It was a highly inspiring evening at this year’s Top Women In Media & Ad Tech awards, where we honored 127 amazing women along with our sister brand AdExchanger. Many honorees received their flowers, from those in the earlier stages of their careers to industry OG’s.
While every honoree was top-notch, there were a few that we encourage you to keep an eye out for as they are doing incredible things within media and ad tech. Don’t sleep; the future is female. (Click here to view all of this year’s Top Women In Media & Ad Tech Honorees.)
20 Top Women in Media & Ad Tech to Look Out For
CHANGEMAKERS HONOREES
1. Chira Schaad
VP & Head of Brand Engagement, L’Oreal USA
At L’Oreal, Chira focuses on enhancing creative intelligence in global teams. Being an immigrant from Romania granted her a different kind of drive and motivation; from an early age, she was destined to make an enormous impact. In a recent video with VidMob, she mentioned that math was the only language she knew when moving to the United States. Still, she ironically majored in Art History in college. She is now using both her knowledge of numbers and creativity to do great things. She is currently teaching her team at L’Oreal how to nail the creative aspect of brand and platform best practices to measure effectiveness against their established KPIs. She recently chatted with VidMob and highlighted how she approached the marketing and creative process with data and how she is transforming decision-making at L’Oreal.
2. Morgan Martins
Head of Marketing, Confiant
With over 20 years of marketing experience, Morgan provides innovative, integrative marketing programs for start-ups and global projects in B2B, Ad Tech, SaaS, Real Estate, Legal, and Higher Education that build brand share, revenue, growth, and customer retention. Morgan’s expertise in strategic marketing, PR, Social Media campaigns, cultural communications, marketing ops, sales enablement, and training are crucial to driving awareness, engagement, and customer journeys resulting in conversion. At Confiant alone, Morgan has increased year-over-year growth and landed them press coverage in print and broadcast outlets globally.
3. Sheila Marmon
CEO, Mirror Digital
Sheila is a star in her own right who is very passionate about working on the launch and operations of new digital media businesses. For the past 20 years, she has established innovative platforms while in leadership roles in strategy, operations, new ventures, and finance at Warner Media, Morgan Stanley, Mercer Management Consulting, and Essence Communications. As the founder and CEO of Mirror Digital, a media and advertising company, she aids Fortune 500 brands in reaching their fastest-growing U.S. consumer base – the multicultural market. Sheila is doing big things and has fully executed over 550 digital campaigns for clients like AT&T, Clinique, Disney, Ford, General Motors, Intel, IPG Group, Macy’s, Netflix, Omnicom, Procter & Gamble, Universal Pictures, WPP, and other leading brands and advertising agencies.
4. Elizabeth Herbst-Brady
Head of Global Revenue & Client Solutions, Yahoo
Elizabeth’s extensive track record makes her a change maker, and she continues to pave the way in marketing, sales, management, and media. She is a boss with over 30 years of experience who has seamlessly achieved company goals while driving transformation across multiple functions and teams. At Yahoo, she oversees the global sales and business development team of 1700, and before that, she led the North American sales and international operations, teams. She has established many global relationships throughout her career, allowing her to deliver cohesive strategies and execution for worldwide demand and supply clients and partners. This Top Woman is an inspiration to many.
5. Tiffany Ashitey
Director of Creator Network, US, Acast
Tiffany made her mark on the industry when she founded and ran ESSENCE Podcast Network, the first-ever podcast network in the brand’s history, and she’s only ratcheting things up from there. Currently, she is the U.S. Director of Creator Network at Acast, the world’s leading independent podcast company that hosts, distributes, and monetizes over 40,000 podcasts. She oversees domestic podcast acquisition, partnership management, and growth. Tiffany is also a three-time Webby Award-nominated Executive Producer with over a decade of experience leading, executing, and managing audio storytelling, video production, digital, and podcast production projects.
