marketing Association recognized with the 2006 Gold Reggie Award. Dunaway's numerous other achievements at Yahoo! have included the launch of Yahoo! Music Unlimited at the Yahoo! Music Penthouse in Miami for the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards and Yahoo!'s global "Life Engine” advertising campaign in 2004. Dunaway also led the Yahoo! Personals "Live Billboard” campaign, which won the 2005 Gold Effie Award and was recognized by Mediaweek as the "Best Out of Home” marketing campaign of the year. She was named as one of the 100 Top Marketers by Advertising Age and has led Yahoo! to numerous industry recognitions including the Clio Awards, the Obie Awards and the Promo PRO Awards.

Prior to joining the company, Dunaway spent 13 years at Frito-Lay, supervising prominent brands such as Doritos, Cheetos, Lays, Ruffles and Rold Gold Pretzels. Dunaway holds a B.S. in business administration from the University of Richmond and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

She is married to Lendy Dunaway and has one son, Davis. She is actively involved with the San Jose Tech Museum and serves on the board of Junior Achievement of Silicon Valley.
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Jim Gregory is founder and CEO of CoreBrand, a global brand strategy and communications firm based in Stamford, Connecticut with offices in New York and Tokyo.

With 30 years of experience in advertising and branding, Jim is a leading expert on brand management and credited with developing pioneering and innovative tools for measuring the power of brands and their impact on a corporation's financial performance.

Among the tools Jim has developed is the Corporate Branding Index ® (CBI) – a research vehicle that has continuously tracked the reputation and financial performance of over 1200 publicly traded companies in 47 industries since 1990. CoreBrand uses the CBI to help clients understand how their brand compares with industry peers and determine how communications can impact corporate reputation and financial performance – including stock price and revenue growth.

Jim is a brand council member for both Bristol-Myers Squibb and New York Stock Exchange. He is a frequent speaker on the financial benefits of advertising and brand management for The Wall Street Journal as well as Business Week.

Jim has written four books on creating value with brands, Marketing Corporate Image, Leveraging the Corporate Brand, Branding Across Borders and The Best of Branding. His latest white paper, Driving Brand Equity and Accountability, was sponsored by Brarron's and published by the Association of National Advertisers.
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