Aaron is a seasoned marketing, communications and sales executive with close to twenty years of experience working with some of the best and largest brands in the world. Earls helped pioneer the social media marketing and measurement industry as Co-Founder of New Media Strategies (NMS), growing NMS to one of the largest social media agencies in the world. NMS was the first social media company to be acquired in the industry, and was purchased by Meredith Corporation (NYSE: MDP).

Aaron oversaw business development efforts leading to extraordinary growth with NMS being awarded INC 500 status three years in a row, a prestigious award given to companies with exceptional year over year growth. Earls built a blue-chip client base that featured some of the world’s leading brands and corporations including ABC, Citigroup, Chrysler, Disney, Dodge, Energizer, Ford, Fox, Jeep, HBO, Lifetime, McDonald’s, Nestle, Paramount Pictures, Procter & Gamble, RCA Records, Red Bull, Subway, Syfy, Sony, Telemundo, USA Network, and Weinstein and Co, as well as strategic partnerships with some of the largest media and advertising agencies.

Prior to NMS, Earls served as a political appointee of the Clinton Administration in the Office of the Secretary of Defense earning the prestigious Secretary of Defense “Award for Outstanding Achievement.” He was involved in the Clinton-Gore 1996 re-election campaign and has extensive political experience. Aaron is a graduate of Hamilton College and lives in New York City with his wife Franceska, and sons Augustin and Andre.

Rudy J. Baldoni is Chairman and CEO of Newport Investment Associates an Irvine, California based Investment Company. Newport Investment Associates invests in distressed real estate assets throughout the United States and provides early stage investment capital to companies in the technology space. Rudy is Founder and CEO of NIAX.com, a national on-line real estate asset exchange and currently has three patents pending. He is also Chairman of MortgageDocs.com, one of the nation’s largest national signing services companies.

During his career, Mr. Baldoni has been involved in over $2 billion of real estate transactions and investments and has directed the successful execution of several joint ventures including the acquisition and liquidation of $750 million of non-performing loans from the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi secured by real estate located in Tokyo. Prior to forming Newport Investment Associates, he served in various capacities within the Arnel & Affiliates organization, which is owned by former United States Ambassador to Spain and Andorra, George Argyros. During his tenure, Mr. Baldoni was responsible for day-to-day management of company operations, which included asset acquisition and disposition, project planning, real estate development and investments, risk management, legal matters, as well as financing and lender relations. He was also a co-investor in several private equity investments with Westar Capital, Arnel & Affiliates private equity arm. Prior to joining Arnel, Mr. Baldoni was a commercial real estate banker with Security Pacific National Bank and Bank of America in Orange County, California. Mr. Baldoni managed a loan portfolio of over $1 billion with clients ranging from major residential builders to large commercial developers.

Barry Appelman is recognized as being the father of the “buddy list” and AOL instant
messenger. Companies had been using crude forms of Instant messaging within their own
networks for over forty years, but the idea of presence, i.e. who is logged on at any given time,
was non existent. It was not until Appelman, and his colleagues at the Thomas Watson Research
Center, first began to write programs on the mainframe system letting each other know when they
were actually online, that modern day Instant Messaging was born.

Appelman joined AOL in 1993 to head up all of AOL server and host development efforts. He
authored many innovations and patents: an instant messaging system, a highly scalable email
system, ad servers, TCP/IP enabled browsers, among many others. Barry Appelman and his
former colleagues from T.J. Watson Matt Korn and Mike Conners who also came to AOL,
were crucial to taking AOL from a distant third position in online services to that of a formidable
leadership – all within 2-3 years.

Barry Appelman authored 77 patents, and now angel invests in the technology space.

Adam is a serial entrepreneur and interactive product manager with a lifelong passion for technology, new media, multi-player games and pop culture. Currently, Adam is an active advisor and angel investor, and consults with a variety of start-ups and established businesses on everything from creating simple online community experiences and establishing viral growth to building teams and refining revenue models. Previously, Adam was the co-founder, CEO and Chief Product Officer of the website Fotolog.com, an online community for posting daily photos that started as a hobby in 2002 and has since virally blossomed into a community of over 20 million members who have shared more than 1 billion photos. Fotolog was sold to Hi-Media, a French media company in November of 2007 for over $90 million

In 1996, Adam joined a small group of entrepreneurs to launch sixdegrees.com, an online community based around a suite of unique social-networking applications that identified and utilized real-life connections among its members. On January of 2000, sixdegrees was sold to Youthstream Media Networks for $125 million.

Before entering the world of new media, Adam spent many successful years in the advertising business as a senior copywriter at agencies like Citron, Haligman, Bedecarre (now AKQA), Lowe and Partners, and Scali, McCabe, Sloves. Adam created memorable campaigns for clients ranging from Mercedes-Benz to Sprite, Perdue Chicken and Marriott Hotels.

Adam graduated from Brown University with BA in Visual Arts. He has also studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York.

John Loeffler has been a major force in television, advertising and music for over thirty years. Honored several times by ASCAP as one of television’s “Top 10 Most Listened to Composers”, he has made his reputation with his distinctive melodies and catchy phrases.
The last few years have been active for Loeffler in film and television. After composing and producing the Sports Emmy-nominated soundtrack for the Paramount / CMT film, “Dale” – the Dale Earnhardt Story and the soundtrack for HBO’s Emmy Award-winning documentary, “Montana Meth”, he completed the score for “The Ride Of Their Lives”, a new film on the history of Nascar (Showtime/CMT).

