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ONLINE JURY
IDMA
TECH MANCH
IDMA 2018 Finalists
Winners IDMA 2018
S Ravi Kant
CEO – Watches & Accessories & EVP Corporate Communications
CEO – Watches & Accessories & EVP Corporate Communications, Titan Company Ltd
Ravi heads the Watches & Accessories business of the Company as its CEO and Executive Vice President. He also handles the additional responsibility of leading Corporate Communications for the Company.
Ravi completed his Masters in Business Management from FMS Delhi in 1982 and started his career with HCL, handling different sales and marketing responsibilities. He joined Titan in 1988 as Head- Direct Marketing and moved on to head Retailing, followed by Exports and also set up the watch assembly plant in Dehradun as Project Leader. Till 2005 Ravi managed the Middle East and Africa operations for watches, jewellery and fragrances as M.D. of Titan International (ME), based at Dubai. He subsequently moved back to the Company headquarters at Bangalore and took over the International Business Division – managing both businesses – watches and jewellery in over 25 countries. Ravi then moved to set up a new business of the Company as CEO- Eyewear and established Titan Eye Plus as a national chain of optical stores backed by a state-of- the-art lens manufacturing facility. He took over the watches business in 2015.
Vipul Chawla
Managing Director - Asia pacific
Managing Director - Asia pacific, (Pizza Hut) Yum! Brand's
Vipul is the Managing Director – Pizza Hut, Asia Pacific, the largest Pizza Hut system outside of the United States, within Yum! Brands.
He is also a member of the International Leadership Team for Pizza Hut! With more than 4800 restaurants, circa $4bn system sales, 16 countries, Pizza Hut Asia Pacific is a market leader, double the size of its nearest competitor, and 29th on the list of Asia's most trusted brands. He is also on the Merchant Advisory Council for Visa Inc. Asia, and a board member of the Mobile Marketers Association – Asia.
In 2011, Vipul joined Yum!as Chief Marketing Officer for Yum! Asia FBU with responsibility for KFC, a brand with a regional footprint of approximately 3,000 restaurants with annual turnover of US $ 3 Billion.
Having worked with Unilever for 19 years in Asia and UK prior to joining Yum!, Vipul was Vice President for one of the personal care categories within Unilever Asia, responsible for the Oral Care business, and was the global leader for Close Up, and the health care platforms. He was also on the leadership teams for Unilever South Asia and Unilever China.
In 2013, Vipul was named as one of the 50 leading marketers in Asia by the Internationalist.
Married to Shefali for 21 years, they have one daughter, 17, going on 21!!
Valedictory Address
Sanjiv Mehta
CEO & MD,
Hindustan Unilever Limited
EVP Unilever South Asia
CEO & MD, Hindustan Unilever Limited I EVP Unilever South Asia
Mr Sanjiv Mehta is the CEO & Managing Director of Hindustan Unilever Limited. He also leads Unilever's business in South Asia as the Executive Vice President.
Sanjiv took over as the CEO and Managing Director of HUL in October 2013. He has done his Bachelors in Commerce (India), Chartered Accountancy (India) and has also completed his Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School. Sanjiv has been with Unilever for 25 years and for the last 16 years has led businesses in different parts of the world. He has been Chairman and Managing Director of Unilever Bangladesh Limited (2002-06), Chairman and CEO of Unilever Philippines Inc. (2007 -08) and Chairman of Unilever - North Africa & Middle East (2008 – September 2013). Sanjiv is on the South Asia Advisory Board of Harvard Business School. He is also on the Indian Advisory Boards of Enactus, HSBC's 'Skills for Life' and Xynteo's 'India 2022' coalition. He is the Vice President of Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry and member of National Committees of CII and FICCI.
GLOBAL SPEAKERS
Deirdre McGlashan
Global Chief Digital Officer
Global Chief Digital Officer, MediaCom
Having started during the heady boom days of late 90's San Francisco, Deirdre McGlashan has been involved in all aspects of digital marketing throughout her career, from strategy to media to technical development and everything in between. As Global Chief Digital Officer for MediaCom, her role is to ensure the full power of technology and interactivity is utilised to drive business growth for clients' brands, from thinking about the entire marketing system when developing communications solutions, to harnessing and using different types of data for identifying opportunities, solutioning and execution, through to delivering specialist excellence in activation. Having this understanding of the holistic digital picture and experience with how things are built from the very beginning has given her a strong base to help clients make the most of their Content + Connections.
