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KEVIN SMITH
Director, Writer, Podcaster
From Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and most recently Red State, Kevin Smith has spent nearly 20 years making filthy movies, and “eating lots of processed foods while living a sedentary lifestyle.”
Smith is also an avid podcaster through his online empire, SModcast.com. When he’s not hosting shows such as Hollywood Babble-On, Jay & Silent Bob Get Old or Fat Man on Batman, he can be found on a stage answering for his crimes. He’s also the host of several shows at his YouTube channel, YouTube.com/SeeSMod, as well as the front man and creator of SPOILERS, a movie “revue” show on Hulu.
He’s also penned three New York Times best-selling books, and a comic-book man from a young age, he’s written Green Arrow for DC Comics and Daredevil for Marvel Comics, as well as adapted his unproduced screenplays for The Green Hornet and The Bionic Man into comics series for Dynamite.
RELATED: Kevin Smith Comes Home Again With Defy Media YouTube Channel
ANDY SIGNORE
SVP Content, Defy Media & Media and Creative Head, ScreenJunkies (Home of Honest Trailers)
As SVP Content for DEFY Media, Signore leads the company’s “Creative Lab,” an in-house production team that develops original programming for the company’s digital brands, which include AWEme, ScreenJunkies, SMOSH and Break, among others. Signore also serves as creative head for ScreenJunkies, leading programming that has helped build the brand into the leading digital destination for fans of film and television, with over 5.3 million subscribers and 1.2B lifetime views and home to the wildly popular franchise Honest Trailers. Signore also led creative execution of the company’s massively successful positive prank series, Prank It FWD.
RELATED: For Defy Media’s Andy Signore, Building a Community is Building a Brand
DJ ENVY
DJ and host of Power 105’s The Breakfast Club
Mixtape legend and president and CEO of Blokmanagement, DJ Envy, a.k.a. Raashaun Casey, turned his passion for music into a career when he learned and perfected the art of mixing at high school parties. He quickly made a name for himself by premiering exclusive freestyles by hip hop artists like Jay-Z and 50 Cent in the early 2000s, and hosting several shows on Hot 97.1.
DJ Envy co-hosts the morning show The Breakfast Club, listed as the number-one urban radio show and listed on the Power 30 list by Source magazine. He also has a daily show on Sirius Satellite Radio called Hip Hop Nation where he spins the most requested songs of the nation and sits down with your favorite celebrities for on air interviews.
After hosting MTV2’s Sucker-Free Music Video Countdown, he became co-host of The Week in Jams also on MTV2. He has done countless interviews with the hottest names in the entertainment industry and has been featured in popular videos.
DJ Envy performs annually at the five-city DJ Envy Tour in Japan, and has also touched down at night clubs and events around the world, from the New York City to the Bahamas; from Greece and Australia.
KEITH CLINKSCALES
CEO, REVOLT Media
An expert on new media, lifestyle and culture, Clinkscales is the CEO of Revolt Media. He oversees an aggressive strategy to make Revolt the number one name in music by focusing on building a network that is real-time, multi-platform and fueled by artists and fans. Clinkscales led Revolt to become the third- largest independent network launch in cable television history. Emmy Award-nominated and two-time Peabody Award Winner, Clinkscale has more than 20 years of experience that includes leading Vibe Magazine to become one of the fastest-growing and most influential magazines in pop culture history, and the launch of Vanguarde Media, which became one of the most diverse minority-owned African American media organizations.
As the senior vice president at ESPN, he also executive produced films, including the award winning sports documentary series 30 for 30, launched ESPN films, managed ESPN the Magazine, and led the ESPN Books team. In 2012 he launched his own multi-platform sports news organization, formerly in partnership with ESPN, called The Shadow League.
His career exemplifies a keen understanding of the evolving media needs and interests of today’s youth consumer. Clinkscales, along with DJ Envy, will keynote the PromaxBDA session Uncontainable: MultillennialZ and the Rise of Gen Z, which explores how music is at the heart of how youth culture is blended.
KATIE COURIC
Yahoo! Global News Anchor
Katie Couric, Yahoo Global News Anchor, is an award-winning journalist and TV personality, cancer advocate, documentary film producer and New York Times best-selling author of The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives.
Couric joined Yahoo in November 2013 as the Global News Anchor, where she reports on live world events, anchors groundbreaking interviews with major newsmakers, and hosts the digital series World 3.0 and Now I Get It. Couric is the executive producer and narrator of Under the Gun, a documentary presenting a balanced look at the gun debate, released in 2016, and Fed Up, a documentary about the alarming spread of childhood obesity, released in 2014.
In September 2006, Couric became the first female solo anchor of an evening news broadcast as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Couric joined CBS News after a 15-year run as co-anchor of NBC’s Today Show.
Couric is a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) and the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance (NCCRA) with the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF). Couric is also a co-founder of the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health. SU2C has raised over $370 million to fund scientific dream teams that tackle myriad of cancers in collaborative and innovative ways.
JAMES CARVILLE
Political Consultant
James “The Ragin’ Cajun” Carville is a well-known political consultant with a knack for steering overlooked campaigns to unexpected landslide victories and for re-making political underdogs into upset winners.
He managed the 1986 victory of gubernatorial victory of Robert Casey in Pennsylvania; helped guide Wallace Wilkinson to the governor’s seat in Kentucky in 1987; helped New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg to be elected to the U.S. Senate, managed the successful 1990 gubernatorial campaign of Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller, and in 1991, Carville—who had already become prominent in political circles—drew national attention when he led Senator Harris Wofford from 40 points behind in the polls to an upset landslide victory over former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. His most prominent victory was in 1992 when he helped Bill Clinton win the presidency.
In recent years, Carville has focused on campaigns in more than 20 countries around the globe, including leading Ehud Barak to victory in his campaign to become the Prime Minister of Israel in 1999.
