About the Speakers
Attendees at the Chicago Summit will have the privileged of hearing from a uniquely accomplished and distinguished group of business leaders over the 2 day event. PeSA is grateful for the sponsorship and participation of the various companies and individuals who support our events, which benefit the attendees and the online community as a whole. |  |
Derek Brown Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. | Thoughts from Wall Street panel
Derek Brown is a senior research analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., a leading global financial services provider to the institutional equity and fixed-income markets. For more than 10 years, Mr. Brown has focused his research efforts on companies in the Internet marketing and ecommerce sectors, with current coverage that includes aQuantive, eBay, Google, Liquidity Services, LoopNet, Netflix, Omniture, and Yahoo!. Prior to joining Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Mr. Brown was member of the equity research teams at Pacific Growth Equities, WR Hambrecht, and Volpe Brown Whelan. Mr. Brown is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
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Jen Cano HammerTap | Customer Lifetime Value panel
Jen Cano, Marketing VP for HammerTap market research, has spent the last several years studying and interviewing online businesses, both individually and collectively, to identify patterns for what makes some fail, while others thrive.
As an online business intelligence expert, Cano has made a career of studying Internet business owner's needs to help provide direction for the development of practical and powerful online business and market research tools, as well as meaningful educational programs.
Cano, HammerTap's spokeswoman, is an eBay Certified Consultant and is recognized as a top authority on eBay market research. She currently acts as a contributing editor for eBay Radio, providing weekly reports on "What's Hot on eBay," and speaks at many industry events each year. Her new book, eBay Performance, co-authored with product sourcing expert Robin Cowie, is scheduled to release April 25, 2007.
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Sandra Churchin goWholesale | Product Sourcing Strategies panel
Sandra Churchin is Director of Marketing & Partnership Programs for goWholesale, the leading wholesale vertical search engine which connects retail, online, and multi-channel businesses with wholesale product suppliers. Sandra has worked extensively in search engine and interactive marketing in management and executive positions with Pennysaver, Healthy Back Stores, and World Wrestling Entertainment. Sandra holds an MBA from the University of Connecticut with a concentration in Marketing and Management of Technology and a B.S. in Engineering from Penn State University.
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Jimmy Duvall Yahoo! | Website Design & Web 2.0 panel
Jimmy Duvall is the Director, E-Commerce Products for Yahoo! Small Business (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant). Mr. Duvall joined Yahoo! in 2003 and is responsible for the development and management of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, a comprehensive ecommerce solution that enables small businesses to build, manage, and market professional online stores. Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is the ecommerce platform for 1 out of 8 online stores and enables billions of dollars in transactions annually.
Prior to Yahoo!, Mr. Duvall held Product Management positions at Good Technology, and at Homestead Technologies, where he oversaw the company's strategy to move from a free advertising-based business model to a subscription-services model. Mr. Duvall also spent six years at Lotus/IBM in various Product Marketing and technology roles.
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Adam Epstein adMarketplace | Locating New Customers panel
Adam Epstein serves as President & COO of adMarketplace, and is responsible for managing day to day business operations for the company. Adam joined adMarketplace in November 2003 as General Counsel and served as General Manager of its advertising network before being tapped as President & COO in June 2006. Prior to joining adMarketplace, Adam founded a VoIP-based media company, which was the exclusive audio conferencing provider to PlaceWare before its acquisition by Microsoft.
A licensed attorney, Adam clerked for Chief Judge Richard A. Enslen of the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, and was an associate with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP in New York. Adam graduated from Columbia University and the University of Michigan Law School.
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Sloan Gaon MIVA, Inc. | Website Design & Web 2.0 panel
Sloan Gaon is the Vice President of Global Strategy for MIVA, Inc. MIVA Media is a leading digital advertising network which connects millions of buyers with sellers. MIVA Media also facilitates ecommerce through its MIVA Merchant shopping cart software. MIVA Media is owned by MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA) which operates across North America and Europe.
Sloan joined MIVA in 2004. Previous roles at MIVA include Director of Corporate Development where Sloan was responsible for mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances.
Before joining MIVA, Sloan was Chief Operating Officer of RegistryPro, Inc., a subsidiary of Register.com (NASDAQ: RCOM), where he was responsible for launching .pro, a new Internet top level domain name exclusively for doctors, lawyers and accountants. Prior to this appointment, Sloan was Director of Business Development at Register.com and Vice President of Internet Initiatives and Associate General Counsel at TurboChef Technologies (NASDAQ: OVEN) where he was responsible for structuring global strategic alliances and joint ventures.
