Principal
Jacob is widely regarded as a thought leader in social business. A key to his success is his strategic vision for both the industry and client projects. Jacob frequently spends his time experimenting, researching, and developing ideas and concepts around social business.
Jacob co-founded Chess Media Group with the goal of helping companies understand the business value of employee, partner, and customer collaboration (Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM). Jacob leads social business strategy at Chess Media Group and provides the vision for how companies can boost productivity, cut costs and foster business agility from their social business initiatives. Jacob also develops partnerships, business opportunities, and focuses on long term growth and strategy for Chess Media Group.
Jacob’s book, Twittfaced – Your Toolkit for Understanding and Maximizing Social Media was published in September 2009. Entirely co-authored through online collaboration, the story of how his book came to fruition demonstrates the power of social media and how online communities and collaboration can yield business successes.
Jacob's blog is ranked among the top 100 most influential marketing blogs in the world by AdAge, he has contributed to Marketing Profs, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, KRON 4 (NBC's San Francisco station), Read Write Web, LCI France (a national TV news network), Search CRM, and Zdnet.
Previously, Jacob ran another social media startup, an SEO consultancy, and worked for an online marketing agency. Jacob has worked with brands such as Adobe, Conde Nast, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, Salesforce, Sandisk, The U.S. Department of State, and Coremetrics.
Principal
Connie, a senior marketer with 15 years of marketing, management and consulting experience, co-founded Chess Media Group to unlock the full potential of combining people, process and social technologies to achieve high business performance. Connie leads the business operations overseeing strategic initiatives from end-to-end. Her strategic thinking and leadership, as well as overseeing and coordinating teams on intricate projects add up to client solutions and satisfaction. Connie’s key ability is her skill at developing and implementing effective strategies, and delivering integrated demand-generation campaigns that deliver measurable value to clients. She uses her extensive experience in traditional marketing to help clients to integrate Web 2.0 strategies and traditional marketing, and recommend the right balance that drives business results. Prior to co-founding Chess Media Group, Connie has been optimizing online and offline communications and customer service strategies for companies like Ivanhoe Cambridge, Good Earth Cafes, Rogers Communications and for clients like McDonald’s, Insurance Corporation of BC and Greyhound at DDB Worldwide.
Mitch is recognized by his peers as one of the world’s thought leaders in Social CRM and is on the forefront of ideas, strategies, and technologies. He has a passion for solving complex business problems by creating the optimal alignment of people, process, and technology. Mitch works with companies of all sizes, helping them leverage social technology to better manage their relationships with individual consumers and/or their business customers. He shares his thoughts on his syndicated blog A title would limit my thoughts. He has continuously shown his leadership in developing and delivering strategies for creative solutions that integrate the right technology at the right time to meet the business objective. Mitch, formerly Vice-President, Strategic Solutions for SugarCRM has 15+ years designing and implementing CRM solutions for a wide variety of industries including telecom, banking, insurance, healthcare and retail. Mitch is responsible for Social CRM direction, analysis, and client strategies, providing the vision for the Chess Media Group Social CRM efforts.
Social CRM Advisor
Esteban is regarded as a top analyst and thought leader in the field of Social CRM and is frequently asked to speak and present on various topics related to Social Business. Esteban is the Principal and Founder of ThinkJar, an advisory and research think-tank focused on customer strategies. He has over 22 years of experience in customer service and CRM consulting, research, and advisory services. Most recently, he spent eight years at Gartner, focused on Customer Service and CRM research. While there he coined the terms for EFM (enterprise feedback management) and CIH (customer interaction hub). In addition, he researched and wrote on the social networking topics that led to today’s revolution and assisted Fortune 500 and Global 2,000 organizations in all aspects of their CRM deployments. Esteban is currently advising vendors and organizations how to extend customer interactions from the CRM niche to the entire organization in their efforts to become Social Businesses. He attended the California Polytechnic University at Pomona, where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration and minor in Computer Information Systems, Telecommunications, and Economics.
Enterprise 2.0 Advisor
Gil is recognized as being one of the world's top Enterprise 2.0 minds and is the man behind the famous "Framework for 2.0 Adoption in the Enterprise" whitepaper which essentially provides a road map and guidelines for how companies can make Enterprise 2.0 a reality within their organization. Gil has a dynanic background including working at companies such as Xerox. More recently, he worked as the Director of Architecture at Fidelity and Analyst at Forrester. He is currently the Director of Open Source Product Management at Yahoo!. Gil is also one of the most respected Enterprise 2.0 analysts in the industry. Gil has a genuine passion and interest in understanding how people within large organizations collaborate with one another. Gil's background and his understanding and vision for the Enterprise 2.0 space makes him the perfect advisor to Chess Media Group for all things related to Enterprise 2.0.
Social Business Advisor
Michael Fauscette is a senior software executive and industry analyst with worldwide expertise in developing profitable, scalable fast growth organizations. Currently Michael is the Group Vice President of Software Business Solutions at IDC and was formerly a senior executive at Autodesk. Michael has executive level experience in business turn-around, starting new businesses and business models in large and small software companies. He has direct experience in leading all facets of software business including product management, consulting, business development, support, marketing, training and services product development and is experienced with social software solutions and social media.
