Grant Michaelson, Vice President, Business Affairs, Disney Branded Television: As vice president of business affairs at Disney Channels Worldwide, Michaelson has a background in entertainment litigation and has moved from entertainment law firms to his current in-house position with Disney, where he works in the realms of Disney +, Disney Channel, and Disney XD. Michaelson will discuss his journey with intellectual property in the entertainment industry, and will describe the intellectual property foundations of Disney and the intellectual property careers in law within Disney's legal affairs department.

Deirdre Thomas, Managing Director, US Audience Measurement, Nielsen: Deirdre is responsible for the commercial strategy and growth of Nielsen’s core U.S. audience measurement product suites: Nielsen ONE, National TV, Local TV, Audio, and Scarborough. Deirdre brings deep digital and x-media expertise to her role, having previously focused on digital solutions and clients. She joined Nielsen in 2011 and has served in a range of digital and x-media focused roles during that time, including client solutions, product, research, and product marketing. Deirdre began her career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, where she was a Business Analyst and later an Associate in the San Francisco Office. She has also managed online performance marketing for QuinStreet and Hotwire. Deirdre graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. She hails from New York and currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband, two young children, and a growing menagerie of pets.

Melanie Brown is the Vice President of Advanced TV at Tubi, leading a team of strategic subject matter experts to bring data and technological capabilities to the forefront of clients’ CTV activations. Melanie began her career in 2012 at one of the first addressable linear television platforms, Visible World, becoming a founding member of AudienceXpress, a wholly owned audience-based media subsidiary of VW. Following the acquisition of VW/AX into Freewheel, Melanie took her experience in linear TV activation and turned to advanced audiences for targeting and measurement, spending time in the TV businesses at Shareablee (now Comscore) and Experian, as well as at VideoAmp, where she led a team focused on the adoption of VideoAmp’s cross-platform planning, allocation, and analytics platform for traditional media buyers. Prior to joining the Tubi team in 2022, Melanie served on the Addressability team at LiveRamp, enabling privacy-safe media activation and measurement across the ad tech ecosystem via the RampID suite of products, with a focus on clients with robust and heavily secured 1P data, including Google, Amazon, Snap, and Tubi.

Ira Rubenstein, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, PBS: As Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, Ira Rubenstein leads digital consumer experiences and marketing for PBS. In this role, Rubenstein focuses on continuing PBS’ digital evolution through the development, implementation and scaling of world-class digital services and marketing content strategies. He also oversees the business intelligence group and leads comprehensive marketing programs to acquire, retain and engage audiences across platforms for the benefit of member stations. Rubenstein joined PBS in 2014 as Senior Vice President and General Manager, PBS Digital, and led the expansion of PBS’ general audience and children’s content to mobile devices, over-the-top (OTT) services and other digital platforms. His accomplishments include an updated PBS.org, which yielded dramatic growth in traffic to station websites and online station donations. He spearheaded the development of Passport, a video offering available through member stations that provides donors on- demand access to a rich library of public television programming. He also led the expansion of PBS Digital Studios, PBS’ network of online-original content. Rubenstein has more than 20 years of experience leading digital entertainment businesses. Prior to PBS, he was Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors for mobile media company MeeMee Media. Rubenstein also served as Executive Vice President, Digital Marketing for 20th Century Fox where he established the Digital Marketing organization and led the team behind ground breaking social and mobile campaigns for Prometheus, Chronicle, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: First Class, and other major motion pictures.

Jonathan Hurd has more than 30 years of consulting and industry experience in Telecommunications, Media, and Technology (TMT). Jonathan has recently been leading Altman Solon’s unique proprietary consumer survey and simulation techniques to analyze the consumer trends in video viewing, movie theater attendance, and sports TV. He has worked with video distributors on product design and pricing of traditional and OTT services and has also been advising broadcast and cable TV networks on product and pricing strategy. In addition, Jonathan is frequently involved in conducting due diligence projects for potential investors in the TMT space, including areas such as traditional video delivery, internet video delivery, wireless infrastructure, digital advertising, and digital publishing. A regular presenter at Digital Hollywood, Streaming Media, and other industry conferences, Jonathan is also a member of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the group charged with investigating and selecting EMMY award recipients for innovative TV technology. Prior to Altman Solon, Jonathan was a Vice President with ADVENTIS, a TMT-focused strategy firm, and was a partner Mercer Management Consulting. Jonathan also held marketing and strategic planning positions at Lotus Development Corporation and he designed and created the Atari arcade video game “Food Fight” while working as a developer. Jonathan received a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Eta Kappa Nu Electrical Engineering Honor Society and the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society.