Friday, January 27, 2012
8:00 AM – 2:00 PM
Technology innovation, business model evolution and creative marketing strategies are helping e-commerce businesses build loyal customers who convert the first time, buy more and keep coming back. Join us on January 27th, 2012 at the Microsoft NERD, to learn how.
SPEAKER LIST
Tom Beecher
President & CEO, Cartera Commerce
As President and CEO, Tom brings over 20 years of experience building businesses that require both consumer marketing expertise and business services skills. Prior to joining Cartera Commerce, Tom was CEO of Imagitas, a marketing services company whose clients included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Home Depot. At Imagitas, Tom played a series of key roles in setting company strategy, managing relationships with key clients, and growing the company's core lines of business. As CFO at Imagitas, he led the $265MM sale of the company to Pitney-Bowes and subsequently became CEO. Early in his career, Tom was a consultant at Bain & Co., president and co-founder of a start-up, and a financial services product manager at Fleet Financial Group (subsequently acquired by Bank of America). He has an A.B. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.
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Billy Conway
VP GSI Global Marketing Services, GSI Commerce
Billy Conway is the VP for GSI Global Marketing Services, parent company of e-Dialog. Billy supports the strategic market position for GMS companies and ensures successful integration of digital marketing channels provided by GMS. Prior to this role, he was with e-Dialog for 6 years in various positions. Billy has an MBA from Baylor University Hankamer School of Business.
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Steve Davis
President, Rue La La
Steve Davis is the President of Rue La La, a leader in the digital private sale space with a membership base of over 3 million. Mr. Davis joined Rue La La in October of 2010.
Prior to joining Rue La La, Mr. Davis served as President, GSI Commerce International from 2007 to 2010, based in Barcelona, Spain. Mr. Davis served in various roles upon joining the founding GSI executive team in 2000, including Senior Vice President responsible for Account Management, Product Management, and Marketing. In addition to building GSI into the leader of outsourced e-commerce services, Mr. Davis developed the strategy for and launched GSI’s Marketing Services division, which is currently a Top 15 Interactive Agency as ranked by Ad Age.
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Mike Dreese
CEO, Newbury Comics & Punk.com
@mikedreese
In 1978 Mike and his M.I.T. roommate John Brusger, opened the original Newbury Comics store on Newbury Street in Boston. With $2000 and a comic book collection, they converted a studio apartment into the second organized comics book shop in the area. A year later a friend brought in his record collection to sell. Mike said, "Why don't I just throw them in the bin here? That's how Newbury Comics began selling music. Newbury quickly became the regions leading record retail specialist during the punk and new wave movement and became known as a place where the punks felt comfortable. By 1982, with a second store open in Harvard Square, the company's revenues were being generated mostly from cutting edge music and rock-related merchandise. With the advent of the CD in the mid 80's Newbury leapt into mainstream music retailing while specializing in independent rock and progressive pop music.
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Alex Finkelstein
General Partner, Spark Capital
@finkelstein1
Alex Finkelstein is a General Partner at Spark Capital and joined the firm at its inception. He has led Spark’s investments in 5min Media (acquired by AOL), 8D World, Altius Education, Linkwell, peerTransfer, OnSwipe and Wayfair. Alex focuses on working with and investing in highly passionate entrepreneurs who enjoy leaving stable jobs to build transformative companies.
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James Keller
CMO, Shoebuy.com
At Shoebuy.com, Jim is responsible for all online and offline advertising and marketing programs and partnerships. His prior career has included a variety of both business and policy roles in the technology industries and has focused on the development of products and markets in emerging online categories. In addition to his roles in the software and services industries, he was the Director of Innovation Programs at the Cambridge-MIT Institute, a joint venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University. He has also served as a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and the Associate Director of the Harvard Information Infrastructure.
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Jessica Kim
CEO and Founder, BabbaCo
@jessicanamkim
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Scott Kirsner
Innovation Economy columnist, Boston Globe & Boston.com
@ScottKirsner
Scott Kirsner was part of the team that launched Boston.com in 1995, and has been writing a column for the Globe since 2000. His work has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and Variety. Scott is also the author of the books "Fans, Friends & Followers" and "Inventing the Movies," was the editor of "The Convergence Guide: Life Sciences in New England," and was a contributor to "The Good City: Writers Explore 21st Century Boston." Scott also helps organize several local events on entrepreneurship, including the Nantucket Conference and Future Forward. Here's some background on how Scott decides what to cover, and how to pitch him a story idea.
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Dusan Koljensic
XD Director, SapientNitro
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Matt Lauzon
Founder & CEO, Gemvara
@mattlauzon
Matt Lauzon co-founded Gemvara while earning his B.S. in Business Management at Babson College. Originally a B2B platform for independent jewelers, he transformed Gemvara into what it is today after recognizing a niche in the jewelry industry at the intersection of eCommerce and mass customization. Matt's "meCommerce" vision entails combining the rational aspects of a purchase (the right product, free shipping, impressive quality, etc.) with the emotional: encapsulating the perfect memory into a physical product that is uniquely you. His path has lead him to being named to Inc. Magazine's 2011 "30 under 30" list, BusinessWeek's "Top Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 25", and the honor of being named an Entrepreneur in Residence at MIT.