CONTENT CAPTIVATORS HONOREES
6. Jenny Guy
VP, Marketing & Communications, Mediavine
Jenny is a top-rated conference speaker, leader, innovator, and creative thinker. She has done great things in influencer marketing, affiliate programs, corporate branding, and product marketing throughout her career. Currently, Jenny leads all marketing initiatives for Mediavine and is the host of the company’s Teal Talk, Summer of Live, and Mediavine On Air. Tune into one of her podcasting episodes here.
7. Tracy Connor
Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Beast
Tracy Connor is an award-winning journalist who has the content thing down to a science. Before being appointed Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Beast in August of 2021, she served as the Executive Editor for three years. Her career began at The Daily Beast in 2018, bringing with her an extensive career from NBC News, where Tracy reported for the website before joining the investigative unit. In her past life, she also worked for New York Daily News, the New York Post, and United Press International. She has won numerous awards over her decades as a journalist, including a Deadline Club award, a Gracie award, and four Emmy nominations.
DATA DEMYSTIFIERS HONOREES
8. Anastasia Dukes-Asuen
Sr. Director, Advanced TV Data & Insights, Ampersand
Anastasia is a leader and innovative collaborator who works hand-in-hand with Ampersand’s National Sales and Product teams to ensure the proper execution of addressable campaigns and alignment with advertisers’ needs. She leads the data and insights team for the company’s national addressable clients while managing unique data partnerships and viewing insights into STB data from over 40MM households. She does all of this while also being a wife and a mother of two.
9. Jasmine Jia
Associate Director, Data Science, Blockthrough
Jasmine hit the ground running at Blockthrough when she designed and launched an algorithm to analyze what causes unfiltered inventory within their network and instilled action items with a forecasted revenue impact of +$3M/year for pubs. Every day at Blockthrough, she works on building the company’s data science practice from the grassroots. Her day-to-day consists of mining Blockthrough’s massive dataset of auctions and creative content to discover insights that can help enhance technology, reduce redundancy, and spot hidden revenue opportunities.
10. Dr. Yana Volkovich
Director, Data Science, Xandr
Dr. Volkovich just happens to be the only woman on this list with a Ph.D. She has been a data science leader and subject matter expert in machine learning, graph theory, computation science, and heavy-tailed distribution for over 15 years. Throughout the last seven years, she collaborated with executives to administer a surplus of strategic corporate initiatives in digital advertising. At Xandr, her role consists primarily of leading identity workstreams.
11. Sheila Colclasure
Global Chief Digital Responsibility & Public Policy Officer, Interpublic Group
This photo is giving Sheila for President, and so is her career background. She was previously the Axiom global chief data Ethics officer and public policy executive, manager of Congressional and Political Affairs for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Washington, D.C., and staff assistant in the U.S. Senate. Sheila is the definition of a Wonder Woman and a known global leader in applied data ethics, accountable data governance, and human-centered digital responsibility. She is on the advisory board for the Information Accountability Foundation and a corporate liaison to many industry standards-setting groups. Sheila is often called on by policymakers, regulators, and government agencies for her insights on data integrity. Her impressive background and phenomenal work have earned her recognition by Chief Security Officers as one of the “12 amazing women in security” in 2017.
DEI CHAMPIONS HONOREES
12. Femi Olu-Lafe
SVP of Global Culture and Inclusion, Kinesso (an IPG company)
Femi leads the DEI strategies for Kinesso and its sister IPG agencies, Acxiom and Matterkind. In her role, she extends the impact of already instilled DEI efforts, identifies opportunities for new programs, and champions the company’s focus on ensuring that all data and technology products are inclusive and respectable. She is passionate about ensuring all employees have impactful ways to engage, so they can continue co-creating the diverse and inclusive culture at the heart of each company’s values.
13. Imani Laners
VP of Partnership & Multicultural, Zeta
Imani has been pushing the multicultural needle for over 13 years and is Zeta Global’s new Vice President of Multicultural Sales. She gladly champions multicultural consumers and digital media solutions to leading international brands like BMW, Emirates Airlines, Amtrak, British Petroleum, FIAT, IKEA, U.S. Department of State, Moet Hennessy, Ford, and Chrysler, to name a few.
