Michael Walrath, SVP
Michael founded Right Media in 2003. He was CEO of the company before its acquisition by Yahoo! in July 2007.
Guiding and following through on Right Media's vision to create a more open, fair environment for online advertising, Mike helped to transform the industry and introduce a new sector: the exchange marketplace. The Right Media Exchange's 145+ members-advertisers, publishers, networks and technology providers-have an equal opportunity to connect directly to new partners, trade more efficiently and bring a new level of control to their businesses.
Mike had a successful career at DoubleClick (and later MaxWorldwide) where he was director of direct marketing and SVP of strategy and development. In 2001, he was responsible for the creation of DoubleClick Direct, the company's direct marketing offering.
Mike was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2007. He spends his non-business time enjoying his family and an occasional golf game. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Richmond.
Bill Wise, VP/General Manager, Global Exchange
As VP/general manager, Global Exchange, Bill Wise runs the Exchange business unit, which includes, among other things, strategy and operations. He ran the company's Remix division prior to Yahoo's acquisition of Right Media in 2007.
Before that, Bill Wise was CEO of Did-it, the largest independent search marketing firm, from 2005 to 2007. Under his guidance as chief executive, the company had a 3 year growth rate of 1,368.5%, which ranked them #137 in the Inc 500 of fastest growing private companies.
As SVP, Products & Strategy at Ask.com, Bill Wise was responsible for the integration and strategy of the consolidated product suite within the Ask portfolio: MaxOnline, The Excite Network, and Ask.com Search. Prior to that, Bill Wise had been CEO for MaxOnline, which Ask.com acquired through its parent company, Interactive Search Holdings, in 2004.
Bill spent five years at DoubleClick in numerous roles-from director of Financial Planning & Investor Relations, responsible for guiding Wall Street and the company's shareholders, to VP/GM of Sonar, a direct marketing media business, to VP of DoubleClick Media. He is also a certified public accountant (CPA) licensed in the state of New York.
Bill Wise sat on the Board of Directors of contextual-based marketing firm ContextWeb (from 2004-2007), and on the college social networking sites College Postings & MyBlotto.com (from 2007). A past weekly contributor to MediaPost's SearchInsider, Bill's opinions are also frequently quoted in various marketing and business publications such as Business Week, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, AdAge, AdWeek, New York Times, and DM News. He was on the client advisory board for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, the search engine marketing council board for Google, and is a board member for the DMA IMAB (Interactive Marketing Advisory Board).
Bill lives in Larchmont , New York with his wife Kelli and their children Connor, Kaitlyn and Charlotte. A sports, travel and wine enthusiast and theater-frequenter (not be mistaken for Bill Wise, the actor!), Bill best enjoys spending time on the weekends with his family.
Hillary Smith, General Counsel
As general counsel, Hillary manages Right Media's global legal affairs, a role to which she brings a wealth of both legal and industry expertise. Prior to joining Right Media, she was the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of DoubleClick Inc. She began her legal career at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison following a federal district court clerkship in the Eastern District of New York.
Hillary obtained her J.D. from Cornell Law School magna cum laude where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. A Montana native, she received her bachelor's degree in History from Montana State University. Hillary was honored in 2004 by the New York County Lawyers' Association as one of the Outstanding Woman of the Bar and has served as a member of the Federal Bar Council Inns of Court Project.
Bennie Smith, Vice President, Exchange Operations
As vice president of exchange operations, Bennie is focused on building a healthy, safe and thriving exchange environment for all participants.
Bennie was most recently the chief privacy officer at DoubleClick. He intends to leverage that, along with his background in risk management at Chubb & Son, and in marketing at American Express, to build policy and procedure around the difficult issues of trust and transparency in an interactive community.
In addition to being an industry professional committed to the health and growth of trust in the online space, Bennie currently serves on the board of directors of TRUSTe and has previously served on the Direct Marketing Associations Ethics Policy Committee.
Bennie is a graduate of Georgetown University where he received his bachelor's degree in History.
Patrick McCarthy, Senior Director, Exchange Product Strategy
Part of the Right Media team since January 2005, Patrick leads the Right Media Exchange Product Strategy team, which works to define the current functionality and future direction of the Right Media Exchange.Since the company's acquisition by Yahoo! in July 2007, he's been working on next generation advertising solutions and publisher strategy.
As a web publisher for over 12 years, Patrick has worked right alongside the growth of online advertising and web publishing, and he writes about it on his blog at ConversionRater.com.
Patrick enjoys coaching and playing basketball, wakeboarding, and spending time with his family. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon with a minor in Business Administration.
