This article is part of an ongoing series profiling participants in the PubTech Connect conference, presented on April 20, 2017 by PW and the NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Publishing.
Words like "innovation" and "disruption" get tossed around a lot these days, but what do they really mean? What practical and concrete steps can companies take to encourage new ways of thinking, new products, and new strategies? The PubTech Connect panel "The Innovators: Shaking Up The Mold and What Publishers Need To Learn" will bring together three industry leaders--George Baier IV of Dropbox, Hillary Kerr of Clique Media Group, and Joanna Lord of ClassPass--who are experts at fostering the entrepreneurial mindset, cultivating an obsessed audience, and creating new metrics for tomorrow's consumer. They'll focus on the realities of what it takes for executives and organizations to make meaningful change.
George Baier IV is Head of Media Solutions at Dropbox, the pioneering cloud storage and services company. But speaking in front of a publishing industry audience is familiar to him, a return to old haunts. Before his time at Dropbox, Baier spent a decade in the New York publishing business, including a stint at Macmillan, where he was VP of business and workflow systems. No one knows the particular challenges publishers face when trying to innovate more than he does.
Hillary Kerr, Co-Founder and Chief Ideation Officer of Clique Media Group, brought her lifelong fascination with fashion and her journalism experience together to help create Clique, the company behind the fashion site Who What Wear, as well as sites focused on home decor (Domaine) and beauty (Byrdie). Clique's three sites boast 13 million unique monthly visitors. Before co-founding Clique with Katherine Power, Kerr worked at Elle and then as an L.A.-based freelance writer for a number of magazines. As for what led her to found Clique and its sites, she told Forbes that "We wanted an incredible of-the-moment site that covered all the latest celebrity, tastemaker, and runway looks, with a great shopping element and a cool point of view, and simply didn't see one out there."
Joanna Lord currently works as the Chief Marketing Officer of ClassPass, a fitness membership startup. ClassPass is an innovative take on gym membership, allowing its users to find and attend classes at different facilities for one monthly fee. She joined ClassPass earlier this year and comes to her new role as something of a young tech veteran, having worked in marketing and strategy at a series of startups previously, including Port, Big Door, and others. She told GeekWire "I'm joining at an exciting time as we look to expand our product offerings and help everyone, everywhere live their most fulfilled life." She's helped take more than half a dozen startups to the next level, and will have plenty to share at PTC.
Fast Company staff writer J.J. McCorvey, who writes about the intersection of business and tech and has covered iconic brands and people from Amazon to Oprah, will moderate a spirited conversation between these three incredible business leaders at the PubTech Connect conference on April 20th in New York City. Learn more and buy tickets here.