Prior to this role, she was Head of Digital, Global Clients for Aegis Media for three years and before that the CEO of wwwins Isobar Greater China (an Aegis Media company), a team of 220 digital specialists across strategy, creative, technology and media across Greater China. In the independent agency space, Deirdre was a Founding Partner at AnalogFolk, a multi-disciplinary marketing communications agency in London that fuses both analog and digital communications channels.
CEO & Co-Founder, TopRank Marketing
Marketing Strategist, Author & Speaker
Forbes Top 20 CMO Influencers of 2017
Lee Odden is a marketing strategist, author, speaker and CEO of TopRank Marketing, a digital marketing agency that provides strategic consulting and program implementation services for top B2B and B2C brands including McKesson, SAP, LinkedIn, State Farm, Dell and 3M.
Lee's team of 30+ consultants are pioneers at developing and implementing "best answer" marketing strategies that integrate content, search, social, influencer marketing and online advertising. Lee's team are winners of the Killer Content Marketing Award for an integrated content, social and influencer program that generated over 200,000 views, 4,000 asset downloads and 1,000 leads. In 2018 TopRank Marketing won another Killer Content Marketing Award along with client Cherwell for an influencer marketing campaign that achieved record levels of awareness and 22% of new pipeline revenue for all of 2017.
Recognized for his expertise, Onlaytica has ranked Lee as one of the top content and social media marketing influencers in the world and Brand24 has ranked Lee as one of the top 100 digital marketers globally.
Cited by the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes for his marketing expertise, Lee has evangelized a customer-centric approach to marketing at over 200 events in 17 different countries through numerous editorial columns in industry publications and on toprankblog.com, the only marketing blog ranked the #1 content marketing blog by Content Marketing Institute three times.
Lee is also the author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing, published by Wiley.
A little known fact about Lee is that he started the infamous Facebook group dedicated to marketers with beards, cleverly called, "Marketers with Beards". When he's not in full stack marketing mode, he's traveling the world, spending time with his family and finding new ways to burn perfectly good food in the kitchen.
Amit Gujral
Chief Marketing Officer, LG Electronics India
Mr. Gujral's responsibilities at LG India include, Brand Management, Digital/Social Marketing, CRM, Media, PR, CSR & Govt. Relations . He is responsible for the development and delivery of a fully integrated marketing & communication strategy for the business. He joined LG India in September 2009.
He brings with him a rich experience and understanding of the Indian technology industry. His career reflects hands on experience in the areas of marketing, sales, product planning, value added services, strategy, R&D and business planning.
Most viewed Indian digital video in 2017
Under his leadership LG India set new records including most viewed Indian video film ( LG astronaut brand film) which was conceptualised & composed by him. The film has set new milestones & won various accolades. On the special occasion of LG India's20 th anniversary, the company had rolled out a unique 'Astronaut video' showcasing brilliantly how dreams come true with LG. The digital video which featured across LG's website and other digital platforms including its social media channels, has received an overwhelming response from viewers and has hit more than 100 million views.
To salute armed forces LG India launched "Kar Salaam" campaign under which people of India pored their heart out in form of messages on sticky notes and a new Guinness record was set. This was an all India campaign with an integrated marketing approach including retail activation & digital . Post this campaign LG India added 10,000 new face book fans & trended on twitter at no 1. This campaign was also conceptualized by Mr. Amit Gujral.
Education & Past experience
Mr. Gujral is a Computer Science Engineering Graduate and is in the Industry since last 23 Years. Prior to joining LG, he had a stint with companies such as BEL, HCL, Flextronics, LG Soft India.
Filmmaker, Lyricist, Poet
Writer & Journalist
Filmmaker, Lyricist, Poet, Writer & Journalist
Ravi Santhanam
Chief Marketing Officer, HDFC Bank
Ravi Santhanam's journey into marketing has taken a truly unconventional path, through automobile, finance, power & telecom. An Engineer and an MBA from IIM Kolkata, Ravi has worked across Industries and geographies covering Strategy, M&A, Operational & Functional leadership roles.
In 1995, straight out of B-school and motivated by a keen interest in finance, he joined ICICI Bank, practicing project finance for three-and-a-half years. He then joined UK-based energy company PowerGen, and looked after investment analysis based out of its India office. After spending 3 years there, Ravi decided to move on to a sector that was growing rapidly – telecom.