Topics:
Right Media Exchange
Direct Media Exchange
APEX
Publishers
Display Advertising
Antony Taylor, Director of Professional Services
As director of professional services for Right Media, Ant focuses on engaging branded publisher and advertiser businesses and provides managed and consulting services utilizing the Right Media technology platform. He joined Right Media in early 2006 to run the Advertiser Media Exchange (AMX), which was designed for large direct response advertisers and began by showing beta customers how the Right Media Exchange could help to redefine the economics of their business.
Prior to Right Media, Ant worked at American Express in corporate planning / finance and card servicing, helping to develop innovative card servicing and emerging market strategies and to improve the cost and quality of the global servicing business. In that net promoter / six sigma driven culture, Ant learned how a top global service brand gets built and just how valuable a winning value proposition - one that creates a ton of value for customers on both sides of the transaction - can be.
He has a B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University with a minor in varsity basketball and entrepreneurship.
Topics:
Exchange in general
Innovation in the exchange
Publisher strategies / innovations
Advertiser strategies / innovations
Yield management / ad operations
Competition
Wendi Sturgis, Client Services
As director of client services, Wendi spearheads deployment and active account management of all domestic clients on the Right Media platform.
Wendi drives the overall strategy for how we serve clients, and she has established a strategic account planning framework, which offers clients programs and resources to expand their business. Wendi is also involved in product strategy to ensure that customer feedback is incorporated into our product roadmap.
Prior to Right Media, Wendi ran the Oracle North American Commercial Consulting practice. In that role, she was responsible for the successful delivery of over $400M of consulting services a year for 500 plus clients. Prior to Oracle, Wendi held executive leadership roles at Gartner, Scient and Price Waterhouse's Media and Entertainment practice. Wendi was an early stage employee at Scient and built the New York and East Coast Operations from 50 people to over 600 in less than eighteen months. Wendi has been involved in digital media since 1992.
Wendi has a B.S. in Industrial Management and Operations Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She lives in NYC with her husband, Alex, and is a rabid college football and basketball fan.
Topics:
Exchange in general
Publisher strategies / innovations
Revenue expansion and sales enablement
Network strategies / innovations
Ramsey McGrory, VP Exchange Platform
As Vice President of Exchange Development, Ramsey leads a team that helps buyers and sellers define and implement their yield management solutions in the Right Media Exchange. He joined Right Media in 2004 to manage advertising sales.
With ten years of online media, banking and military experience, Ramsey brings a diverse background to Right Media. He's a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and the early days of the internet, and he thrives in chaotic, fast-paced environments. Before joining Right Media, Ramsey worked in media and technology sales at DoubleClick and Excite. He also spent six years at NationsBank and Citigroup in the Treasury and Derivatives Trading Groups, focused on Internet banking and credit/debt derivatives structuring. He was in the military from 1985-1993 with tours of duty in Germany and the Persian Gulf.
A native of Montana, Ramsey lives in Harlem with his wife, Courtney and two children. He enjoys fishing, golf, politics, any new gadget, and is active in the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Jericho Project. He received an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of the South and a Master's in Management from Georgia Tech.
Topics:
Online display
Co-registration/Lead Generation/Lifetime value
Yield management
Online Exchanges
Politics online
Competitive Landscape
Ad serving / Ad Operations
Advertisers / Publishers
Behavioral
Innovation in online media
Google
Where is the market going?
Denise Colella, International Operations
Denise joined Right Media in January of 2007 to develop and execute the company's international expansion strategy. Denise brings to Right Media over 12 years of product and operations experience working in the global marketing and IT industries. Denise joins Right Media from Blackfoot Inc., where she was VP of Product Operations for their multi-channel analytics platform.
Before joining Blackfoot, she was the International Technology and Operations Director for Abacus UK, a division of DoubleClick. There she was responsible for establishing the infrastructure and local operations to expand into such markets as France, Canada, Germany, Japan, and Australia. In addition to working with numerous local vendors, she also set up a central data processing center in Dublin which specialized in direct marketing data modeling and analysis.
Prior to joining Abacus, Colella, who is fluent in Japanese, spent 4 years at DoubleClick's Tokyo offices as Product Director, Asia where she was involved in developing and localizing the company's online marketing products. During her time with DoubleClick, she was also responsible for the acquisition of a Korean email software product.
Denise received a Bachelors degree in International Management from Villanova University and a Masters of Computer Systems Management from the University of Maryland. She lives in New Jersey with her husband Eoin, and enjoys scuba diving, walking her dog on the beach, and learning foreign languages.
