Board of Advisors
Dr. Naveen Agnihotri
Naveen is a Founder and CTO of Sobayli, a leader in the development of pattern recognition technology. As a neuroscientist and a computer scientist, Naveen has researched, developed, and perfected novel neural network algorithms. Naveen applies his technical wisdom to every aspect of Sobayli’s software development process.
Naveen trained as a computer engineer in India, and got an MS in Biological Engineering at University of Georgia. He then went on to do a PhD in neuroscience at Columbia University, working with Nobel laureate Eric Kandel to discern how brain networks process and store information. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at computational neuroscience laboratory at MIT where he studied how neurons talk to one another and create new networks. Naveen has published in leading journals in neuroscience as well as computer science and mathematics.
Merrill Brown
Merrill is the founder and principal of MMB Media LLC, which provides clients with management and strategy consulting, corporate, editorial and program development, business analysis and marketing services. Since the founding of MMB Media, clients have ranged from companies in the news, information and wireless businesses to a large foundation. Brown serves as Chairman of the Board of NowPublic.com, the leading citizen journalism company in the world.
Before establishing MMB Media, Merrill served as Senior Vice President, RealNetworks’ RealOne Services from August 2002 through August 2003 and was responsible for all facets of the RealOne programming business including programming, subscription sales, marketing, advertising sales and technology. During his tenure, RealOne expanded subscription-programming offerings in news, sports, entertainment and music and grew from 750,000 paid subscribers to over 1,000,000.
Merrill became the first Editor in Chief of MSNBC.com in August 1996 after serving as acting managing editor for the July launch of the service. He became Senior Vice President in August 2000. During his tenure, the company grew to become one of the most visited news offerings on the Web, maintaining a position as the No. 1 online news provider since 1999.
Merrill was one of the initial strategists responsible for creating the Courtroom Television Network (Court TV). As a founder of the cable network, Merrill worked on all facets of the network’s operation leading up to its July 1991 launch. As senior vice president, corporate & program development, he oversaw program planning, advertising, promotion, marketing, public relations and development of day-to-day management of the cable network. [ back to top ]
Alan Chapell
Alan founded the privacy program at Jupiter Research, an Internet research firm focusing on the consumer Internet economy. During his 4-1/2 years at Jupiter, Alan also directed Jupiter’s marketing, sales and compliance operations.
After Jupiter, Alan helped productize DoubleClick’s research product suite. He focused on DoubleClick’s Advertising Effectiveness products, which measured the brand impact of online advertising. Alan is widely recognized as a thought leader on issues of privacy, consumer perception and interactive marketing. He is a regular contributor to the iMedia Connection, the DMNews and the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Privacy Officer. He is a member of the New York State Bar Association’s International Privacy Law Subcommittee, a faculty member at Data University, a research fellow on the Ponemon Institute’s Responsible Information Management Council, and is the New York Chapter Chairman of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Alan is certified by the IAPP as an information privacy professional. [ back to top ]
James (Jamie) A. Crouthamel
Jamie is the Principal of Old Town Capital, LLC where he is an operating investor in early-stage interactive marketing service and technology companies. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the publicly traded Internet media firm ValueClick (NASDAQ:VCLK).
In 1998 Jamie founded Performics, Inc. serving as the company’s Chief Executive Officer from inception through its acquisition by Doubleclick, Inc. in June 2004. Performics was ranked first in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 program for Illinois in 2004. Jamie was awarded Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Information Technology in Illinois in 2004 and was named to Crain’s Chicago ‘40 Under 40’ list. He has also been named one of the “Top 100” most influential people in technology in the Midwest and has been named to the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, presented by the University of Illinois Chicago. [ back to top ]
Brian O’Kelley
Brian O’Kelley has been an active entrepreneur and technologist since 1995. During college, he started his first Internet company, building an open-source e-commerce engine that was used by more than 100 companies. After graduating from Princeton in 1999, he was CEO of Netamorphosis, an early social networking and e-commerce site for events and venues.
Brian was an executive at LogicSpan, the general manager of Cetova, and briefly worked for Poindexter Systems before joining Right Media in 2003. As CTO of Right Media, Brian invented, developed, and launched the Right Media Exchange. Leading a team of more than 100 people, Brian scaled the platform to more than 4 billion impressions a day, managing more than $250MM in exchange-wide revenue. In 2006, Brian led the Yahoo pilot of the Right Media technology and was instrumental in their subsequent investment and acquisition of the company.
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Dr. Joseph Plummer
Prior to joining Columbia University’s School of Business as a Professor of Marketing, Joe was Executive Vice President, Director of Research & Insight Development for McCann-Erickson WorldGroup and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Before this, he was Director of Brand Strategy on Global Accounts for McCann-Erickson WorldGroup. His responsibilities included helping global clients develop brand vision and values, creating growth strategies for the future and developing communication strategies to build brand equity. Prior to joining McCann-Erickson in 1997, Joe was Vice Chairman and Worldwide Planning Director at DMB&B advertising and a member of the DMB&B Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. Earlier, from 1995-1997, he was Vice Chairman of ASW, a worldwide research firm, and a Board Director of the firm from 1995-1999. Joe served as Managing Director of Paine Webber/Young & Rubicam Ventures, a marketing and consumer-driven investment bank from 1986 to 1989. Prior to that, he was Worldwide Research Director of Young & Rubicam, Inc. His research has appeared in numerous publications including The Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing and Journal of Marketing Research. [ back to top ]
Foster Provost, PhD
Foster is an Associate Professor, NEC Faculty Fellow, and Paduano Fellow of Business Ethics at NYU’s Stern School of Business. His research and teaching focuses on data mining, machine learning, and social-network marketing. Foster is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Machine Learning. He was elected as a founding board member of the International Machine Learning Society, and he co-chaired the program of the premier data mining conference in 2001. He has won IBM Faculty Awards for outstanding research in data mining and machine learning, and awards in the ACM’s KDDCUP data mining competition. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Machine Learning Research and the journal Data Mining and Knowledge Discover, and his special issue of the journal Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, on eCommerce and Data Mining is available as a book. Foster advises the U.S. Government (National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, NASA, DARPA, National Research Council, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) on policy and investments in data mining research. He has written over 100 technical papers and tutorials, and has applied machine learning technologies to a variety of business problems, including fraud detection, targeted marketing, and customer contact management. [ back to top ]