He joined Reliance Communications in 2002 and there he was instrumental in setting up the Corporate Mobility, Public Access and Enterprise Businesses, before moving on to head the Public Access business as its National Head. In 2009 he moved on to the mobility side as Head of Maharashtra.
Ravi moved to Vodafone in 2010 as its COO for Uttar Pradesh to handle a vastly rural area. In 2013, he moved back to Mumbai to spearhead the newly created business vertical of Data, Devices, Content & Innovation. He was accountable for the growing Data business and feels privileged to have contributed to the current data led revolution that is happening in the country.
In March 2017, Ravi joined HDFC Bank, India's No.1 Bank as CMO. As CMO he is now tasked with furthering the Banks Brand metrics and digitizing the entire customer experience.
A passionate football fan, Ravi is married with two teenage kids who he believes are his primary teacher on all things digital and digital experience.
Lloyd Mathias
Former Asia – PAC Marketing Head
Former Asia – PAC Marketing Head, HP Inc
Lloyd Mathias has held senior leadership roles in sales, marketing & business development in Fortune 500 companies, across India & Asia-PAC in Consumer Goods, Telecoms and Technology.
Until June 2017, Lloyd was the marketing head of HP's $2.2 billion Consumer PC business across Asia Pacific & Japan, based out of Singapore.
In previous corporate roles he was President & CMO at Tata Docomo and Senior Sales Director for Motorola's Mobile phone business in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Lloyd had his basic grounding in consumer goods spending 12 years with PepsiCo. His last role was Executive VP Marketing and Category Director for PepsiCo's beverages in India.
He has been Chairman of MRUC the publishers of the Indian Readership Survey IRS, Co-Chair of the Device Strategy Council of the Worldwide Mobility Development Group and Asia Board Member of the CMO Council.
Lloyd is a science graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai; has an MBA from the University of Bombay and completed a Senior Executive Program at the London Business School.
In 2007 he named among the world's top 15 marketers, by Inter national list magazine – a list that celebrates those international marketers behind outstanding cross border campaigns.
Rahul Gautam
Vice President, Marketing
Vice President, Marketing, Ford India
Shoumyan Biswas
Head of Marketing, Flipkart India
As the Head of Marketing for Flipkart India, Shoumyan is responsible for the Brand Building, Marketing, Growth and Ad Sales Strategy and Execution for Flipkart including all its categories, private labels and product/solutions in India. With 15 years of experience with diverse industries, he comes with rich expertise in the creation of brand positioning and architecture and experience of having conceptualized and executed highly creative, award winning and results driven Marketing campaigns.
Ulf Smedberg
Country Marketing Manager
Country Marketing Manager, IKEA India
Ulf Smedberg has 20 years of experience in Marketing in IKEA. He has held multiple roles in marketing across geographies including Sweden, Belgium, China, Russia and Korea. Ulf is a member of IKEA country boards in Korea and Australia and also works closely with IKEA global communication.
Ulf Smedberg joined IKEA India in 2013. He is responsible for positioning the brand, marketing efficiency and effectiveness across the Asia Pacific region and supports the country marketing teams by sharing best practices, implementing new tools, methods and ways of working.
Prior to India, his last assignment was to spear head Marketing for opening up IKEA store in South Korea, one of the best performing stores today.
In India, Ulf is the brand custodian and is responsible for all marketing communications, range communication, build-up of the IKEA digital platforms, IKEA India Catalogue, and IKEA Family, the loyalty program for customers.
Ulf lives in Bengaluru, India. He is married with two daughters, loves to travel and is passionate about discovering people and places. His hobbies include running, badminton and swimming.
John Thankamony
Head Programmatic Advertising
Head Programmatic Advertising, Mindshare
John is the Head of Programmatic for Mindshare India. He is focused on driving programmatic adoption and enhancing the product offering available to Mindshare clients. He has driven programmatic adoption and implementation for global and local clients such as GSK, General Motors, Mondelēz, Burberry, Adidas and Marina Bay Sands. For a number of these clients, he helped establish planning, ad operations, optimization, data management, reporting and analytics processes.
John was previously at programmatic leadership roles in SEA, leading regional teams, comprised of programmatic specialists and analysts across Singapore, Hong Kong and 4 other regional markets.
