Web Analytics Association Board of Directors and Advisors

There is simply nothing else like the WAA. No other organization is currently focused on this subject matter. As we create a strong voice in the marketplace for the web analytics community, we are honored by the involvement of our boards comprised of web analytics thought leaders and industry luminaries that are helping to attract more of the same to act as advisors, committee chairs and volunteers.

President and Advocacy Director
Vice-President of Marketing, Rainmaker
Seth Romanow

Seth is responsible for managing all Rainmaker client and corporate marketing efforts, including helping Rainmaker customers achieve their revenue goals through effective integrated marketing programs. Seth's background includes over 20 years of broad marketing experience in online marketing, relationship marketing, advertising, branding, marketing operations, data and analytics.

Before joining Rainmaker, Seth led the Customer Intelligence organization for Microsoft.com. There he managed web analytics, customer data, behavioral targeting and business intelligence platforms and services. Prior to Microsoft, Seth was a Global Account lead at Wunderman/Y&R where he was responsible for managing client service activities on behalf of Microsoft's Server and Tools business group.

Previously, at Hewlett-Packard, Seth was Director, Worldwide Customer Knowledge Management and Analytics. At HP Seth was responsible for globally managing customer information, data quality, web traffic, customer satisfaction measurement and advanced analytics. During the HP / Compaq merger, Seth held a leadership role on the integration team developing customer and platform strategies for HP.com. At Compaq, Seth managed Compaq.com. He also has broad management experience in advertising and marketing, holding senior positions at EuroRSCG, BBDO and BatesUSA. He has been recognized twice by B2B Magazine as a Top 100 Marketer and is a founding board member and currently Treasurer of the Web Analytics Association.

Seth has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business in marketing and an AB from Occidental College, Los Angeles in Political Science and Russian Studies.

Chairman of the Board
Jim Sterne
Target Marketing consultant, author and Emetrics Summit conference producer - Santa Barbara, California

As a Founding Director and President since 2004, Jim has been instrumental in the appointment of the first Board of Directors, the Advisory Board and the development of the Education Committee and its programs. Jim is the Association's spokes person and chief cheer-leader, leading the organization to deliver on its mission - uniting and educating analytic professionals, consultants, practitioners and educators.

Jim Sterne produced the world's first Marketing on the Internet seminar series in 1994. Today, Sterne is an internationally known speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction. A consultant to Fortune 500 companies and Internet entrepreneurs, Sterne focuses his 20 years in sales and marketing on measuring the value of a web site as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships.

Sterne has written five books on Internet advertising, marketing, and customer service including, his most recent, Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success.

Vice President and Marketing Director
April Wilson
Director of Product Management for AH Belo

April Wilson joined the WAA in 2004, and attended the 2005 eMetrics Summit in Santa Barbara, California where she was delighted to meet so many others who shared her passion. April is the Director of Product Management for AH Belo.

April’s job at AH Belo combines the experience and expertise she has gained from a diverse professional background. She began as a sexuality health educator at Virginia Commonwealth University, which included producing award-winning original programming and evaluation instruments on the topics of sexual assault, relationship abuse and sexual harassment. April graduated with a M.S. in Sociology while running her own business, OutSpoken Productions. Her company employed trained professional student educators who focused on touring colleges, universities, military institutions, and correctional facilities around the United States. April was also invited as a guest lecturer to several of these institutions to talk about using innovation to make a positive difference in the community.

When family life called, April built her second career from her love of quantitative analysis. She retained her focus on serving the greater good, which took her to companies like People’s Bank, The Royal Bank of Scotland, TIAA-CREF, The Dallas Morning News and AH Belo. She is also an active community volunteer.

April lives in Rowlett, Texas, with her husband and three children. You can learn more about April on her eclectic working mother blog, WWWWD (What Would Wonder Woman Do?), at aprilwilson.net.

Secretary and Strategic Programs Director
Vicky Brock
Co-Founder Highland Business Research

Vicky Brock is Co-Founder of Highland Business Research, an intelligence agency based in Scotland.

Vicky was Co-Chair of the WAA International Committee and has delivered WAA Basecamp training in Washington and San Francisco. She contributed to the UBC Web Analytics Certificate program and is Course Director in EMarketing and Web Value Optimization for the University of the Highlands and Islands.

She regularly speaks at conferences on web analytics and online research, with recent sessions including eMetrics, the Research 2008 Conference, the Internet Marketing Conference and ITB Berlin.

Her clients include the Scottish Government, HP and VisitScotland. When Vicky isn't working, teaching or blogging, she tends to be busy maximising the floral return on investment from her garden.

