Dan Schawbel - Head Judge

Dan is the leading expert in personal branding for the generation-y audience, with an award winning and world recognized Blog, a TV podcast series that he directs, Awards that he gives out, and a Magazine that benefits the American Cancer Society.  He has written over 20 publications for major magazines and online resources and have been featured in Fast Company Magazine and Yahoo! Finance and it EMC's social media expert.  He also establishing the first 360 degree personal branding website, DanSchawbel.com, creating a new standard for career development.  Recently, he has redefined personal branding by establishing a collaborate wiki, which he is using to acquire knowledge from all the leading experts to establish a single definition for personal branding.  

Andy Beal

Andy Beal is a blogging and search engine marketing consultant and is considered one of the world’s most respected online marketing experts. Andy has worked with many top companies such as Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, SAS, Lowes, Quicken Loans and NBC. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy Beal has had articles published around the world, including Business Week Online, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and Web Pro News. Andy Beal is constantly keeping up-to-date with search engine news and online marketing developments and has appeared on CNBC and NPR (National Public Radio) and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The Washington Post, and many other publications. Often approaching search engine marketing from a unique, easy to understand perspective, Andy Beal has also been invited many times by SearchEngineWatch.com to speak at the Search Engine Strategies conferences held around the world. Andy has also received a nomination for the 2006 Fast 50 and was named to the Triangle Business Journal’s "40 Under 40."

David Jones

David Jones is the Vice President of Digital for Hill & Knowlton. Previously he was a Senior Vice President at  Fleishman-Hillard Toronto(2006). Since beginning his career in 1991, Mr. Jones has amassed a wealth of marketing communications, corporate and sports marketing experience as both a consultant and in-house communications leader. At Fleishman-Hillard Toronto, he provides senior counsel to Yahoo! Canada, Gatorade and Score Media. Before joining Fleishman-Hillard, Mr. Jones was vice president at the Thornley Fallis Group in Toronto, where he led the marketing communications and financial groups and was a key contributor to the firm’s leadership in adopting and evangelizing social media as a communications tool. He first joined Thornley Fallis in 1997, following positions at the Canadian National Exhibition, Edelman Toronto, Harbinger Communications and a stint as the Director of Communications for the Royal Canadian Golf Association.

David V. Lorenzo

David V. Lorenzo has over 20 years of business experience. He is an expert at developing creative strategy for all size businesses. Lorenzo has been working with the Gallup Organization’s Consulting Group since 2002 – currently serving as Managing Partner of the Executive Development and Organizational Effectiveness team based in New York City. In this role he consults with the leadership of Fortune 500 companies on Executive Performance Management, Succession Planning, Learning and Development and Integrated Marketing Communications. Lorenzo is the Founder and President of DLorenzo Business Advisors, a group that coaches entrepreneurs and independent professionals on Business Strategy, Sales, Marketing and Work-Life Balance. Lorenzo works directly with small business owners to unlock their hidden talent and use their natural ability to make more money, have more fun and enjoy the freedom that should accompany business ownership.

Chris Brown

Mario Sundar

Mario Sundar has over five years experience in leadership roles both in Marketing as well as in Software Development. Mario currently works at LinkedIn, the World’s largest online professional network, as Community Evangelist. Prior to that, he helped develop & manage marketing initiatives for Fortune 50 high-tech brands. Mario is also on the board of the American Marketing Association (Silicon Valley Chapter). In May 2006, Mario launched his marketing blog where he discusses customer evangelism, community marketing and social media strategy. Ranked as one of the fastest growing Wordpress blogs in July 06, “Marketing Nirvana” continues to expand its readership each week. The blog currently (as of 04/07) has a Technorati Rank of 7,113 and an Alexa Ranking of 142,830.

Kevin Dugan

The last 15years have found Kevin Dugan managing public relations efforts everywhere from the factory floor to the boardroom for some of the biggest business to business brands.  Dugan is director of marketing communications for FRCH Design Worldwide. Prior to this, he spent eight years with HSR Business to Business—a full-service marketing communications agency.  While at HSR, his work helped earn Silver and Bronze Anvil awards from PRSA and an award from PR Week (Silver Anvil and PR Week in 2004 for AK Steel, Bronze Anvil in 2005 for CONTECH Construction Products). Dugan’s work has included everything from new product launches to custom publishing.  Dugan has counseled a variety of clients, including GE Plastics, Xerox, Allianz Global Risks US, several small software companies and Makino machine tools. His work for Makino helped earn HSR a PRSA Silver Anvil Award of Excellence in 2001.  Prior to HSR, he worked for Sive/Young & Rubicam. At Y&R, he worked for companies including Procter & Gamble, Teklogix International, Senco Products, Square D Company, IBM and CompuServe.