Kerry Flynn

Business Reporter
Mashable
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.

Vanessa Fontanez

Executive Director, Brand Marketing
Vox Media

Vanessa Fontanez is the Executive Director, Brand Marketing for Vox Media, the fastest-growing digital media company today. Vanessa oversees strategic partnerships, live experiences, and brand strategy to drive relevance and revenue for the company's eight distinct brands: The Verge (Technology), SB Nation (Sports), Eater (Food and Dining), Vox (News & Culture), Polygon (Gaming), Curbed (Neighborhoods & Homes), Recode (Technology and Business), and Racked (Shopping).

Vanessa has worked for brands including Marie Claire, GQ, Condé Nast Traveler, Woman’s Day Brand Group, Food & Wine, and Travel + Leisure.

Rebecca Grossman-
Cohen

VP, Platforms + Product Marketing
The New York Times
Rebecca Grossman-Cohen is VP of Platforms + Product Marketing at The New York Times. In this role she spans the marketing and product organizations, leading cross-functional teams focused on presenting the best product and marketing experiences to drive customer revenue through subscriptions. She works with key distribution partners including Google, Facebook, Apple, and others to create the product experiences that best represent the Times journalism off their owned and operated properties, and packages and merchandises subscription bundles for revenue growth. Rebecca joined The New York Times almost three years ago as managing director for new products and mobile.
 
Previous to The Times, Rebecca was Vice President of Partner Relations at News Corp, Vice President of Marketing at The Daily, and Executive Director of Marketing at The New Republic. She has also worked in strategy and development roles for the Associated Press and NPR.
 
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Tufts University and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She was awarded the McCormick Fellow for Media Management at Northwestern.
 
She lives with her husband, daughter, and their pit bull-shepherd-lab mix in Brooklyn.

Michelle Manafy

Editorial Director
Digital Content Next

In her role as editorial director, Michelle Manafy is responsible for the DCN’s content-related initiatives, including our InContext site and annual member summit, as well as evangelizing industry best-practices in a wide range of venues. She has two decades of publishing experience, more than half of which has been focused squarely on the business of digital content.

Her career has included leadership roles at the Media Industry Newsletter (min), where she concentrated on digital strategies and revenue channels for the magazine media; UK-based digital publisher FreePint Limited, where she focused on the enterprise information industry; and Information Today, Inc.‘s Enterprise Group, where she provided content direction on publications and events in the areas of content creation, management and delivery strategies and tools, enterprise search, and the business of content.

Michelle also has extensive knowledge on millennials and “digital natives,” having co-written the book Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That’s Transforming the Way Business Is Done. She is also a regular columnist at Inc.com. Michelle is a lively and informative industry writer and speaker and holds a BA in journalism from San Francisco State University.

Coleen O'Lear

Editorial Director, Emerging News Products
The Washington Post
Coleen O’Lear is the Editorial Director for Emerging News Products at The Washington Post. She oversees the day-to-day editorial operations for the team responsible for curating, producing and designing The Post’s national suite of apps and Snapchat Discover channel, as well as growing audiences through strategic partnerships with distributed platforms. Coleen was one of the original members of the team, which was created three years ago to grow The Post’s national audience. Before that, Coleen was a homepage editor.

Steve Rubel

Chief Content Strategist
Edelman
Steve Rubel (@steverubel) is Chief Content Strategist for Edelman, a leading global communications marketing firm that partners with many of the world's largest and emerging businesses and organizations. He is considered one of the leading experts on the evolving media and marketing landscape and the blurring lines between publishers and platforms.
 
Rubel is responsible for advancing Edelman's thinking on the entire ecosystem and for helping clients develop new programs that blend paid, owned, and earned content strategies. He serves as a senior advisor to the firm's executive committee as well as its global roster of clients. Since joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel has served in a number of advisory roles.
 
Rubel is also one of Edelman's more visible industry thought leaders. He was named by PR Week as one of 20 innovators who are having the greatest impact on communications and by Folio: magazine as "a go-to expert on the evolving media landscape." He is a frequent contributor to Advertising Age and speaks at dozens of industry events each year.
 
Prior to joining Edelman, Rubel worked for 15 years in a variety of marketing communications positions in corporate, non-profit, and small/mid-sized PR firms. He joined Edelman from CooperKatz where he conceived and developed some of the earliest social media programs in the PR industry.
 
Rubel is a graduate of Hofstra University and hails from Long Island, NY.

Fred Santarpia

Chief Digital Officer
Condé Nast
Fred Santarpia was named chief digital officer of Condé Nast in October 2014, and is responsible for building and executing the company's digital strategy to expand the reach of its brands, strengthen its marketing offerings, and deepen its relationship with consumers across all platforms.
 
