Scott Meyer is the Chief Outreach Officer at social marketing firm, 9 Clouds, Inc. 9Clouds is a social media marketing firm that connects small to mid-sized businesses to their customers with cutting-edge tools for online intelligence gathering, monitoring, strategy building, and engagement.
After Scott graduated from Luther College in 2001, he spent four years in Europe obtaining a masters degree in Peace and Conflict Transformation from the University of Tromsø, Norway, teaching English in Spain, and teaching political philosophy and methodology in Norway. While teaching he helped create an online network connecting peace researchers around the world.
Ryan McCarthy is an Associate at Ceres Hospitality, LLC. He has over ten years of experience in the hospitality industry including operations, branding, strategic planning, and real estate transactions.
Prior to his role at Ceres, McCarthy was the finance manager for startup apparel company, Hugh Simms. In this role, McCarthy created the legal, financial, and logistical structure of the company, sourced all materials and managed manufacturing and vendor relationships and handled all equity and debt accounts.
Ryan McCarthy is a graduate of Cornell University.
Bianca Jade Taxman is the Founder of MizzFIT which focuses on delivering fashionable fitness apparel and accessories.
Prior to MizzFit, Taxman worked as a creative art director for Ogilvy and Mather, Saatchi and Saatchi, Chiat Day and several other boutique ad shops.
In late 2009, along with Teen Vogue fitness editor Eva Chen, Taxman was invited by Nike to join their Global Influencer Panel and speak about the role of fitness and fashion in the lives of young women. She's also appeared on the Dr. Manny Show on Fox television as well as NBC's Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda.
Bianca Jade Taxman attended Cornell University and earned a BA in psychology.
Dan Sommer became division president of social media and marketing Services at XL Marketing after its acquisition of Caridan Marketing Labs, an interactive marketing agency that he founded in 2007.
Prior to founding Caridan Marketing Labs, Sommer served as SVP at HNW (www.hnw.com), a strategic marketing agency focused on the affluent segment. He was responsible for leading marketing engagements, and managing some of the firm's largest relationships with financial services and luxury brands. While at HNW, Sommer was instrumental in developing the firm's direct and interactive marketing practice area. Prior to HNW, Dan worked in the marketing group of Digitas Inc. (www.digitas.com) where he led interactive marketing and web development efforts for American Express. Prior to Digitas, he served as vice president at Zustek (www.Zustek.com), an interactive marketing agency, where he developed and implemented marketing strategies for Fortune 500 companies including Time Inc., Caesars Entertainment, Alliance Capital Management and a host of entrepreneurial firms.
Sommer was co-founder and COO of SimplyDone Business Solutions, an enterprise software and consulting firm that sold a unique CRM application to large service-based franchise businesses. He began his career at Sapient Corporation (www.sapient.com), a systems integrator and ecommerce consultancy.
Sommer has an MS from NYU in direct and interactive marketing and a BS in applied economics and business management from Cornell University.
Archana Shah is a senior executive director in the emerging markets derivative sales group at Morgan Stanley. She currently acts as co-chair of the New York chapter of Woman Advancing Microfinance (WAM), which is an international organization with 13 chapters worldwide, which supports gender issues and women's empowerment. Shah also supports Equity for Africa (EFA), a UK-based charity that provides capital to small business owners through lease financing in northern Tanzania, and is active within the microfinance community at Morgan Stanley.
Her interest is rooted in her diverse upbringing. She was born in Kenya to Indian parents and raised in Hong Kong and Tanzania. She moved to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a BS in finance and a B.A in French. She continued on to New York University to receive her master's in economics.
Elizabeth Francis is the Chief Marketing Officer at Intelligent Beauty Intelligent Beauty creates and operates businesses in the personal care, beauty and fashion spaces. The company believes in a better way to launch and grow businesses in the marketplace today, utilizing technology and a disciplined approach to brand building.
Elizabeth Francis has more than a decade of marketing and advertising experience, both offline and online. As CMO of Intelligent Beauty she manages the Interactive Agency, IB Interactive, supporting all divisions of IB Inc. including JustFabulous, Dermstore and SENSA. Intelligent Beauty spends over $60 million annually in advertising across all businesses. In addition to being CMO she is president of IB's newest business, JustFabulous, an online fashion company offering virtual personal styling and hand-selected fashions for customers. She is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the business, driving strategy and marketing. Prior to joining Intelligent Beauty, Francis was a vice president at Alena, a Fox Interactive company and director of marketing at LowerMyBills.com, an Experian Interactive company.
Elizabeth Francis is a graduate of Cornell University.
Not so long ago, Susan Gibbs left a career as a network news producer in New York City in search of something more authentic. A chance encounter with a book about raising sheep sealed her fate. With a great deal of hard work and a towering stack of How-to-Farm books, Susan developed a flock of Cormo sheep and a beautiful herd of angora goats. Today, Juniper Moon Farm is home to a herd of lovely angora goats, some fat, spoiled sheep, two Maremma livestock guardian dogs, and the world's first yarn CSA. In her spare time, Susan does consulting for would-be farmers and has written dozens of published articles on food and farming. But her full-time job is shepherding the flock and blogging about her experiences.
Ara Weiss is the Director of Account Planning in the Domestic Home Entertainment division of Twentieth Century Fox. He has been with the organization since 2005.
Previously, Weiss was a Manager in Finance and Planning with the Walt Disney Company. He has also held positions as a Senior Financial Analyst at Warner Brothers and as a Senior Financial Consultant with The Carson Group.
Ara Weiss received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his MBA from the University of Southern California.
Brad Treat is on the Board of Directors of Mezmeriz. He was most recently the Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Cornell University. Brad is also the co-founder and former CEO of SightSpeed, an innovative video and voice communications company. Together with co-founders Aron Rosenberg and Cornell University Professor Toby Berger, Treat grew SightSpeed from a university research project at Cornell into the world's premier video calling software. SightSpeed was acquired by Logitech for $30MM.
Earlier in his career, Treat worked for eight years in the automotive industry at Bowles Fluidics and GKN Automotive, where he was responsible for engineering, operations, and personnel management within the high precision, high volume industrial units.
Brad Treat holds a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from the Johnson School at Cornell Univesity.