An alumnus of Clark University, he graduated cum laude from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1995 where he was Executive Editor of the Law Review and an Irwin Brodsky Securities Scholarship recipient.
Sloan is a volunteer for the Citi Bar of New York's Guardian Ad Litem program and serves on the Boards of Comfortshoeshop.com, Ice Cream Planet, the Berkeley Carroll School and Eastward Bound. Sloan has been featured on CNNfn, CBS MarketWatch, Reuters, TechTV, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Herald, CNet and Wired and is a frequent speaker at industry trade shows.
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Jeremy Hanks Doba | Product Sourcing panel
Jeremy Hanks is an entrepreneur and leader who has founded several successful technology companies. He is currently CEO of Doba, the leader in product sourcing services for Web retailers. Prior to co-founding Doba, Jeremy spearheaded the development of numerous businesses in the supply chain, wholesale distribution, and retail industries. He founded GearTrade.com, an online marketplace for used and distressed inventory, where he was the company's President and CEO. He led the company through a merger with e3vertical. At which time he focused on providing ecommerce and supply chain management solutions for the small business market. Jeremy is the co-author of eBay Inventory the Smart Way and of Drop Shipping for Dummies. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management from Brigham Young University and lives in Lehi with his wife Amy and two children.
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Christie Hefner Playboy Enterprises | Keynote Address
Christie Hefner has been Chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises since 1988. Under Christie's leadership, the company evolved into an international media and entertainment company.
Christie led the company onto the Internet in 1994 when Playboy became the first national magazine on the World Wide Web. Playboy.com – which is made up of original content as well as repurposed content from the magazine and television – is a multiple revenue business with ecommerce, subscriptions, advertising and online gaming, and is the company's fastest-growing profit center.
Playboy Online also operates PlayboyStore.com and ShoptheBunny.com, which sell popular Playboy-branded products. The company also has international online and mobile ventures in a number of countries.
Playboy magazine, the centerpiece of the Playboy brand, is the best-selling monthly men's magazine in the world and is published in 22 countries.
Christie has also greatly expanded the leveraging of the Playboy brand via licensing. Last year Playboy generated over $750 million in global retail sales of consumer products. The company is additionally expanding with stand-alone concept stores and opened a multi-faceted location-based entertainment venue in Las Vegas at the Palms Casino Resort in October 2006.
For her revolutionary efforts in the digital space, Christie was named to the Media Industry Newsletter's Digital Hall of Fame in 2005. Forbes magazine named Christie to its "100 Most Powerful Women in the World" list in 2005 and 2006 for overseeing the expansion of the Playboy empire beyond print and building the brand globally.
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Todd Lutwak eBay | Locating New Customers panel
Todd Lutwak is the Senior Director of Seller Development at eBay. Todd joined eBay in November, 2000 as Director of Computer categories. During his two-year tenure in this role, he helped build the credibility and business usage of these categories by focusing on securing consistent sources of quality supply by developing selling relationships with computer manufactures such as IBM, Dell, and HP.
In 2003, Todd left category management to create a Seller Development team. The Seller Development team creates and manages programs to acquire, develop, and retain business customers. Seller Development includes programs such as Seller Onramp, Seller Outreach, Seller alert, TSAM, PowerUp Quarterly, PowerSeller, and Trading Assistants.
Prior to eBay, Todd worked in management consulting with Arthur D. Little. As a Senior Manager at ADL, Todd worked on the development and execution of marketing and sales strategies for start-up telephone and Internet companies in Europe. Todd received his B.A. in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin and his M.B.A. from Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
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Tom Mersrch Depot86 | Financing Your Business panel
President and Founder of Depot86, Inc., Tom Mersch brings a proven track record managing corporate growth, strategic relationships, corporate counsel, people, projects, budgets and operations in the sales, finance, legal and information technology areas. Hired as a consultant for a large Internet retailer who needed to restructure their business, Tom navigated their operation from near collapse to solid growth. Armed with the contacts and knowledge gained from that successful assignment, Tom leveraged that experience using his own capital and resources to launch Depot86, Inc. Tom has successfully managed Depot86 from a concept into today's capabilities.
Prior to starting Depot 86, Tom was hired by a group of angel investors to be the President of WeType4u.com an Internet based business services outsourcing company with over 300 Indian employees and a USA based customer service and development team of 15. Prior to this, Tom spent 10 years founding and managing a computer software company UCS, Inc. UCS was named the fastest growing privately held company in South Florida in 1995. UCS grew from $600,000 in revenue to $16,000,000 in revenue and was eventually sold to Sungard Data Systems. Prior to UCS Tom negotiated and managed all third party contracts for the Delta Airlines Dream Vacation program.