ENTREPRENEUR HONOREE
14. Shachar Orren
Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, EX.CO
Shachar Orren is a thought leader in the video industry, sharing her expertise with emerging professionals and industry experts alike. Her company, EX.CO is a globally in charge content experience platform with significant investors’ support, and The Walt Disney Company is one of them. EX.CO is behind billions of personalized interactions around the web, and Shachar has been a huge part of EX.CO’s rebranding efforts. At EX.CO, she manages an international team of marketing experts who are responsible for sharing EX.CO’s story with precision, consistency, and long-term impact.
MAGNANIMOUS MENTORS
15. Kate Spellman
CMO, Questex
Kate is a well-accomplished industry leader with a concrete track record in launching and driving rapid growth in revenue within information service businesses. Throughout her achievements, she brings a unique balance of strategic vision and precision, and her collaborative style allows for traction through partners and acquisition. Kate positively influences her colleagues and is known to pay it forward and help other emerging professionals in her line of sight. She is usually looked to for insight as she knows a surplus about the rapidly evolving ecosystem of technology, events, and practical applications in the marketing services arena.
PROGRAMMATIC STORYTELLERS HONOREES
16. Erin Madorsky
Chief Strategy Officer & Managing Director MiQ
Erin is an industry veteran known for her passion, drive, integrity, and deep knowledge of the ad tech sector. She has delivered unwavering business results on behalf of several industry organizations and is currently the CSO at MiQ, a global programmatic activation partner to brands and agencies. She is an established and trusted leader in the ad tech space. She has expertise in building and executing effective strategies for revenue growth, territory management, and team leadership in emerging and high-growth digital ad tech and media markets. Before joining the MiQ team, Erin was the Chief Revenue Officer for mobile technology company Verve and was previously SVP of Sales for Viant Inc.
17. Christine Jennings
VP of Product Marketing, The Trade Desk
Christine Jennings has quite an impressive resume. At The Trade Desk, Christine oversees all aspects of the company’s internal and external marketing operations, supporting all customer success and content strategy programs. Before joining The Trade Desk, she was the Senior Director of Marketing & Campaigns for Sales Cloud at Salesforce. And before that, the Director of Product Marketing. She joined Salesforce after spending nine years at Adobe, starting as a Campaign Marketing Manager and working her way up to Senior Content and Social Strategist for Creative Cloud.
TECH TRAILBLAZER HONOREES
18. Gabriela Maestre
VP, Creative Solutions, Tremor International
As VP of Global Creative Solutions at Tr.ly — Tremor International’s in-house Creative Studio — Gabby is responsible for developing full-funnel video solutions that empower markets to scale their message to the right audience at the right time. She has over 15 years of experience working in broadcast, and digital solutions across multiple industries, always focused on the details surrounding storytelling for different screens and audiences. She is usually the non-traditional voice “in the room where it happens,” frequently collaborating with C-Suite executive leaders in new business pitches and client consultations as creative cross-screen optimization is key to brands’ campaign strategies.
19. Linda Payson
VP of Product, Mediavine
Currently leading Mediavine’s Product and UX teams, Linda has been in the game for a long time with over 20 years of ad tech experience. She focuses on building the company’s overall product strategy and scaling operational practices. She also has a seat at the prebid table, where she contributes to the org’s message of making the web experience better for advertisers, publishers, and consumers as the future of media continues to elevate.
20. Heather Petty
Manager, Client Services + Strategy, January Digital
Digital media is Heather’s firstborn child. She is driven by the desire to learn about digital marketing, content creation, and campaign strategy. Having graduated from Penn State in 2020, she has risen twice at January Digital, where she is currently a Client Strategy & Service Manager. In 2021, she received the January Digital’s peer-nominated 2021 Founder Award and remains an integral member of the agency.
To view all of this year’s Top Women In Media & Ad Tech Honorees click here