He has previously worked at Amnet, CtrlShift and Google.
Panel Members
Abhijit Shah
CTO, DCB Bank
Abhishek Ahluwalia
Head – eCommerce - India
Head – eCommerce - India, Mondelēz International
Abhishek Ahluwalia heads Mondelēz International's eCommerce business in India. We have an ambitious target to generate $1bn in e-commerce revenue globally by 2020. In his role, Abhishek is leading this rapid growth agenda in India. Prior to joining Mondelēz International, he spent 15+ years in Brand Management, Commercial & Digital roles, across Alcobev, Tobacco and FMCG sectors, in MENA, SEA and India. Abhishek's mantra in life – "Take chances and don't play safe, keep bar always high"
Ajay Kaul
Chief Digital Officer, Mahindra Group
Ajay Kaul has over 20 years of global marketing and executive management experience and has served across various global brands in USA and India.
Ajay Kaul is presently Chief Digital Officer at Mahindra Group. He oversees the digital marketing and business transformation for Mahindra Holidays. Prior to this role, Ajay was with Google as the Director for Google's North America business, responsible for helping Google's largest customers meet their digital marketing objectives and managed campaign optimizations for fortune 500 customers of Google.
Prior to Google, Ajay was with Lenovo where he served as the Executive Director for Lenovo's Global Brand Communications and analytics hub in Bangalore.
Ajay joined Lenovo from Dell. At Dell he played a key role in establishing Dell as a #1 SMB brand in the PC category in North America.
An MBA graduate of the Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota, Ajay also has an undergrad degree in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering from India's National Institute of technology Srinagar.
Ankit Desai
Head Media & Digital Marketing
Head Media & Digital Marketing, Marico
Ankush Manchanda
Head Digital Marketing – Middle East, Africa, India, South East Asia
Head Digital Marketing – Middle East, Africa, India, South East Asia, Bacardi
Ankush is the Regional Lead for Digital and PR marketing communications for Bacardi's portfolio of iconic brands, across the Asia, Middle East and Africa region. He also leads 1862 - Bacardi's Global Digital Centre of Excellence; delivering brand point of view via content and generating insights through digital behavior.
Ankush has worked in the alcohol and spirits business since he joined Bacardi as Head of Digital for India in 2012. He has a total of 14 years of work experience in the digital and mobile space. During his career, Ankush has successfully led the Delhi Branch of Resultrix – A Performance Agency and set up the digital infrastructure and marketing communications team at Virgin Mobile.
Arindam Biswas
Head – Digital Intelligence COE
Head – Digital Intelligence COE, FedEx Express
Mr. Arindam Biswas leads the Digital Intelligence COE at FedEx India. Arindam is responsible for driving the digital transformation strategy, innovation and thought leadership to steadily and securely steer FedEx into the rapidly evolving Digital era.
Arindam has 16+ years of rich and diverse experience in the areas of Data Science, Machine Learning, Big Data and Predictive Analytics. In his previous roles, he has been closely associated with multiple Fortune 500 organizations in envisioning innovative and award winning analytics solutions to establish competitive advantage.
Arindam holds a PGDM (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Gold Medalist in B.E. (Electrical Engineering) from Indore University.
Arindam is passionate about mentoring aspiring Big Data and Data Science practitioners in both academic and professional circles. He is a frequent speaker at analytics conferences and has conducted multiple workshops on analytics in the U.S. and India.
Arindam currently shuttles his time between Mumbai and Memphis, USA.
(Session Chair)
Devendra Deshpande
Head - Content Plus
Head - Content Plus, Mindshare
Jyoti Kumar Bansal
Managing Director, PHD India
Jyoti Kumar Bansal, an Engineer-MBA by education, entered the field of media right out of B-School and has worked across traditional and digital media in a career spanning 19 years. Jyoti has also dabbled in research & product development with an online publisher, when digital was still being evangelized by angel investors in the country.
Starting her career with Lintas in 1995 and having worked with multiple media houses like MediaCom, MPG (Havas Media) and Webdunia, Jyoti is no stranger to developing cutting edge media solutions for clients. Jyoti has been leading PHD India since its launch in 2013, and has built it to a 200M USD agency in 3 years, with key clients like Unilever, Volkswagen Group, HP, SAP, S C Johnson
Before taking on this role, Jyoti was leading the new business development efforts of Omnicom Media Group in India very successfully and was informally evangelizing 360D media solutions for clients within the Agency.