Treasurer and Public Sector Director
Alex Langshur
President, Publicinsite

Alex manages PublicInsite a web analytics / site optimization consulting firm dedicated to helping clients realize the full potential and value of their online channel. He has worked with and led web analytics and online performance measurement initiatives for clients in the public, private, non-profit and education sectors. Alex is the Treasurer of the Web Analytics Association and co-Chair of their Public Sector Committee. He has been a speaker at many conferences and teaches web analytics courses for WAA Base Camp and Web Manager University.

Education Director
Andrea Hadley
President NetSetGo Marketing - Vancouver-based web analytics and search engine marketing company since 1999 and Director of Canada eMetrics Summit since 2008.

Not only is Andrea an internationally known web-marketing consultant, industry speaker and leader, she is a guest lecturer at the University of British Columbia, a founder of two professional associations and brought the first eMetrics Marketing Optimization to Canada in April 2008 as conference Director.

In 2004, recognizing the need for industry standards, education, advocacy and networking, Andrea joined forces with Jim Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg, Andrew Edwards, Rand Schulman, Seth Romanow and Greg Drew and formed the Web Analytics Association (WAA). The Association officially launched in February of 2005 and continues to thrive with 1700+ members as of May 2008.

Social Media & Community Director
Marshall Sponder
Monster Worldwide

Marshall Sponder is a Web Analyst and Artist who works for Monster Worldwide; he maintains his own Search Engine Marketing Consultancy and has several B2B and B2C clients. Marshall's blog, www.WebMetricsGuru.com is one of the most influential and viewed blogs on Web Metrics. Marshall also writes ArtNewYorkCity.com which covers the New York Art world along with his own art; Marshall writes for Smartmobs.com and Biggreenblog.com as well.

Marshall is also a chat moderator for Search Engine Workshops and World Resource Center. Special Interests are: Art and Technology, Visitor and Audience Segmentation using Geo Demographics, Search Marketing and Optimization, Podcasting and RSS Feed Measurement and Metrics, Keyword Optimization, Content Analysis, Link Analysis, Competitive Analysis, SWOT Analysis to provide insight to site owners.

Director at Large
Laura Paxia
CTO ImetriX.biz

Laura Paxia is CTO and driving force behind ImetriX.biz, the first web analytics system to be released in Italy, which debuted back in 2000.

From the outset, Laura has endeavored to promote web analytics in Italy by holding seminars, conferences and meetings at Italy's leading universities. In 2002, her success in creating the first web analytics system in Italy was recognized by the Italian Ministry of Communications, and she was named as a “Microsoft success story”. Also in 2002, she edited a newsletter and a report on web intelligence for bCentral--Microsoft's business portal--in which she encouraged companies to take proper account of the importance of monitoring and analyzing the components of their web site traffic.

She has been involved in analyzing and consulting on a range of high-profile sites for clients including Microsoft, Unicredito Group and Janssens-Cilag (Johnson & Johnson). Laura has supervised numerous PhD papers on web analytics, providing her students with relevant material and case studies. She compiled a Web Analytics Glossary for one of the leading internet marketing publications in Italy, and has written numerous articles on web analytics and search-engine marketing. Moreover, she is also co-author of the first Italian book on web analytics, Web Analytics Strategies.

International Director
Neil Mason
Co-Founder Applied Insights

Neil Mason is the co-founder of Applied Insights, a consumer analytics consultancy that specialises in the online space. Neil has been involved in marketing analysis for more years than he cares to remember having started off his career at ACNielsen helping major FMCG brands understand the effectiveness of their marketing programmes.

At Applied Insights, Neil consults with major businesses on using web analytics to improve online business performance. He is also a frequent speaker at web analytics conferences and events.

Neil got involved in web analytics over 7 years ago when he moved from the agency side to the client side as Chief Knowledge Officer at QXL. He developed and led the implementation of the company's marketing information strategy, implementing a customer data warehouse and a web analytics solution across the business's 12 European markets. Neil became Chief Marketing Officer for QXL in 2001 and got the opportunity to practice what he preached by putting customer insights and analysis at the core of the marketing strategy. With this experience, Neil gained a deep understanding of the pan-European e-commerce landscape and online consumer behaviour.

Before joining QXL Neil had gained over 15 years experience working in multinational marketing services organisations working with some of the world’s leading brands in a variety of general management and specialist consultancy roles.

Research Director
Robbin Steif
CEO LunaMetrics

Robbin Steif is CEO of LunaMetrics, a Pittsburgh Internet consulting firm. Steif and her team work to increase traffic to websites and convert more of that traffic into business. They have a strong emphasis on testing and web analytics. (LunaMetrics is the only Google Analytics Authorized Consultant in W. PA.) Steif, a serial entrepreneur, has spent 23 years in direct response and technology marketing. She is on the Board of the Web Analytics Association, in charge of Marketing. Steif is a PA Best 50 Women in Business, and is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Business School.

