Bharat Anand is the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, and the faculty chair of the HBX initiative. He is an expert in digital strategy and corporate strategy. He has written over fifty research articles and case studies, and his work has received various awards and been profiled in several media outlets. He created Harvard Business School’s first executive program on digital strategies for media companies, has served as faculty head for the required strategy course in the MBA program, and currently serves as faculty chair of various executive programs at the school. He is a renowned teacher and a two-time winner of the “best teacher award” at Harvard Business School. Professor Anand has advised leading organizations and entrepreneurs worldwide. He received his B.A. in economics from Harvard College magna cum laude, and his PhD in economics from Princeton University. His new book, The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change, was published by Random House in October 2016.

Melissa Bell is the Publisher of Vox Media and co-founder of Vox.com. She leads Vox Media's company's Growth and Development team and its divisions: Analytics & Growth, Brand Development & Identity, and the Storytelling Studio, which builds multi-platform, multimedia stories across the company's eight editorial brands.

 

Prior to Vox Media, Melissa oversaw digital platforms at the Washington Post. She was also one of The Post’s most-read bloggers and a columnist for the Style section. Before joining The Post, she helped launch Mint, a Wall Street Journal subsidiary in India, where she lived for four years. She hails from San Diego, California and makes a mean banana-and-cheese quesadilla.

 

Born in the North East of England, UK, Nick developed a passion for business creating and successfully exiting a number of start-ups in the B2B and B2C space. Bell formed Teenfront.com with Robbie Hodgkiss in 1998 at the age of 14, he later sold the business to Rools.com, a teenage payment solution provider.

Bob Cohn is the president of The Atlantic. He oversees the magazine's business and editorial teams on its principal platforms: print, digital, video, live events, and consulting. He was named to the job in 2014 after serving five years as editor of Atlantic Digital, where he built and managed teams at TheAtlantic.com, The Wire, and CityLab, growing TheAtlantic.com's audience ten-fold.

 

Before coming to The Atlantic, Bob worked for eight years as the executive editor of Wired, where he helped the magazine find a mainstream following and earn a national reputation. During the dot-com boom, he was the executive editor of The Industry Standard, a newsweekly covering the Internet economy. He began his journalism career at Newsweek, where for 10 years he was a correspondent in the Washington bureau, covering the Supreme Court and the Justice Department and, later, the Clinton White House.

 

Bob helped lead The Atlantic to National Magazine Awards for Magazine of the Year (2016) and Best Website (2013). During his tenure at Wired, the magazine won three National Magazine Award for General Excellence. At Newsweek, he won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for coverage of the Supreme Court nomination process. A graduate of Stanford, Cohn has a masters degree in legal studies from Yale Law School.

Steven Cook has more than 25 years of experience as an accomplished Fortune 50 global strategic brand marketer and CMO in customer-centric brand building, transformational innovation, B2C and B2B business development and account management with P&G, Coca-Cola and as Samsung’s SVP, CMO, North America. He has built and led iconic, image-based, consumer-centric passion brands globally online and offline in highly competitive categories.

 

Russ Klein has led marketing teams for many of the world’s foremost brand names—holding top marketing posts at Dr Pepper/7UP Companies, 7-Eleven Corporation, Burger King Corporation, Church’s Chicken, and Arby’s Restaurant Group. Russ has been named to “top marketer” lists spanning three decades, including his Burger King body of work that was recognized by ADWEEK as “The Advertiser of the Decade” for the 2000s. 

 

As CEO for the American Marketing Association, Russ is charged with the transformation of the AMA to become the definitive force and voice shaping marketing best and next practices worldwide. Klein was once nicknamed “Flamethrower” by an industry publication for his managerial boldness and provocative advertising, but he now aspires to be the torch bearer for all marketers.​

 

Matt Lieber is cofounder and President of Gimlet Media, the award-winning narrative podcasting company. In a previous life, Matt produced radio shows (On Point, Fair Game) and podcasts (Slate Culture Gabfest). He also worked as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, where he focused on media and digital business. He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Martin is the Chairman of the Viacom Marketing Council and a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He was recently named to the Board of Directors for The Ad Council and serves on the advisory boards of St. Jude Children’s Hospital and the Yale University Center for Customer Insights. He has been named one of Fast Company's “100 Most Creative People In Business,” a "Media Maven" by Advertising Age, one of Fortune Magazine’s "40 Under 40" top business leaders and one of Adweek’s 50 most indispensable executives in advertising. In 2014, he was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Achievement.

From 1995-2012, Martin managed digital operations for The New York Times Company and was the founding CEO at New York Times Digital and nytimes.com. In 2002, Martin founded the Online Publishers Association (now, DCN), the leading trade association among quality content creators. In 1983, Martin founded Ogilvy Interactive, the first digital agency at a major US advertising firm. Martin began his career as a research scientist and assistant professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he serves on the Alumni Board.

