SPEAKER SERIES

TECHNOLOGY & CULTURE: DISRUPT, INNOVATE, LEAD << PANELIST BIOS

> Tim Armstrong P ’24, ’22 ceo & founder, the dtx company Tim Armstrong is the founder and CEO of the dtx company, where he is focused on building the infrastructure for the direct-brand economy through experiences, platforms, and investments. Current dtx investments include Dirty Lemon, Argent, Olive & June, Niche, Margaux, and ThirdLove.

Armstrong founded a Boston newspaper after graduating from Connecticut College. In 1995, he moved to Seattle to join Paul Allen’s first internet company, Starwave, which was acquired by Disney. Armstrong moved to New York with Disney and worked at ABC/ESPN Internet Ventures. After Disney, he joined Florida Governor Rick Scott’s health-focused cable and internet company, America’s Health Network, which was later sold to News Corp. Armstrong then went on to be a founding team member of Snowball, which went on to IPO on the Nasdaq. Armstrong left Snowball in 2000 to join Google as its first New York employee; he left Google after almost a decade serving as President of the Americas and as a member of Google’s global executive team.

He joined AOL as chairman and CEO to spin the company out of Time Warner and launch AOL as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. After turning AOL around and outperforming the S&P 500 during his tenure as CEO, he sold the company to Verizon Communications. Armstrong joined Verizon as CEO of its digital media division, Oath, and served as a member of its executive team.

Stephanie Benedetto ’98 CEO & Co-Founder, Queen of Raw < Corporate attorney turned fashion tech and sustainability entrepreneur, Stephanie is the co-founder of Queen of Raw (Techstars ‘18), a blockchain-enabled engine for businesses to buy/sell unused raw materials and map, measure, and trace their supply chains, turning pollution into profit. Prior to starting Queen of Raw, Stephanie worked as a lawyer in the fashion, media/ entertainment, start-up, and technology industries and co-founded a sustainable textile manufacturing facility.

An advocate for women in business and sustainability, her companies have been featured in NYTimes, Vogue, WWD, Elle, Cheddar, Parade, WCBS, United Nations, Fortune, Entrepreneur, WIRED, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and Fast Company. Stephanie is a NASA/NIKE/IKEA/DELL LAUNCH.org Innovator, a Grand Prize WeWork Creator Awards Winner presented by Ashton Kutcher, was nominated as a Founder to Watch by Women 2.0, and was a finalist for the WGSN Global Fashion Awards, Rent the Runway/UBS Project Entrepreneur, and the $1M Verizon Powerful Answers Award.

She is a member of Pledge 1% and founding member of Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network, along with Aveda, Kering, and Stella McCartney.

> Catharina Lavers Mallet ’98 Head of Concept Development, Consumer Electronics, Bose Corporation

Catharina Lavers Mallet is an executive leader and general manager for growing and transforming businesses. She is currently leads the Consumer Wearables business for Bose Corporation, including their recently announced audio augmented reality platform, Bose AR.

Prior to joining Bose, she was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she mentored startups in their DeltaV accelerator program. She is actively engaged with the startup community in London and the US East Coast, advising several startups and entrepreneurs and mentoring/judging for MassChallenge and other incubators. She also served as COO at Talla, an early stage startup creating AI-powered solutions for internal communications, where she remains an advisor. Previously, she served as general manager at King Digital (developer of Candy Crush, and now part of Activision Blizzard), where she built their UK games business, including overseeing the development of Farm Heroes Saga, a top-10 grossing casual mobile social game. During her time at King, the company grew from 175 to over 2,000 employees and $2B in revenue, IPO’d and was acquired. Before joining King, she was a product manager and executive producer at Playfish (acquired by Electronic Arts), where she managed development of Facebook game The Sims Social, part of the beloved The Sims franchise, and was product manager for Pet Society, one of the first successful games on Facebook.

Catharina has also worked as a vice president and product manager of enterprise risk management solutions for financial institutions at Algorithmics (acquired by Fitch Ratings), and as a summer consultant at OC&C Strategy Consultants. She started her career at PVA International, a boutique financial services consulting firm. She has an MBA from MIT Sloan and a BA cum laude from Harvard, and now lives in the Boston area. She enjoys mentoring, traveling, and sampling foreign foods, not necessarily in that order.

Lisa Utzschneider P ’27 CEO, Integral Ad Science <

Lisa Utzschneider is the chief executive officer of Integral Ad Science and a member of the company’s board of directors. IAS is a global technology company that offers data and solutions to establish a safer, more effective advertising ecosystem. Lisa joined IAS as CEO in January 2019, bringing more than 20 years of digital advertising expertise and tech-industry leadership experience to the role.

Prior to joining IAS, Lisa held the position of chief revenue officer at Yahoo where she oversaw Yahoo’s global sales organization and provided solutions for the needs of advertisers worldwide. Lisa served as CRO up through the acquisition of Yahoo by Verizon in June 2017.

Previously, Lisa was Amazon’s vice president of Global Advertising Sales, where she developed the company’s global advertising business through product, marketing, sales, and operations strategies, driving consistent revenue growth. Prior to Amazon, Lisa spent 10 years at Microsoft culminating in her role as general manager of the national sales and service teams where she focused on driving revenue for the company’s top online advertising accounts. She also developed the U.S. advertising go-to-market strategy.

Lisa has previously served as a board member for the Ad Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, where she was also a member of the organization’s executive committee. Notable honors include: the Adweek 50, Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising,” New York Business Journal’s “Women of Influence,” and Working Mother Magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Moms.” Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree from Bates College and a master’s degree in public administration from New York University.