in 3–5 years.
Wharton and Penn have a host of impressive alumni who are now finding one another in this community of innovators who are redefining the landscape. Thanks so much to those of you who have connected with us. We encourage you to continue to reach out, reconnect, and leverage this community to make a positive impact on the field and on the world.
We also want to acknowledge the students and student organizations with whom we have partnered to create bridges and dialog between the WFoA Innovation Network Community and students across disciplines at Wharton, Penn and beyond, through the open, online courses we'll be creating. You make us all hopeful for the future. Be brave to strive for the triple wins for brands, people, and society in the work you do after graduation. We are just getting started and you are an essential driver for a better future.
All of this would not have been possible without Al West. Through his support of Wharton's SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, which he and Jerry founded in 1990 and where we have incubated the WFoA Program since 2008, Al has been our primary visionary and benefactor, continuing his investment is us and in our mission, year after year. Thank you, Al, for enabling what has become so widely and globally valued and appreciated.
We are also grateful to our other early stage funders who individually believed enough in the importance of our mission to champion corporate gifts when they were, and in some cases still are, at these companies: Sanjay Govil at Infinite; Sebastien Lion at Mars Petcare. Laurent Larguinat at Mars Marketing Lab; Andres Siefkin at Daymon; Christopher Lyons at Kodak; Alan Hallberg at Lenovo and at RFMD; Paul Bascobert at Bloomberg Media; and Graham Mudd at Facebook.
We want to give particular mention to the leaders of closely-held organizations who embrace the WFoA vision and have devoted a portion of their budgets to the Program, in addition to their time, over multiple years: Karsten Koed, Gorm Larsen and Zornig; Denise Larson and Gary Reisman, NewMediaMetrics; Kirk Cheyfitz, Story Worldwide; and Mitchell Reichgut and Dan Feldstein, Jun Group. Your personal commitment has been an inspiration and an engine.
Many in our community found other ways to support us along the way. Early on, Chuck Porter tapped the creativity of Mike del Marmol at CP+B to create our first logo and put us in touch with the people on his team and at Dominos to provide information and insights for our first “Insight Report” that we hope will become a model for future case studies. Cindy Goodrich and Sofia Buschmann at Google were the masterminds in co-creating our Fast. Forward Channel on YouTube in 2009 and we had a blast conceiving, launching, and scaling it together. Matt Scheckner and his indomitable, unflappable Advertising Week team welcomed us on very short notice beginning in 2009 to conduct roving interviews with the remarkable set of thought leaders he assembles each year. Scott Goodson, founder of StrawberryFrog, helped conceive and seed our first annual Super Bowl Tweet Meet in early 2011, which continues – thank you to all who have taken time away from the chips and guacamole to be part of this tradition. Celia Berk, our first GAB member from the HR world (how prescient was that!), offered to reach into her Y&R network many times to find hosts for our roundtables (Paris and Beijing), to bring research expertise, and to engage others from the executive ranks. Chris Yeh continues to generously provide us invaluable access to the PBWorks online collaboration platform to help us manage all aspects of the WFoA Program. How fortunate were we that the inimitable Phil Cowdell stepped up to become one of our trusted advisors. Barry Libert introduced us to our website co-creator/partner par excellence, Doug Ward (WatersWard), and underwrote the first year of development to make the WFoA Program, and the Advertising 2020 project in particular, accessible and interactive. Thank you, TED, whom we sought to emulate.
As WFoA was incubating in the SEI Center, we relied extensively on Katherine Rohan Grosh and Chu Hui Cha for their tremendous support in establishing the board, organizing meetings and conferences, and juggling Jerry's time and commitments. Megan Gillespie has taken over as close collaborator in that role while keeping the Center moving forward and developing new initiatives. Thank you for always being there for us.
Since the inception of the Program, and throughout the development of this book, we have been fueled by the intellect, energy, and dedication of the most wonderful team of Penn and Wharton undergraduate student research and administrative assistants. To all of you, we thank you for your contribution. In particular, there are a few who have really gone above and beyond to bring so much extra effort and value to this program and this manuscript including especially Elijah Cory, Imran Cronk, Raina Dhir, Zak Knudson, Carolyn Koh, Nicole Laczewski, Kaitlin Leung, Adam Rawot, Evan Rosenbaum, Hailey (Weiss) Suyumov, Jill Wang, Molly Wang, and Kelly Yao.
In addition, we are grateful to Sanjay Govil, who has supplied us with a wonderful group of high school and college students during the summers to provide research and administrative support while immersing themselves in the ongoing work of the Program.
In the last few years we have been incredibly fortunate to work with part time staff assistants who defy the term. Each came on to help with “administrative support” while pursuing advanced degrees, yet with their intellectual curiosity, creativity, professionalism, talent, and flexibility offered us so much more than we imagined. In succession we are grateful for Maisie Pascual, who helped us get our administrative house in order; Matt Wiegle, who shared his facility with words, graphics, and databases; and most recently, Alexis Rider who took on a tremendous amount of ownership in navigating so many critical aspects of the manuscript in its final stages and who distills the key insights from our live radio show into a highly readable blog. Thank goodness she is willing to stay with us through the rest of her PhD work in the History and Sociology of Science.
Alexa de los Reyes joined in 2010 in what was supposed to be a part-time administrative support role. But she soon emerged as a full-on co-creator and co-owner of the Program. She has been instrumental in expanding the involvement of the community, the student research assistants, the website content, the EG II Conference, the Advertising 2020 Project and pretty much everything else it took to build WFoA. Her sensibilities as an accomplished artist, her talent as a writer, her warmth as a person, and her healthy skepticism of advertising have graced all facets of WFoA. She has contributed so much to the heart and soul of WFoA and to the content development of this book with constancy, honesty, diligence, and laughter. As the book project began to heat up, she moved to focus her energies on helping to create chapters and marshal them to completion, and she still retains the role of resident historian, advisor, and confidant. Our love and thanks to Alexa, and in turn to Gastón, Inigo, and Eliam for their support of her throughout this endeavor.
We are so grateful that when Kelly Rhodes graduated from Penn with high honors in the spring of 2014, she chose to take a full-time position to help run the Program. And what an impact she has made. Her dedication and wisdom, positive, can-do attitude, unbounded enthusiasm, intelligence and resourcefulness has enabled us to more fully support and enable our growing WFoA network to innovate, inspire and learn. Kelly represents the best of what the next generation is bringing to our world. We treasure all that she has to offer and look forward to being part of her growth and life-long success.
We are thankful for the collaboration and friendship between us that began back on campus as we – Jerry as the founding Director and Catharine as a founding Fellow in Wharton's Lauder Institute for Management and International Studies – helped to shape that program as pioneers. And now these many years later, reconnecting to co-create and evolve this Wharton Future of Advertising mission, program, community, and content. We have grown together by working together and celebrate the yin and yang that our different yet complimentary backgrounds and personalities bring to this endeavor. We cherish the closeness that we share and the path that we have forged. And we look forward to continuing to find important and impactful ways, in collaboration with others, to make the future a better place in this particular and important space.
And finally, we thank our families and loved ones, who have been our rock and our inspiration throughout this project and especially as the book deadline loomed … and loomed. John, Lee, Mark, Gavi, and Barbara; Olivia, Lizzy, Stan, Terry, Bill, and David,