Carville is also a best-selling author, actor, producer, talk-show host, speaker and restaurateur. Carville can be seen on news networks worldwide. He is a columnist for The Hill newspaper which publishes daily when Congress is in session and serves as a Professor of Practice at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he lives with his wife Mary Matalin and their two daughters.
HUGH HEWITT
Author, Law Professor and Broadcast Journalist, The Hugh Hewitt Show
Hugh Hewitt is host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, on the Salem Radio Network and its affiliates. He is a Professor of Law at The Fowler School of Law at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. and a partner with the law firm Larson, O’Brien LLP in Los Angeles. Hewitt is the author of 14 books, and was a panelist on four of the GOP Republican debates in the 2016 election cycle.
During the campaign he conducted more than 175 interviews with would-be GOP nominees. Hewitt also served nearly six years in the Reagan Administration, an editorial assistant to Richard Nixon during Nixon’s retirement, and oversaw the construction of the Nixon Library from 1989-1991.
Hewitt spent a decade as a news anchor for the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles, KCET, before launching his radio show in July of 2000, and has appeared regularly on all of the networks since leaving PBS. Hewitt writes a weekly column for the Washington Examiner and daily at HughHewitt.com.
RICK KAPLAN
Chairman, Kaplan Media Partners; Former President, CNN & MSNBC
Richard Kaplan has been a broadcast journalist for more than 40 years for four major news networks, in positions ranging from field production and news coverage to senior decision-making and program creation. For more than 15 years, he has been actively involved with journalism departments at a number of leading universities, teaching, lecturing and working as a Fellow.
He now heads a consulting and production company that he founded, Kaplan Media Partners, which works with a variety of communications companies, in television networks and in digital platforms. Kaplan also works with corporations to develop media strategies to better communicate with their own employees and clients and with the business world at large.
MARGARET HEFFERNAN
Consultant
Dr. Margaret Heffernan produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years before moving to the U.S. to spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard&Poors.
She was Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the “Top 25” by Streaming Media magazine and one of the “Top 100 Media Executives” by The Hollywood Reporter.
The author of five books, Margaret’s third book, “Willful Blindness : Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril” was a finalist for the Financial Times Best Business Book Award 2011, and the book was named one of the most important business books of the last decade.
In 2015, she was awarded the Transmission Prize for A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and How We Do Better, described as “meticulously researched…engagingly written…universally relevant and hard to fault.”
Her TED talks have been seen by over four million people and through Merryck & Co., she advises CEOs and senior executives of major global organizations. Heffernan is Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme, and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath.
JOHN LANDGRAF
CEO, FX Networks and FX Productions
John Landgraf is CEO of FX Networks and FX Productions, overseeing all aspects of entertainment and business operations for FX Networks, including FX, FXM, FXX, FX Productions (FXP) and the digital video-on-demand platform, FXNOW.
Under Landgraf’s leadership, FX Networks has risen to all-time highs in ratings, revenue and acclaim. Landgraf has increased the amount of original programming six-fold, largely through the creation of FX Productions. His legacy of acclaimed and award-winning programs began with Rescue Me and continued with Damages, Sons of Anarchy, Justified and the American Horror Story franchise.
FX Productions produces FX’s acclaimed drama series The Strain; the upcoming limited series Trust; the Emmy-winning comedy series Louie, Archer, Baskets and the upcoming Better Things and Atlanta; and the FXX comedy series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, You’re the Worst and Man Seeking Woman. FXP co-produces the FX drama series The Americans, Tyrant and the upcoming Taboo; the limited series Fargo and American Crime Story; and the comedy series Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll starring Denis Leary.
DENIS LEARY
Creator/Executive Producer/Star of Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll
Denis Leary is a five-time loser at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ annual Emmy® Awards. He has lost in both the drama and comedy categories. In leading and supporting roles. Not to mention writing. Leary hopes to one day be nominated for - and more than likely not win - an Oscar®, a Grammy® and a Tony® Award. In his long and storied entertainment career, Leary has also never won The Stanley Cup, The Nobel Peace Prize or an argument with his wife.
EDUARDO RUIZ
President and General Manager, A+E Networks Latin America
Eduardo Ruiz currently serves as president and general manager of A+E Networks Latin America, a joint venture between A&E Television Networks and Ole Communications. Under Ruiz’s leadership, A+E Networks Latin America has positioned itself as a leader in the pay-TV industry. Ruiz is responsible for the continuous expansion of the business unit, development of new technologies, advertising sales, marketing and operations throughout Latin America. A+E Networks Latin America consists of a portfolio of media brands that include A&E, History, H2 and Lifetime with offices in Miami, Caracas, Mexico, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo.
Ruiz has more than 25 years of career experience in television, media and advertising in the United States and internationally. Prior to joining A+E Networks Latin America, Ruiz was president and general manager of HBO Latin America Advertising Services (HBO LAAS). A Pan Regional Advertising Sales unit representing cable TV networks throughout Latin America, including the Warner Channel, E!, A&E and History.
MICHAEL WOLFF
Journalist, Entrepreneur and Bestselling Author
Michael Wolff has chronicled the diverging paths of old and new media over the past 20 years in his regular columns in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, and British GQ. He is the author of the recently published Television Is The New Television, as well as five previous books, including the bestseller Burn Rate, the story of the rise and fall of the early search engine company he founded—often singled out as the best book of the dotcom age—and The Man Who Owns the News, the definitive biography of Rupert Murdoch, based on nine months of conversation with the mogul.
He has received many citations for his work in both the U.S. and U.K., including two National Magazine’s Award and four nominations. He is the son of an ad man and, in 2011, edited and revamped the trade magazine, Adweek, and is one of the founders of news site Newser.
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