In this role, he has pushed the company to explore new distribution partners and develop new revenue streams, leading the recent acquisitions of the popular music editorial property, Pitchfork, the London-based editorial tech company, Poetica, leading social data and marketing platform, CitizenNet, and the launch of a new digital innovation center in Austin, Texas. Santarpia’s team, Condé Nast Co/Lab, works across 10 categories—business development, monetization, data, technology, product, design, audience development, digital assets, content, and strategy—to support the company both from a collaborative centralized team and from positions embedded within the brands. Previously, Santarpia served as executive vice president and chief digital officer of Condé Nast Entertainment (CNÉ). Under his leadership, CNÉ launched 14 fully distributed video channels based on Condé Nast’s iconic portfolio of brands, in addition to The Scene, a platform dedicated to creating and curating premium digital video content.
 
Prior to joining CNÉ, Santarpia was general manager of VEVO, where he was part of the company’s founding leadership team and served as head of all operations responsible for audience development and video syndication, social media and marketing strategy, revenue operations and VEVO’s original content and programming team. Under his leadership, VEVO was consistently the #1 video property on YouTube in terms of unique viewership. Before VEVO, Santarpia worked for Universal Music Group, where he held a variety of senior level positions during his tenure with the company, most recently as vice president, operations and finance at Global Digital Initiatives/elabs. Santarpia is a graduate of Villanova University and holds an M.S. from Boston University.

Alan Saura

Audience Development Strategist
AJ+
Alan Saura is an Audience Development Strategist at AJ+, Al Jazeera's digital-only offshoot. Alan has been with AJ+ since its launch, and has developed audience growth initiatives that have helped AJ+ become one of the most-viewed video publishers online. In his role at AJ+, Alan has overseen digital strategy, worked with producers to optimize content for specific social networks, and created partnerships with some of the world’s top brands and publishers.

Michal Shapira

SVP, News Content Partnerships
Turner Ignite
Michal Shapira is senior vice president of news content partnerships for Turner Ignite. In this role, Shapira oversees strategic partnership marketing across the news division’s multiplatform footprint, including CNN, HLN, CNN Airport Network, CNN Digital and Great Big Story. Based in New York, she reports to Dan Riess, executive vice president of content partnerships and co-head of Turner Ignite.
 
Since joining the company in 2014, Shapira has been focused on the development of innovative, best-in-class brand programs that drive meaningful business results for marketing partners. From spearheading the launch of Courageous, CNN’s first-ever brand studio (with a global purview and focus on brand journalism), to leading the creation of new advertising products spanning native, video, mobile and social, Shapira and her team continue to expand the suite of capabilities available to partners. Within this position, Shapira also manages the news properties branding and positioning in the marketplace, including CNN’s role in Turner’s cross-portfolio Upfront and Great Big Story’s NewFront in 2015, as well as brand partnership activations at tentpole events, from the CNN Grills at the Presidential Conventions to CNN Heroes.
 
Previously, Shapira held a number of leadership positions within the Ad Sales department of The Wall Street Journal, including vice president of media innovation, vice president of integrated marketing solutions and head of digital marketing. Prior to her time at The Wall Street Journal, Shapira served as the executive director of Condé Nast Studio, delivering digital and mobile creative services to Condé Nast clients. Within her career, Shapira also held several digital-focused roles at AOL and iVillage.
 
 

Michael Silberman

General Manager, Digital Media
New York Media

Michael Silberman joined New York Media as general manager of nymag.com in May 2007. Under his leadership, New York Media has grown its digital business substantially, more than tripling revenue and growing audience tenfold, while transforming a regional news and service website into a powerhouse group of national sites. Silberman oversees strategy and day-to-day operations for New York Media’s digital properties Nymag.com, Vulture.com, TheCut.com, GrubStreet.com, Science of Us, and Select All, with a staff of 110 across editorial, technology, marketing, social media, and sales.

Silberman came to nymag.com from Rodale, where he was vice president and editorial director for Rodale Interactive. He joined Rodale in April 2005, where he managed a 35-person team responsible for editorial, design, production and product development for the online editions of Rodale's magazines. During his time at Rodale, he launched the Websites for Women's Health magazine and redesigned and relaunched the Websites for Men's Health, Runner's World, and Bicycling magazines, resulting in significant growth of Web traffic for each of those sites.

Prior to Rodale, Silberman worked at MSNBC, most recently as deputy editor, East coast, partners & strategy, managing all MSNBC.com program production with NBC News and MSNBC Cable.  He first moved to the digital realm in 1995, as a senior news producer for Microsoft, developing the MSNBC Website and its relationship to the cable channel and NBC News.  He previously worked as a television producer for CBS News and graduated cum laude with a B.A. in government from Harvard College.