Her key strength is her strong understanding of all disciplines of media including traditional, digital, entertainment content and sports, the last three of which she helped set up in her previous stint. A strong believer in seamless media solutions across platforms, Jyoti's motto is 'the consumer merges & consumes media seamlessly in their life; our media & communications solutions have to reflect this'.
Manav Sethi
CMO, ALTBalaji
Manav Sethi leads ALTBalaji as the Chief Marketing Officer. He launched this platform in April 2017 and oversees the company's overall communication strategy in India and internationally.
In his last role at Getit he launched multiple businesses and brands in India and Malaysia across Yellow pages, Horizontal Marketplace and verticals like grocery and furniture, mobile wallet and a merchant lending platform.
At Reliance Big Entertainment, he was the founder of then India's largest online local search platform that got investment interests from Navteq & acquisition interest from Justdial. While at Reliance, he also worked on launching businesses across FM Radio, Music, Motion Pictures, Movie rental & download, online gaming & a JV with Dreamworks Animation SKG.
In his earlier stints, Manav exited a startup in stealth mode that created an IP that helped telecom towers reduce their energy costs.
He has formal education in Management and Law.
Sr. VP - Digital Marketing & Innovations
Sr. VP - Digital Marketing & Innovations, Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited
Manish Agarwal is currently the Senior Vice President - Digital Business. He was instrumental in launching the industry first , complete DIY Bank Account – Kotak 811. His responsibilities are to provide Direction & Strategy for leveraging the constantly evolving channels of Internet & Mobile for every aspect of the business and create visible differentiation in the mind of consumers.
He is based in India and has over 20 years of experience in Sales & Interactive Services. Before Kotak, Manish was with ICICI bank, where he spear headed acritical project–with World Bank & IBM to launch an online tool for information, mentoring & business for Small & medium Enterprises. He also drove the Go Green Initiative with ICICI, where customers were driven to E channels to save environment. Previously, he has worked with the SIFY, India's pioneer Internet Company, managing the business development function for web basedsolutions.
Manish has been thricepart of TOP100fintech leaders in Asia - http://www.fintechfinals.com/fintechasia100/ . He is a Mentor@StartupBootCamp&Jury@EFMA Innovation.
He is a soughtafter speaker on IT, social media, new age technology & embracing the next generation tools for business. As a national speaker on IT issues, he has spread the message of innovation with insights into the future of web technology and how it will shape the way of doing business, in the times to come.
Neel Pandya
Head of Media
L' Oreal
Head of Media, L' Oreal
A marketing professional with extensive experience in Digital and traditional media strategy and a proven track record of consistent media deliveries and large teams. Currently work as the National Media & Digital Head at L'OREAL India working on large brands like Garnier, Maybelline, L'OREAL Paris, NYX and professional division. It's been more than 10 years of my career working as media planning & buying expert with focused digital marketing and research expertise in FMCG (Unilever) and Telecom (Vodafone). Currently I am part of L'OREAL India's national brand team heading the digital and traditional media for the brand.
In his 10+ years of work experience he has worked as Media and marketing expert across various advertisers like Vodafone, HUL & Future Groups. His last role of Sr. Media Director of the most complex and challenging category in FMCG - Hair Care, he was responsible of leading media planning of brands like Clinic Plus (India's no. 1 Shampoo brands), Dove, Sunsilk, TRESemme, Clear Anti Dandruff and Brylcream. He has been as Strategist at TAM Media India Pvt. Ltd for more than 3 years prior to joining Mindshare.
Neel Pandya has done his MBA specializing in Marketing in 2006-2008. He has been awarded as "Young Emvie of the Year" by most recognized advertising forum in the country. He also has been nominated as Young Achiever across South Asia for his work at Mindshare in the year 2013.
Key Skill Sets : Media Planning and Buying / Media Strategy / Advertising / Brand Management / Event Management / Marketing Strategy / Market Research / Media Research.
