DMEF Rising Stars' Biographies

and Corporate Commitment Winner Description

Janet Barker-Evans

As senior vice president, group creative director at Draftfcb Chicago, Janet oversees creative work on core accounts that cross various marketing services including advertising, promotion, direct and digital. Her clients have included Masterfoods, ConAgra, P&G, CVS, Folgers, Bank of America, MilkPEP, GSK, and Kmart.

With a background that includes general advertising, direct marketing, promotional marketing and digital marketing, Janet brings a unique blend of disciplines that helps her create and provide direction to multidimensional efforts for all Draft clients. Considered a digital pioneer, she made online/offline programs a reality for many of Draft’s clients in the early days of the web and has continued to do so as the digital world expands.

She and her teams are recipients of dozens of creative awards including Reggies, Golden Eagles, ECHOs, Tempos, PRO Awards, APMA Globes and John Caples awards. In addition, Janet has and continues to serve as a respected judge at numerous industry forums and award shows.

An active member of WDMI since 1995, Janet is a past president of the organization. She was named the Woman of the Year by WDMI in 2006. She is also an active member of the Chicago Advertising Federation and the Promotional Marketing Association and is a frequent speaker at industry meetings and conferences.

A member of the board of advisors of Little City Foundation, Janet has for several years led Draftfcb’s ongoing pro bono work on behalf of this non-profit organization dedicated to serving the needs of adults and children with developmental disabilities. She also oversees creative on other pro bono efforts at Draft.

Janet has taught classes in advertising strategy and Internet marketing as an adjunct professor at Governors State University and she has been responsible both for mentoring future direct marketers and for administering extern and internship programs, while developing courses in direct and digital marketing.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and a master’s degree in media communications from Governors State University.

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Todd Leiser

Todd Leiser, brings over 17 years of professional experience in direct response strategies and database marketing to his role as vice president of database marketing, Rodale Direct, Rodale’s direct-to-consumer business unit.

In this position, Todd oversees all of the company’s database marketing and customer analytics activities, including the design and implementation of database-driven marketing solutions and the management of Rodale’s extensive consumer database. He leads a team of statisticians and database marketers to understand and predict direct consumer behavior across all Rodale brands. He also works in conjunction with other Rodale business units to support direct response and customer relationship management activities in all channels, including direct marketing, e-mail, print, and alternative media. Finally, Leiser manages Rodale’s international direct response business in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Todd continues to support the DMA. For the past four years, he has served on the DMA Ethics Policy Committee and was the committee’s 2007 Chairperson. He has presented at industry conferences including the DMA, NCDM, CircDays, and SIPA. He also presented case studies at several Acxiom client conferences and sales rallies in Melbourne, Australia, Long Beach, CA, and Little Rock, AR. Todd is the Rodale privacy policy advocate and has sponsored and organized the Rodale Database Marketing Symposium (a gathering of database marketing practitioners from the media/publishing industry) for the past seven years, most recently hosting the Fall 2007 symposium.

Prior to joining Rodale in 1996, he held similar positions in the financial service sector with The Prudential Insurance Company.

Leiser graduated from Penn State University in 1991 with an honors degree in quantitative business analysis.

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Joseph Pak

Joseph Pak joined Google in 2003, and as sales operations senior analyst, is responsible for ensuring that the company's products are successfully sold in the marketplace. From 2003 to 2005 he was based in New York and played a key role in positioning Google's products for technology and telecom companies, including Dell, Apple, Verizon, Comcast, Vonage, Cingular, and Samsung. He then transferred to London to build the sales operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Currently, he is helping to lay the foundation for Google China's operations.

Prior to joining Google, he was a project manager at EarlyBirdCapital and a marketing associate at Community Connect, where he held product management and marketing positions. In those roles, his responsibilities ranged from analyzing technology companies to managing partnerships with over 50 university organizations.

Joseph received a master's degree in direct and interactive marketing from NYU, and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, San Diego.

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Joseph Pych

Joseph Pych is the founder and president of NextMark, Inc. Joe started the company back in 1999 with the vision of streamlining the direct marketing process and, in particular, the mailing list procurement process. He's quite proud of the NextMark team's success in realizing this vision with the delivery of a number of innovative products and services that have helped thousands of companies to successfully reach their markets. Joe is responsible for the overall direction of the company. However, as a techie by nature, he can't help but get involved with the details of software development and is the inventor for two of NextMark's patents.

Under Joe’s leadership, NextMark has delivered a number of innovations, yet to be imitated, including: being the first to apply modern search technologies to the problem of finding mailing lists, the first to syndicate access to mailing list information through websites such as Direct Magazine, MultiChannel Merchant, and the Direct Marketing Association, as well as building the biggest and most up-to-date index of mailing lists in the world.