Tom is a licensed Attorney in Florida and Mississippi. Tom earned his JD from the University of Mississippi and his BA from Southern Methodist University.
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Lisa Morgan Online Market World | Customer Lifetime Value panel
Lisa Morgan is the Senior Vice President of Programs and Education at Online Market World, and arguably wrote the first industry article about ecommerce in 1994. Since that time, she has become a recognized author, journalist, speaker, industry awards judge and executive advisor who has helped vendors, service providers, associations, and event producers shape the direction of emerging trends and technologies. Her work has spanned several industry segments including ecommerce, telecommunications, data communications, software, mobility and more.
Lisa holds a B.A. degree in Management with honors from St. Mary's College and a J.D. from Monterey College of Law. She oversees event content, speaker programs, and business development at Online Market World.
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Robert Peck Bear Stearns | Thoughts from Wall Street panel
Robert (Bob) Peck is a managing director/principle at Bear Stearns who has been covering consumer internet stocks since January 2004. Internet names that Bob follows are: eBay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, Expedia, Interactive Corp, Baidu, Liberty Interactive, VistaPrint, Sabre, and GSI Commerce. In 2006, Bob was ranked number 3 in Institutional Invenstors ranking of leading analysts after being Runner Up the year before. Prior to joining Bear Stearns, Bob was a Vice President at Lehman Brothers covering satellite communications for two years as well. Bob has been ranked No. 1 in the Wall Street Journal's "Best on the Street" survey for earnings estimates. Bob also holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, where he graduated with honors.
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Patrizio Spagnoletto Yahoo! | Locating New Customers panel
Patrizio Spagnoletto joined Yahoo! Search Marketing in early 2000, bringing over 10 years of experience in brand management, marketing and business development to his role as Director of Marketing. In his current position, he is responsible for generating awareness of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s search related products and services among small and medium-sized business segments. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Patrizio held several positions in brand management at consumer product companies Nestle and Parmalat.
Patrizio received his B.A in Economics and International Affairs from Lafayette College.
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Ralf VonSosen Infopia | Customer Lifetime Value panel
Ralf VonSosen drives the global marketing strategy for Infopia's market-leading eCommerce solutions, bringing to the company a track record of identifying and leveraging growth opportunities through new market segments, product developments and partnerships. Prior to joining Infopia, Mr. VonSosen spent nearly a decade in a number of leadership roles within the software industry to drive product growth and market awareness. Most recently, he was the vice president of solution marketing at SAP, with responsibility for the company's CRM product marketing strategy. Mr. VonSosen also previously led product marketing at Nextance, a leader in the enterprise contract management space, as well as Siebel Systems for several industry verticals, including communications, media, and energy. Mr. VonSosen holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Utah.
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Steve Woda buySAFE | Website Design & Web 2.0 panel
Steve Woda fell victim to online fraud in 1999 when he purchased a PDA that never arrived. Recognizing the need for a better trust and safety model for online shoppers, Steve turned his frustration into inspiration by developing the concept and vision for buySAFE, marking the first time surety bonds would be successfully used for ecommerce. He further developed and refined the business plan and product prototypes for buySAFE while earning his MBA at the Wharton School, where the venture became a finalist in the School's prestigious business plan competition.
As founder, chairman and senior vice president for strategy and product, Steve has been a driving force behind the company's rapid ascent, and he is responsible for leading its business intelligence, strategic planning, and product management teams. He is a recognized expert in the area of online transaction risk management and information economics, and has given speeches on the topics of ecommerce, Internet safety and entrepreneurship to numerous industry groups and educational institutions, including The Wharton School, University of Maryland, Rutgers University, and Professional eBay Sellers Alliance, among others. Additionally, he was recently appointed to the Virginia Joint Commission on Science and Technology's Cybercrimes Advisory Committee.
Prior to founding buySAFE, Steve was both a vice president of Assurance Capital Corporation and a director of the Financial Risk Solutions practice within the Rutherfoord Companies, one of the largest privately-held insurance brokerage firms in the United States. At USF&G Insurance, he managed a $1.5 billion portfolio of surety bond guarantees and built the business from $3 million to more than $12 million annual revenue in two years. Steve began his career at Travelers Property & Casualty, and also worked at PayMyBills.com, an online bill management service and idealab! company.
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