Nishant Radia
Co-Founder & CMO
Co-Founder & CMO, Vidooly
Nishant Radia co-founded Vidooly in 2014 and currently serves as its Chief Marketing Officer. Before starting Vidooly, Nishant worked for Headstrong &IndiaMART. He helped IndiaMART's initiative business unit to achieve million dollar revenues & then took a plunge for starting up. He is an Electronics Engineer from Amity University, Noida. Apart from being an influential person in the online video ecosystem, Nishant is also a trustee at Rita Radia Foundation For Cancer Awareness & Detection, a non-profit charitable organisation and a member of Project Chirag.
Prasad Shejale
Co Founder & CEO
Co Founder & CEO, Logicserve Digital
Prasad Shejale is a lover of 'All things Digital'. For him digital is a huge universe where each marketing tool and platform plays its vital role in benefitting the client's need.
And if you catch him in his break with a cup of chai he will let you in on his secret love for display and search marketing. His passion for digital marketing and a sense of understanding people makes him a unique entrepreneur who knows how to transfer an effective idea into a successful campaign.
An IIT Chennai Alumnus, his intuitiveness makes him a go-to for any solutions or converting ideas into reality. He Cofounded Logicserve Group in 2007 and grew it from a small team to a high performing result-oriented group. He spearheads Logicserve Digital, the Indian arm of Logicserve Group.
Why you should listen to him? An entrepreneur with experience and exposure not just of the Indian Digital Marketing space, but also Global Digital space, Prasad Shejale offers unique insights on what can and is actionable for the services that you provide. An expert in performance marketing, his solutions and analysis enables one to reach not just the 'why' but also the 'how' of every solution.
Prasad has been instrumental in:
Setting up and Growing Integrated Digital Media agencies in UK & India
Setting up successful consumer facing products in India and Europe
Enabling the agency to become a DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner in India
Prasad is an amateur photographer and an avid follower of eCommerce trends across the world. Recently, he was interviwed at ad:tech, one of India's largest digital marketing conference, wherein, he shared his insights on the future of digital marketing.
Listing down some key events that Prasad was a part of in 2017 & will be participating in early 2018:
• Moderator at India Digital Summit 2018 for a panel discussion on 'Mastering cross device marketing in an attention deficit world'
• Jury member at India Digital Summit 2018
• Panelist at World Digital Marketing Congress 2018 on the topic 'The digital marketing lifecycle: the new world of one screen' on 13th February 2018
• Panelist at Adtech 2018 on the topic 'Next generation of programmatic solutions'
• Grand Jury member at exchange4media's Prime Time Awards 2017
• Panelist at iMedia Brand Summit 2017 on the topic 'Is taking Programmatic In-House the Best Decision for Brands?'
• Panelist at Fireside Chat by DoubleClick on the topic 'Programmatic Media: The Evolving Indian Landscape' at Google, Gurugram
• Panelist at 2nd Modern Marketing Summit (MMS), 25th October 2017 on the topic 'The right measure for video on mobile'
• Panelist at India Affiliate Summit (6th October 2017) on the topic 'Email marketing – influential or misleading?'
• Panelist at CDO Converge & Digital Industry Awards 2017 (4th October 2017) on the topic 'From User Experience To Customer Experience – The Expanding Role Of Digital Across Organizations'
• Panelist at the India Affiliate Summit on the topic 'Means or End – Last Click v/s Multi-click attribution'
• Keynote speaker at the International Marketing Conference on Digital Disruption at ISB Mumbai • Panelist at Adtech Delhi 2017 on the topic 'The Top Challenges of Performance Marketing Revolution'
• Jury member at Digixx 2017 by Adgully in partnership with Adtech Delhi 2017
• Speaker at the National Digital Marketing Congress 2017
• Moderator at IAMAI Digital Summit 2017 for Panel Discussion on 'Understanding Mobile Users' • Panelist at BBC Knowledge National Digital Marketing Conference & Awards 2017 on the topic 'The Advent of Digital Intelligence Systems & What This Could Mean For Your Customer Experience'
• Featured in ad:tech, one of India's largest digital marketing events' newsletter.
• Moderator at Kerala Digital Summit 2017 on the topic "Digital Marketing for Business Promotion"
Associate Director - Integrated Marketing Communications, India; Head of Media for APAC Division
Associate Director - Integrated Marketing Communications, India; Head of Media for APAC Division, Colgate Palmolive
A Media & Communications professional, with 19-years of experience in functional leadership roles across India's marquee CPG company-Colgate Palmolive and leading media & marketing services companies.