Joe has more than 20 years experience delivering software solutions. Prior to Exchange Applications, Joe managed various business initiatives at The Travelers. In addition to delivering large-scale marketing databases for Fortune 500 clients, he developed a patent-pending system for implied response attribution -- a process now commonly known as "match back." Prior to Exchange Applications, as one of the first employees of Exchange Applications (sold to Amdocs), Joe managed various business initiatives at The Travelers. His key innovations include two mobile computing platforms and a single, countrywide 800-number for claim reporting (1-800-CLAIM-33). Joe also co-founded a startup subsidiary, Precision Damage Control Services, where he served as the director of technology and finance.

Joe, an active contributor to the direct marketing industry, is a member of numerous associations, and has created a program used by colleges to help educate tomorrow’s direct marketing professionals. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and dual bachelor of arts degrees in mathematics and in computer science from Cornell University. For further information, visit: http://www.nextmark.com/company/jpych.html

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Jeff Yowell

Jeff Yowell is founder, president and chief executive officer of DATACORE Marketing, LLC, a marketing services company that provides data-driven marketing solutions supported by robust process-driven operations. Before launching into his successful entrepreneurial career, Yowell worked as an account executive responsible for database marketing at a local advertising agency in Kansas City, MO. He was intrigued by the challenges faced by clients who had substantial amounts of data on their customers and prospects but did not know how to mine and utilize the data to improve their overall marketing efforts.

To integrate consumer and channel data into the marketing strategy process, Jeff founded DATACORE Marketing in 1992. His face-to-face client interaction and tenacious attention to the details of his clients’ businesses resulted in a new class of marketing support for the B2B2C market. Powered by experience, motivation and focus, Jeff grew DATACORE from a small two-employee operation to a thriving, unique marketing services provider that today serves nationally renowned companies including H&R Block, Hill’s Pet Nutrition Inc., John Deere, Michelin, Microsoft and Novartis. DATACORE has emerged as an innovative leader in the marketing services industry, providing clients with strategic marketing solutions that integrate marketing strategy, database management, technology, and program management.

Jeff’s entrepreneurial success has earned him recognition from several respected organizations. In 2002, he was honored with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Business Services in the Kansas/Western Missouri region. In 2003, the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce named DATACORE the Small Business of the Year. Jeff received dual awards in 2004, receiving Ingram’s “40 Under Forty” recognition and the Future of Business Award in Kansas City.

Jeff holds a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, as well as a master of business administration degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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KnowledgeBase Marketing/Wunderman

KnowledgeBase Marketing along with its parent company, Wunderman, has been named the winner of the DMEF Corporate Commitment award. Both KnowledgeBase Marketing and Wunderman embody the curious, knowledge-hungry culture in which direct marketing careers thrive. Not only do both organizations nurture the skills, knowledge and careers of their employees, but they contribute to the direct marketing industry by sharing their knowledge and best practices with clients and fellow direct marketers.

This commitment to education is evident in Wunderman’s global direct marketing learning center, Wunderman University. Wunderman University provides employees worldwide (including its operating companies such as KBM, DATACORE Marketing and ZAAZ) a standardized direct marketing curriculum taught by a network of internal “faculty.” Wunderman University serves all employees across all departments at all levels. Built on rich direct marketing expertise across all practice areas, Wunderman University has a global presence that helps leverage learning globally, far surpassing international benchmarks.

KnowledgeBase Marketing takes its education initiative to a deeper level with its own impressive staff of experienced direct marketing practitioners who share their expertise in data-driven marketing internally and across Wunderman. Through multi-level training opportunities, KnowledgeBase Marketing employees learn about the direct marketing industry, the competitive landscape, the needs of their clients and prospects, ethics and privacy, as well as best practices in their individual jobs. Such training includes classroom sessions, on-the-job training, Lunch and Learn programs, cross-training, online instruction and mentoring. This training covers general skills as well as training on third-party and proprietary systems.

This commitment to education goes beyond company walls. Both KnowledgeBase Marketing and Wunderman experts are in demand at direct marketing conferences worldwide. In 2007, the companies’ subject matter experts conducted 40 sessions at 25 conferences. In addition to face-to-face training, KBMers published a book on customer churn in the telecom industry and 14 articles covering multiple aspects of direct marketing.

For anyone who has attended any DMEF meeting or event, it is evident that KnowledgeBase Marketing and Wunderman are major supporters by the presence and participation of their top executives, Gary Laben and Daniel Morel. Laben serves as vice chairman/chairman-elect of DMEF and is also a member of the DMA Ethics Policy Committee. As a DMA board member, Morel has been a proactive advocate of DMEF.

Both KnowledgeBase Marketing and Wunderman are considered industry leaders as evidenced by their many awards and recognition by respected authorities. Most recently, KnowledgeBase Marketing was named one of the leading database marketing vendors in its evaluation of Database Marketing Service Providers. Wunderman played a leading role at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival winning 25 Cannes Lions awards since 2002.

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Direct Marketing Educational Foundation
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-6700
212.768.7277
Fax: 212.790.1561
dmef@the-dma.org
www.the-dmef.org

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