About Your Speakers

Bridget McQueen has over fifteen years of experience in corporate communications, branding, marketing, public relations and web marketing, for both publicly traded and privately held companies. Her industry expertise includes: alternative health, consumer products, medical & healthcare, and business services. She has published articles and has spoken at industry conferences on methodologies for enhancing corporate visibility and customer loyalty. Currently driving all affiliate marketing, PR, marketing, and promotion for both Baseline Nutritionals and The Baseline of Health Foundation, she has successfully helped tripled revenues in the highly competitive natural health industry—with a limited marketing budget. Part of her success was due to applying time-tested PR and marketing tactics to the affiliate space through aggressive viral marketing and word-of-mouth (WOM) strategies.

Carl Prindle is a veteran of e-commerce’s bubble, bust and rebirth. As SVP of ProductDevelopment for the bubble version of Furniture.com, he drove online furniture sales to anannualized $84M in less than a year. In 2001, he led efforts to recreate the company, nowthe exclusive e-commerce provider to $1.7B in furniture retailers. He has received 9 U.S.Patents and is an alumnus of Stanford, MIT and McKinsey and Company.

David Witzig is currently the Senior Director of Online Marketing & Video at ShopNBC. ShopNBC is a multi-channel, direct-to-consumer retailer that sells general merchandise to consumers through television, the Internet, and direct mail. He oversees all aspects of the online marketing and video commerce (v-Commerce) strategies.

David started his career at EMI Music/Capitol Records and worked in a variety of executive positions including National Sales Director. In 1996, David started his career in e-commerce and digital media. During his four years at NetRadio. com, where he helped grow NetRadio.com into the leading Internet radio network. David also worked at Best Buy for five years developing the digital media strategy for BestBuy.com and created industry-leading merchandising programs for entertainment software products. David has been a panelist in numerous e-commerce and digital media trade conferences.

Evgenii "Geno" Prussakov is a graduate of the University of Cambridge. He is the author of "A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing" (2007), the "Online Shopping Through Consumers' Eyes" (2008), international speaker, senior editor for the affiliate marketing section of the Search Engine Marketing Journal, and regular contributor to Website Magazine, FeedFront Magazine and Econsultancy.com's blog. Geno is the founder and CEO of AM Navigator, an outsourced affiliate program management company, and he was voted the "Best OPM of the Year" for three years in a row (2006-08) by the largest online affiliate marketing community, ABestWeb.com. He is now working on his doctorate, and continues to write and pro-actively manage a number of affiliate programs.

Jack Kiefer possesses a unique combination of business and technical expertise. Aveteran of the Internet and e-commerce, he is no stranger to start-up businesses. Prior toco-founding BabyAge.com, he was responsible for building the first Fixed Income TradingIntranet for Banc of America Securities as he served as the Vice President of CorporateSecurities Trading. Preceding Banc of America, Jack Kiefer was Vice President ofTechnology for iBaby.com, the first e-commerce initiative for iVillage. Jack Kiefer designedand managed the development of the e-commerce system for iBaby, with his most notableachievements coming with the Advanced Merchandising tools as well as CompleteInventory Management. During his tenure, iBaby revenues increased from $15,000 permonth to $500,000 per month over a 6 month period. Before becoming involved with theiBaby business, Jack Kiefer managed the development of a sophisticated chat systemwhich included collaborative filtering, a recommendations system, and iVillages’ firstmember registration system.

As Director of Product Management, Jiyan drives product platform strategy and roadmap execution for PRWeb, the leading online news distribution service. In addition he supports strategic business planning, partnerships, and marketing/sales. Prior to Vocus, Jiyan served as Vice President of Online Services for v-Fluence Public Relations where he was responsible for defining and developing services to monitor and analyze online activity. He earned a BA in English from Georgetown University and Masters in Media/Communications from the London School of Economics where his dissertation focused on media production and consumption in social media communities. He currently sites on the vendor council for the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and maintains a blog, New Influencer (www.newinfluencer.com), where he writes about media and technology.

