Join us for a networking night and inspiring panel discussion on women’s leadership. You’ll hear from women leaders from the intersection of technology and journalism about working across departments, collaborations between product and editorial, women’s leadership journeys and more.
This event is a special collaboration with ONA’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator. The Accelerator is a yearlong program aimed at advancing women in digital journalism. This fourth annual mixer serves as a celebration of women’s leadership and a welcome to LA for the cohort, speakers and mentors.
Refreshments will be available, thanks to our host sponsor, Microsoft News.
WHAT TO BRING
Attendees must provide their first and last name at the time of RSVP, and bring a photo ID.
SCHEDULE
6:30-7: Doors open; networking
7:7:30: Panel discussion
7:30-7:50: Q&A
7:50-8:30: Networking
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Vera Chan is Sr. Manager, Worldwide Journalist Relations at Microsoft News Labs. A UCB Journalism school graduate, Vera got her start covering lifestyle, A&E and business at local Bay Area newspapers. She joined Yahoo at a time when 1 out of 2 people who went on the Internet went to the search giant: There she served various roles including Front Page reporter, global projects editor and Web trends analyst, studying millions of search terms to track news interests and shifting information consumption patterns. At Microsoft, she was “chief journalist”/content strategist for the Bing News product & engineering team before moving on to Labs to work with journalists and newsrooms to find innovation solutions.
Erin Carlson is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, working on Microsoft News’ Trust Initiative. Erin has worked for MSN, now Microsoft News, for twelve years, supporting the business of online publishing. She began as a performance analyst, with a strong interest in monetization, and migrated to a fulltime focus on ad mix and engagement with sales teams. Moving closer to the technology stack, she worked closely with content publishers around the world to develop the next generation Microsoft News Partner Hub. Most recently, she has been lead on the Microsoft News’ Trust Initiative, investigating features and opportunities to improve both user and partner trust in Microsoft News. Her key interests in this space are media literacy and using the technological might of Microsoft to provide the dna of news stories.
Laura Hertzfeld is an Emmy-winning producer, writer, and editor with over a decade of experience helping news organizations develop online content, engagement and distribution strategies. She leads the newly launched XR Partner Program at RYOT/Verizon Media Group, building next-generation projects with Yahoo News, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and more. Laura was a 2018-2019 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University where she researched the intersection of art, immersive storytelling, and journalism. She previously led Journalism 360, an immersive storytelling initiative from Google News Lab, Knight Foundation, and ONA. She has held leadership roles at Entertainment Weekly, Ora TV, and PBS.org and was an editor on the original Yahoo News team.
More speakers to be announced.
ABOUT MICROSOFT NEWS
Microsoft News is a publishing platform that delivers high-quality news from the world’s most popular and trusted publishers, across web and mobile experiences for Microsoft and syndication partners. Our team of 800 editors reaches 500M readers across 180 countries in 31 languages. We’ve delivered $900M in revenue to partners and are on our way to a $1 billion in 2020.
ABOUT THE WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP ACCELERATOR
ONA’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator is a yearlong intensive program that supercharges the leadership and management skills of women who are pushing digital innovation. Each year we welcome a cohort of women representing a range of backgrounds, expertise and newsrooms around the globe.