Membership Director
June Dershewitz
Vice President of Analytics, Semphonic

June Dershewitz enjoys helping companies improve their practice of web analytics. She held her first web analyst job at a San Francisco startup in 1999 and has worked in the field ever since. Between 2004 and 2007 she took freelance consulting assignments with enterprise clients such as Oracle, CNET, Wells Fargo and Blue Shield. In 2007 she joined the leadership team at Semphonic, a top web analytics consultancy. She has been a member of the Web Analytics Association since its inception in 2005, serving on the Education and Social Media Committees. As an original instigator of Web Analytics Wednesday, she continues to organize and attend WAW events throughout the Bay Area. She has spoken at conferences such as Emetrics, XChange and the Optimost Optimization Summit. She blogs at june.typepad.com.

Dennis R. Mortensen
Director of Data Insights, Yahoo!

Dennis R. Mortensen is a pioneer and expert in the Web Analytics industry, having worked in the field of internet analysis and statistics since 1996. He is an accredited Associate Web Analytics Instructor - University of British Columbia and a frequent speaker on the subject of analytics and online marketing. He was the COO of IndexTools, a top tier enterprise analytics vendor, until it was acquired by Yahoo! Inc. in May 2008. Today he is the Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! You can follow his insights on web analytics and online marketing on his blog: VisualRevenue.com/blog.

Greg Drew
President, CEO of WebTrends - Portland, Oregon

Greg Drew is President and CEO, of WebTrends Inc., the global web analytics market leader for more than ten years.  A 28-year veteran with fast growing technology companies, Drew was formerly the founder, chairman and CEO for 800 Electronics, where he established the company as the leading full-service electronics e-retailer with revenues in excess of $50 million. Earlier in his career, Drew held positions at Hewlett-Packard, Central Point Software, Clientele Software and NOW Software/Qualcomm. Drew is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickenson University, with a Bachelor of Science degree in business management.

Bryan Eisenberg
Co-founder and Chief Persuasion Officer of Future Now, Inc - New York, NY

Bryan is recognized worldwide as a leading expert on online marketing and marketing analytics. Bryan has been helping companies realize that to maximize results it is essential to incorporate expert persuasion techniques and a deep understanding of customer behavior into all marketing efforts. Bryan also is an inventor of Persuasion Architecture™. Persuasion Architecture is a process for persuading customers when they ignore marketing and for doing analysis without an analyst.

He is the publisher of Future Now's popular marketing optimization blog GrokDotCom, is the author of the ClickZ column ROI Marketing, and has been a featured speaker at leading conferences including DMA Annual, DMDAYS, Adtech, Search Engine Strategies, Internet World, and eMetrics Summit. Bryan is a co-author of the #1 best-selling Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, and  BusinessWeek best sellers: "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?" and "Call to Action".

Richard Foley
Currently, Richard Foley is a World Wide Product Manager and Strategist for SAS Institute, a leader in customer analytics. As product manager Richard’s primary function is to gather user requirements and to pontificate the necessity for better web analytics. Richard is also a firm believer in aligning web strategies with corporate strategies. Richard has had numerous speaking engagements about web analytics from sitting on panels such as Council of American Survey Research Organization, to keynote speaker at a Business Intelligence Forum.

Richard Foley has been active in the Web Analytics community since 1996 where he worked on implementing web analytics standards and kpi’s for Medscape, now part of WebMD.

Before entering the new fast growing field of Web Analytics, Richard worked as a Risk Manager at a large financial intuition, and as a self employed contractor for Risk Management. The knowledge gained as a Risk Manager was provided Richard with a unique understanding of how important proper business strategies are in running an organization.

Rand Schulman
Rand is considered by many a new marketing and media pioneer and innovator. In his twenty years as a high technology executive he has led world known brands like Software Publishing/Harvard Graphics and is credited with many transformational products and solutions; from the early PC-based paint and draw systems to creating one of the first DTP products. In 1996 he founded and was CEO of Keylime Software, one of the first Web Analytic applications (acquired by Yahoo); was an executive at NetIQ/WebTrends, and was the CMO of WebSideStory through its 2004 IPO until 2007. Most recently he was General Manger Internet Products at Unica and is currently CMO of Insideview. He was named one of the Top 100 BtoB marketing executives by BtoB Magizine, is a regular speaker on digital marketing topics and is widely quoted in national publications. He is a founder and past board member of the Web Analytics Association, and currently sits on the board of several companies and is a partner in his consulting firm, Rand Schulman Partners.

When not on mountain trails with his bike, which is most of the time while he's not in the office, you will find him somewhere in or on the water, sailing off the coast or in the surf zone.