John A Ciampa is a professional Blogger, Citizen Journalist, self-taught marketing person and Eagle Scout. He is actually the perfect example of the American entrepreneur and inventor. John was a truck driver by trade who found his way out through Blogs and New Media. He was in the news as a spokesperson for a spray company, when he first learned about the Internet and got fascinated with the possibility of learning online, coaching himself and becoming the CEO of his own company. John owns more than 15 blogs about subjects like snowboarding, hunting, commercial drivers training etc.

Bloggers School is an educational source for Blogging, Social Media and Web 2.0 Technologies. Our aim is to educate entrepreneurs, traditional publicists, and business owners on marketing themselves online with strategies enhancing search engine rankings and branding their business using Social Networks.

John Reel is an Internet entrepreneur and online application developer since 1993. He is best known for his software called www.GoTryTHIS.com, which has over 2,500 users and won the Internet Marketing Product of the Year for 2006. It was initially marketed with two versions, a “white-hat” link cloaking and real-time tracking solution and a “black-hat” affiliate domination solution that also automated several new and little-known affiliate marketing techniques. John is launching a new "web 2.0" version of GoTryTHIS to help marketers increase conversions on their initial traffic and increase the number of commissionable sales, across all their web sites and online marketing, in one place.

Jon Kubo has been the Chief Information Officer for the Wet Seal, Inc since 2005. He is also responsible for the ecommerce and direct marketing efforts for the company. Before joining The Wet Seal, Mr. Kubo held the positions of Chief Administrative Officer for FAO Schwarz, Chief Information Officer for FAO, Inc, and several executive positions in the software technology industry.

Jonathan Kranz is a freelance copy writing consultant where he has written a stack of advertising, direct marketing, and public relations materials for consumer and B2B clients in financial services, banking, insurance, high-tech, healthcare, education, and other industries. His work for his clients has won him a number of honors, including the 2004 New England Direct Marketing Association's Awards for Creative Excellence “Best of Show” gold medal. He has also written columns for local newspapers and have been a guest essayist on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His radio commentaries include: Bricks and Metaphor, Signs, Some Better Ideas, Lawn Care, and Failed Artist. Jonathan has taught writing courses at Harvard University Extension School, Emerson College and Northeastern University, and he sits on the board of directors of Notre Dame High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Lee Bissonnette currently serves as Senior Vice President of the Direct to Consumer division of FAO Schwarz. There Lee oversees both web and catalog initiatives for the venerable toy seller. Prior to coming to FAO Schwarz, Lee ran the e-commerce divisions for Top 100 etailer Delia’s as well as Bloomingdales.com. Before embarking on his e-commerce career, Lee spent 15 years in offline retailing including operating his own business for many years and a Directorial role at department store retailer, Macy’s Inc.

Marwan Forzley is the founder and CEO of eBillme™, and has been the driving forcebehind the company's strategic vision and partnerships. Marwan is the creator of eBillme,the alternative payment option that enables consumers to shop online and pay throughonline banking. Marwan is an expert in alternative payments, articulating the evolvingdynamics of the industry with major publications including: Internet Retailer, Forbes,Business Week, American Banker, CNN Radio and eCommerce Times, among others.

Rohit is a founding member of the pioneering 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy, a group focused on developing social media and word of mouth marketing strategy and campaigns for clients including Intel, Unilever, Lenovo, Ford, CDC, Lance Armstrong Foundation and many others. He is author of the award winning new marketing book Personality Not Included, an entertaining and useful guide to using your personality in marketing, which is available in more than 50 countries around the world in 6 languages. For four years, he has published the Influential Marketing blog, which is currently ranked among the top 50 marketing blogs in the world and was called "intellectual and educational" by the Wall Street Journal.

He is widely recognized across the marketing industry (and on Wikipedia) for inventing the concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO) on his blog, and has been featured as an expert in global media including BusinessWeek, MarketingChina, PR Week UK, Fast Company, BusinessWorld, Le Figaro and many other publications. Rohit is a frequent industry speaker at at events around the world with recent keynote appearances in Singapore, London, Kiev, Toronto, Paris and more than dozen cities across the US in the past year.