John Ridding is the Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Times Group, a role he has held since 2006.  Under his stewardship the FT has expanded its global operations, successfully scaled and transformed its core business and acquired a number of companies that support its multichannel strategy including Money-Media, Medley Global Advisors, Exec-Appointments, Assanka (renamed FT Labs) and most recently Alpha Grid.

 

He managed the acquisition of the FT by Nikkei in 2015, a merger than has been completed smoothly to create a global news media leader. John also serves as a Special Executive Director of Nikkei.  He is co-chair of Nikkei’s Digital Strategy Committee and sits on Nikkei’s Global Investment Committee.

 

During his tenure the FT has gained a reputation for innovation and digital transformation.  The FT now attracts the largest paying readership in its 128-year history, with two-thirds of its readership now coming from digital channels and a growing presence in video and social media.

 

John has been at the FT for 28 years, including leadership roles in editorial, business and at the FT’s former parent company, Pearson, where he was President of Pearson Professional, a division of the global education business.  John was a member of Pearson’s executive board, and also served as President of Pearson in Asia, over-seeing the group’s regional education strategy.

 

Prior to his Pearson role, John was the editor and publisher of the Financial Times in Asia. He led the launch of the FT’s Asia edition in 2003, steering it to a series of commercial and editorial successes.  John also led the development of the FT’s Chinese language website, which now has more than 2m users and is the leading international source of business news in China.  He also launched a number of training and educational initiatives in the region.

 

During his career at the FT, John has held a variety of senior positions in both editorial and business departments, including deputy editor, managing editor, Asia editor, Paris correspondent and Korea correspondent. 

Before joining the FT, John worked at Oxford Analytica, heading the economics and Asia Pacific desks. 

 

John has held a number of non-executive board positions, including the Economist, and FTSE (the joint venture between the FT and the London Stock Exchange).  He continues to sit on the board of Bonnier Business Press, part of the international media conglomerate Bonnier AB.

Fidji Simo leads Video, News and Advertising in News Feed at Facebook. Most recently, she launched Live video, 360 video, videos that autoplay in News Feed, and Instant Articles. She also helped grow Facebook's mobile ad business by building new ad formats - video ads, Canvas ads, carousel ads and lead ads. Fidji joined Facebook from eBay. There, she was part of the Strategy group and rotated through eBay’s main offices of France, Spain and the US, then joined eBay’s incubation team to develop new growth businesses. She holds a Master of Management from HEC Paris and spent the last year of her Master program at UCLA Anderson School of Business. She holds several advertising- and video-related patents.

Justin B. Smith has been the Chief Executive Officer of Bloomberg Media Group at Bloomberg L.P. since September 16, 2013. Justin was the Founder of Breaking Media, the Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, and the Ouagadougou Education Project. He served as President of Atlantic Media Company of National Journal Group Inc. from January 2010 to 2013. Justin was responsible for oversight of National Journal and Government Executive Groups, including National Journal, CongressDaily, The Hotline and Government Executive publications.

 

Jim Spanfeller is the Founder of Spanfeller Media Group, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and President. Prior to founding Spanfeller Media Group, Jim served as the President and CEO of Forbes.com Inc., a division of Forbes Inc. from 2000 to July 2009 and oversaw all aspects of its strategic and operational management. Previous to Forbes.com, Jim served as President of Consumer Magazine Group of Ziff Davis Enterprise, Inc. (formerly, Ziff Davis Media, Inc), where he was responsible for PC Magazine, Yahoo! Internet Life, Smart Business, Family PC and Expedia Travels; managed Ziff Davis Corporate Sales and Custom Publishing.

 

Marta Tellado joined Consumer Reports in the fall of 2014 as President and Chief Executive Officer of Consumer Reports, the largest and most-trusted nonprofit consumer organization in the world. She began her career in the consumer movement and has 25 years of experience as a frontlines advocate and leader for social justice. She is the organization’s eighth president since its founding in 1936.

 

Marta is known as a transformational leader with a talent for innovation, a lifelong commitment to social justice and a distinguished portfolio of accomplishments in mission-driven organizations.

 

Marta came to Consumer Reports from the Ford Foundation in New York, where she was Vice President for Global Communications and an officer of the board. While there, she led strategic communications and advocacy on a range of social-justice issues in the United States and around the world, including economic fairness, free and fair access to an open Internet, and civil rights.

 

Before that, Kinsey was served in senior editorial roles at USA Today, beginning in 2000 as editor-in-chief of its website and from 2005 to 2008 as executive editor. He also led Congressional Quarterly’s early web strategy from 1995 to 2000 and served as a reporter at Newsday for seven years, from 1988 to 1995..

Professor

Author—The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School, director of the Poliak Center at Columbia Journalism School and a contributing writer at NewYorker.com.  He is an adviser to President Obama on competition issues. He recently worked with NY Attorney General on consumer protection issues in technology, including launching a probe into whether certain ISPs were providing slower speeds to consumers than promised. Tim is best known for his work on Net Neutrality theory. He is author of The Master Switch, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, and other works, and in 2013 he was named one of America's 100 Most Influential Lawyers.