Seminar Faculty
s undergoing a tremendous number of changes, as are

Kate Degelau-Pierce
Speaker

Kate Degelau-Pierce is a Web metrics and audience research expert, working in the field for almost 10 years. She began her career as a project manager in the Web Metrics and Analysis Group at Amazon.com. She then worked in the market research department at CoxNet, the interactive division of Cox Newspapers. In both jobs, she directed a variety of research projects including metrics analysis, usability tests, and Web-based surveys to provide insight into who users are and how they use the Internet. This information helped direct daily operations and new product development efforts. She currently conducts and analyzes customer satisfaction surveys at Yahoo. Her experience leads her to believe that to effectively run a Web site, you need to know what your customers think and what they do as a foundation for meeting your business goals. She received her Masters of Information degree from the University of Michigan and her undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.



Stacy Lynch
Consultant

Stacy Lynch is a consultant on innovation, understanding audience needs, research and newspaper management. She was most recently director of innovations at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In that role she worked with journalists and executives throughout the newspaper to understand audience trends and recognize opportunities to increase readership and online use. She worked with newsroom staff to develop audience-drive new products and with cross-departmental implementation teams to make them a reality.

Previously, she served as readership editor at the AJC. Before going to Atlanta, she was research manager for the Readership Institute at Northwestern University. She managed several components of the Impact study, a groundbreaking study of newspaper readership. She also directed the Latin American Cost and Revenue study for five years, an annual study of newspaper finance and operations involving papers from throughout Latin America.

Stacy has also written and edited books and case studies including The Newsroom Brain, In Their prime, Inside Newsroom Teams, and The Changing Reader. Stacy received her BA in English and Spanish from Cornell University and her MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism.



Annette Moser-Wellman
President and Founder
Firemark, Inc.

Annette Moser-Wellman is one of the world's leading experts on innovation. Her company, FireMark Inc., works with leaders of Fortune 500 firms to create market breakthroughs. She has taught thousands of business managers how to use her model for creative thinking and apply it to develop new products and services. Annette's clients include; The Coca-Cola Company, The Starbucks Coffee Company, Kraft Foods, Georgia-Pacific, The Ford Motor Company and many more.

Based on her research of creative genius in the arts and sciences, Annette's book The Five Faces of Genius: Creative Thinking Styles to Succeed at Work (Viking/Penguin) demonstrates how business people can learn how to invent from the greats of history.

She developed a profiling tool to assist managers in understanding their personal creative style and become inventors.

In addition to speaking engagements for corporate and public audiences, Annette consults with firms on bringing innovation to organizations. She works with management to optimize creativity and develop new ideas for today's rapidly changing marketplace. She specializes in finding the intersection between future trends and new business invention.

Annette holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her undergraduate degree was in Art and she has had an abiding interest in the lives of creative individuals. Annette's passion is to help others find their genius and use it to transform the world.



Michael P. Smith
Executive Director
Media Management Center

Michael P. Smith is the executive director of the Center. He oversees the Center's research projects as well as the faculty and curriculum for the Center's on-campus programs.

Smith was a journalist and editor for 23 years. Before joining the Center, he was assigned to the corporate staff of Knight Ridder. In 1982, as assistant managing editor, he was part of the team at the Ft. Wayne (IN) News-Sentinel that won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Smith is the author or editor of several monographs, including Values. Culture. Content., The Newsroom Brain and The Changing Reader.

Smith has a B.Sc. degree in journalism from Ball State University and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.



Michael A. Silver
Consultant

Michael A. Silver is the first executive director of the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium, a joint venture of 30 major newspaper companies. Silver works to develop new opportunities for the Consortium across the digital media landscape and to grow the Consortium's existing relationship with Yahoo! on content and advertising.

A longtime executive of Tribune Company, Silver led a diverse set of digital development efforts, from Tribune's initial investment in AOL to many of Tribune's interactive content and marketing programs. Most recently, as an independent consultant Silver developed online listings applications for the entertainment products division of Tribune Media Services. Prior to that, Silver was vice president of corporate development for Tribune Company, focusing on next generation media opportunities and assisting local business units in development and management of wireless and online video projects. Silver began his media career as a reporter and editor, working for the Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, Dow Jones and WPBT-TV in Miami.



David Stoeffler
Principal
Touchstone News Consulting

David Stoeffler has nearly 30 years experience as a reporter, editor and top management executive in the news business. As the principal of Touchstone News Consulting (www.touchstonenews.com), he works with news companies to develop and implement plans for maintaining and improving journalism in print and online, even during challenging times. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and in seminars for individual companies.

Prior to forming his own consulting business, Stoeffler served as general manager of the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, which is owned by Lee Enterprises, the company Stoeffler first joined in 1979. Among his many positions with the company, he was the first vice president for news of Lee, serving nearly five years in that role. He launched a series of initiatives to strengthen journalism in the company, including regular critiques of the papers, plus a web site, Editorial Matters, and other training initiatives aimed at exchanging and fostering the development of new ideas for improving newspapers and related web sites.

A native of Wisconsin, Stoeffler graduated in 1981 with an English degree from Viterbo University, a private college in La Crosse, Wis.



Vivian Vahlberg
Managing Director
Media Management Center

Vivian Vahlberg is the managing director of the Media Management Center. She is responsible for developing a new line of educational programs, seminars, research, and publications (both online and print) to help media executives understand, embrace, and innovate in the rapidly evolving new-media world.

Vahlberg has spent most of her career either in journalism or at journalism-related non-profit organizations. Prior to joining the Center in 2006, Vahlberg was president of Vahlberg & Associates; director of journalism programs for the McCormick Tribune Foundation; executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, adjunct professor of journalism at Northwestern University, vice president of the National Press Building Corporation and assistant Washington Bureau chief for the Daily Oklahoman.

The first woman president of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and an inductee in the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, she was named by Working Woman magazine in 1996 as one of "350 Women Who Changed the World." She is also a frequent speaker on topics ranging from journalism to newspaper readership, innovation, women in management, press freedom, and non-profit leadership.

She received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Rice University, attended the Medill Graduate School of Journalism, and is a graduate of the Media Management Center's Advanced Executive Program.



Vickey L. Williams
Director of Digital Workforce/Talent Development Initiative
Media Management Center

Vickey L. Williams joined the staff of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University in April 2007 to direct a new initiative that will look at the staffing and development needs of media companies to ensure they are able to transition and grow in the digital future. Previously, she was director of the Learning Newsroom, a three-year research project on workforce change that was a joint venture of the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The Learning Newsroom (www.learningnewsroom.org) worked with 10 pilot newspapers to test ways to help journalists become more strategically focused and more adept at responding to marketplace change. The work was chronicled in a just-released book: All Eyes Forward: How to help your newsroom get where it wants to go faster.

She formerly was corporate editorial director at Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., based in Birmingham, Ala. There she worked closely with the Readership Institute to train CNHI editors, publishers and other executives on readership research findings and to develop responses to the changing needs of today’s news consumer. Prior to that, she held editing or reporting positions at seven daily newspapers ranging in circulation from 7,500 to more than 300,000, including The Tampa Tribune, The Oakland Tribune and The Birmingham News. Williams also has trained on a host of editorial subjects in more than 100 newsrooms and for numerous industry organizations. She is a journalism graduate of Auburn University.