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Leanne Letourneau
Client Services Manager, e-Dialog
Leanne Letourneau is a Client Services Manager at e-Dialog. In this position Leanne supports the strategy of Ralph Lauren and Bed Bath and Beyond. She is currently based in e-Dialog’s New York office. Leanne has degrees in Marketing and Merchandising from Southern New Hampshire University.
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Gary Lombardo
Multichannel & Mobile Product Marketing, Demandware
@garylombardo
Gary Lombardo manages mobile, multichannel and social commerce product marketing for Demandware. He can be found tweeting at @garylombardo and can be reached at glombardo@demandware.com
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Lelah Manz
Chief Strategist, Commerce, Akamai Technologies Inc.
Lelah Manz is the Chief Strategist of Commerce at Akamai Technologies, where she is responsible for Akamai’s global Commerce technology strategy, across both the retail and travel industries.
Prior to this role Lelah was the Director of Commerce Services, building the first Akamai services team focused on Commerce in North America. Lelah was responsible for growing a multi-functional technical team tasked with ensuring Akamai’s ecommerce clients were successfully using the Akamai platform to meet their goals of delivering a high performing, highly scalable online experience. With the acquisition of Velocitude, she was also responsible for building the services team to introduce Akamai’s new Mobile technologies to a global market.
Lelah joined Akamai in late 2005 after 8 years in the technology industry, working for companies Microsoft and Trilogy, in both the United States and Europe.
Lelah holds a BS in Management Information Systems from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
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John Marcus III
Director of eCommerce, HubSpot
@jwmarcus
John is the director of eCommerce Sales at HubSpot, where he and his team help eCommerce businesses to grow sales through Inbound Marketing. He has 8 years of eCommerce experience, through various roles in sales, marketing and application development. Now tasked with leading the free-world into the new age of Inbound Marketing, John and his team work with hundreds of eCommerce businesses as part of HubSpot's 6,000+ customer base. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan as well as the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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Sucharita Mulpuru
Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester
@smulpuru
Sucharita serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy professionals. She is a leading expert on eCommerce, multichannel retail, consumer behavior, and trends in the online shopping space. She is also a noted authority on technology developments that affect the online commerce industry and vendors that facilitate online marketing and merchandising.
In her research, Sucharita covers such consumer-oriented topics as eCommerce forecasting and trends, merchandising best practices, conversion optimization, and Social Computing in the retail world. She has also authored "The State Of Retailing Online," a joint study conducted annually with Shop.org and a leading industry benchmark publication.
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Bridget O'Brien
VP Marketing, Brand & Communications, Vistaprint
Bridget O'Brien is Vice President of Marketing Communications at Vistaprint where she is responsible for all aspects of the company's brand strategy and external communications. This includes establishing an integrated marketing strategy for the business across multiple mediums.
Prior to joining Vistaprint in 2010, Bridget was a Senior Vice President of Marketing at Fidelity Investments. While there she led the company's private equity marketing and was responsible for orchestrating strategic marketing initiatives for that area of the business.
With over 20 years of experience in marketing and communications, Bridget has held a variety of management positions with Canaccord Adams, Parametric, Waters Corporation and Lehman Millet. She has also served on the advisory boards of Terametric and Shortbord.
Bridget earned her B.S. in Advertising from the University of Texas, Austin.
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Jules Pieri
Founder & CEO, Daily Grommet
@julespieri
Jules Pieri is Founder and CEO of the online marketplace, Daily Grommet. The company’s “Citizen Commerce” platform is reshaping how consumer products get discovered, shared, and bought. Jules started her career as an industrial designer for technology companies, and was subsequently a senior executive for large brands such as Keds, Stride Rite and Playskool. Daily Grommet is her third startup, following roles as VP at Design Continuum and President of Ziggs.com. She completed her undergrad degree at the University of Michigan and people tell her she is the first designer to graduate from Harvard Business School.
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Niraj Shah
CEO, Wayfair
@nshah10
Niraj Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Wayfair, a $200M+ online retailer. Wayfair owns and operates 200 online retail stores including BedroomFurniture.com, Cookware.com, CSN Lighting and AllModern.com. Wayfair was founded in 2002, and today offers over 1,5000,000 items from over 4,000 brands, and is one of the largest online retailers of home goods in the United States. Wayfair is headquartered in the Prudential Center in downtown Boston, and has additional offices in London, Munich, and Galway, Ireland.
Prior to co-founding Wayfair, Mr. Shah was the co-founder and CEO of Simplify Mobile, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) at Greylock Partners, and the co-founder and CEO of Spinners, an IT consultancy. Spinners was sold to iXL, a publicly traded technology consulting firm with over 3,000 employees. Mr. Shah went on to become the Chief Operating Officer and member of the Board of Directors of iXL.
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Brian Tilzer
VP, E-Commerce and Business Development, Staples
Brian has nearly 20 years of e-commerce, business development and corporate strategy experience in retail and consumer businesses. He currently is responsible for Staples.com from an e-commerce and business development perspective. Specifically, Brian leads strategic and operational efforts to drive better customer experience and more growth from Staples e-commerce and mobile assets, as well as leads the development of new growth platforms.
Brian received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his undergraduate degree from Tufts University. He resides outside Boston, MA with his wife and three boys.
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Prat Vemana
Director, Mobile Strategy, Staples
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