In children’s music, he continues to create all the Pokemon music for the cartoon series (over 655 shows) and the very popular “Kidz Bop” albums (15 albums), which have sold millions of copies over the last 10 years. His album, “ 2B a Master” ( Koch) sold over 3.5 million units. John has also spent over 25 years creating music for commercial soundtracks. He launched many recognizable campaigns, including Domino’s Pizza – “Gotta Be Dominos!”, “I Love Eggs”, Jif Peanut Butter, and other campaigns for Coca-Cola, Avon, Windex, American Airlines, Red Lobster and Ford.

John has recently entered into a relationship with BMG Music publishing to create and develop a music label of new, undiscovered writer / artists for soundtracks and licensing. In partnership with Broadway Video Entertainment, he is currently attached as a co-producer on two television pilots with VH1 and MTV. John’s music production company, Rave Music, is currently located in New York City, where he has several other composers and editors on staff.

He graduated from Williams College, cum laude, and has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Psychology. He currently lives in New York City and Sagaponack, New York, with his wife Debbie, and his two children, Lucas and Kylie.

Brendan Burns has spent over 20 years at leading technology and financial institutions
including Moody’s Investors Service, Salomon Brothers, Vigilar and AdOne, an Internet
software pioneer.

Currently Burns is a Managing Director of Stepping Stone Capital Partners, LLC. SSCP is a
growth-stage focused advisory and merchant banking firm. The firm specializes in early and
growth stage capital raising, M&A and turnarounds. Primary recent assignments include the
turnaround and sale of Vigilar, an information security company where SSCP drove balance
sheet restructuring, multiple capital raises and a sale in 2.5 years resulting in a 5x increase in
enterprise value.

Prior to Vigilar, Burns spent two years as the CEO and Publisher of Empire Information
Services (now readMedia), the leading regional press release distribution company and
publisher of political information in the Northeast. Burns led a financial and strategic
repositioning of EIS that impacted all areas of its business including marketing, branding,product and corporate structure.

Jimmy Lynn is the managing partner of JLynn Associates, a global strategic advisory firm focused on sports-related media, marketing, and retail for a diverse set of clients including teams, athletes, leagues and associations, media outlets and other businesses.

Prior to founding JLynn Associates, Lynn served as Vice-President, Strategic Development and Partnerships at AOL, where he and his team were responsible for the strategic development and account management of AOL Sports’ strategic partnerships and organizations including the NFL, NBA, NASCAR, MLB, WNBA, NHL, PGA Tour, ABC Sports, CBS Sports, HBO Sports, Sports Illustrated, Turner Sports, NFL Players Association, WWF, The Sporting News, STATS, SportsTicker, etc. During his 14-year career at AOL, he was also instrumental in developing AOL Sports into one of the leading global sports destination internet sites.

Lynn is a full-time faculty member of Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management graduate program, where he serves as the “Visiting Professional in the Practice of Sports Industry Management.” Lynn received the “Dean’s Outstanding Service” award in 2010. He’s also a member of the Adjunct Faculty in Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He has a B.A. in Public Communication and an M.B.A. in Marketing from American University.

In 2007, Clayton De­Giacinto, felt ready to strike out on his own after running the proprietary trading desks for adjustable-rate mortgages and residential credits at Goldman, Sachs & Co. for five years. As the global financial crisis mounted, however, two of his original backers for a hedge fund changed their minds, so DeGiacinto opted instead to join Tower Research Capital, a New York–based quantitative proprietary trading firm, as head of its new structured-products business.

After earning returns of 55 percent in 2009 and 26 percent in 2010 at Tower, DeGiacinto left to start his own firm, Axonic Capital. He launched the Axonic Credit Opportunities Fund with $110 million on January 1. Today it has more than $350 million. The West Point graduate was an airborne ranger in the U.S. Army before earning his MBA from Wharton.

Ari started his first tech company at 12 years old and two more before graduating high school. After attending the Wharton School of Business as an undergrad, Ari went into construction, developing a row of old buildings in upstate New York. After creating a new loft district there, he came back home and started working in sustainable design. After developing several properties in New York City and the Hamptons, Ari published “LEED Materials: A Resource Guide to Green Building” and invented a material called PapierTile. In 2006, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s is an incurable disease of the digestive tract. His case was severe, and required over a dozen daily medications and several hospital visits. After reaching a personal low point in hospital, he decided he would do everything in his power to strengthen his by then weak body. Through a combination of yoga, nutrition, natural supplements and rigorous exercise (Ironman and Crossfit) Ari was able to fight back the symptoms of Crohn’s until he was finally able to suspend medication. Eventually he was declared free of all traces of the ‘incurable’ disease, and competed in Ironman France in June of 2011. He has since spoken at seminars and at a regional TED Talk about his struggle against a seemingly insurmountable opponent. Through the process of data collection, self tracking, and analysis, he helped develop Less Doing. This was a way of dealing with the daily stresses of life by optimizing, automating, and outsourcing all of my tasks in life and business. Now Ari focus on Achievement Architecture, helping individuals be more effective at everything.