Priyanka joined Colgate Palmolive (CP) in 2008 and since then has grown from handling the media portfolio to then additionally taking over Digital Marketing & now leading the entire Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) for the Colgate Palmolive India. Additionally, she also manages some key media responsibility for Asia Pacific region.
Before CP India, Priyanka spent over 9 years (many of which in leadership positions) in India's top media & communications agencies including Madison Communications, Carat (Dentsu Aegis Network) and Starcom (Public Group) where she managed & led media businesses like Mondelez, Marico, Godrej, ICICI among others.
Rajiv Dingra
Founder & CEO – WATConsult
Rajiv Dingra is the Founder and CEO of WATConsult, the most awarded digital and social media agency of India, founded in the year 2007.
An entrepreneur and a thought leader in the digital space, Rajiv started his journey in the digital space at a young age of 22 years. Currently he leads a team of 400 people at WATConsult, which is headquartered in Mumbai, and has offices in Delhi and Bangalore.
In January 2015 Rajiv sold majority stake in WATConsult and became a part of global advertising network - Dentsu Aegis Network.
A great storyteller, Rajiv has been speaking globally at digital and social media seminars and forums across New York, Bangkok, Dubai, Amsterdam, London, Malaysia and Africa along with India. He is an active jury member across prestigious awards shows like M&M Global Awards, Effies, DMA Echo, Smarties, Abbys, IDMA and many others, along with being a speaker at TEDx Mica 2018.
Over the last 11 years, Rajiv has worked with more than 100 global and Indian brands for their digital media campaigns and strategies. Under his guidance and leadership WATConsult has won over 150+ digital and social media awards for work done across distinct marketing campaigns.
In the last one year, under Rajiv's leadership, WATConsult has grown from a 220 member team in 2017 to 400 member team in 2018.
Rajiv was featured in The Drum's The Digerati Asia Pacific 2018, Campaign Asia 40 under 40 list of advertising media and marcomm professionals across APAC region. He has also featured as a Linkedin Power Profile for Marketing and Advertising category for 2 years consecutively (2016 & 2017) in India. He has won 'The Young Social Media Entrepreneur of the Year' at CMO Asia Singapore (2015) and the Agency CEO of the year (runner up) at the Media Ace Awards (2016). He is also a part of the Digital Council and the Executive Board at Dentsu Aegis Network India.
He is a guest lecturer at IIM Calcutta and MICA Ahmedabad and has also been actively involved in conducting workshops for social and digital media across India, Dubai, Sri Lanka and Turkey.
A travel enthusiast and adventure junkie, Rajiv has been to 27 countries in the last 10 years where he has dived in the waters of Bali, Maldives, Vietnam, South Africa, Thailand and Mauritius as an amateur scuba diver and has flown a two-seater plane in UAE and a helicopter in New York!
Beyond travel and adventure Rajiv is a big movie buff and a cricket fan, who enjoys it with a tub of caramel popcorn on weekends!
Rakesh Yadav
CEO & Co-Founder – Ad Global 360
Rakesh is the CEO and Co-Founder of AdGlobal360, India's largest independently held Digital Agency in India. Founded in 2009, Rakesh's vision has been to change the mundane to exciting using innovative marketing.
Rakesh is a serial entrepreneur having started his own venture TechSila, a software services company back in 2007. Prior to that, he had a successful stint with eBusinessware India Pvt. Ltd as the Technical Lead.
Rakesh believes that great businesses can be successful if not marketed in the right manner. He has been instrumental in scaling up the organization to more than 600 global clients. Rakesh's current focus is to use some of the best tracking and analytic tools available on the Internet for businesses, and develop newer ones wherever required to achieve the desired marketing objective.
Rakesh is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur having completed his BTech from the institute. He is also an active member of the entrepreneurial community in the Delhi NCR region in India and is working towards creating an ecosystem for future startups to benefit from the experience of successful predecessors in different domains.
Shamsuddin Jasani
Managing Director, Isobar India
Shamsuddin Jasani Managing Director Isobar India, Practice head Media and Programmatic Isobar APAC, Exec Sponsor AMNET India
Shamsuddin Jasani (Shams) has been in the digital industry for over 17 years. He launched Isobar in India in August 2008, he has grown the agency's billing size from zero to USD 150 million and staff number grew from four to 200-member strong team.
Under his leadership, the agency has been achieved the distinction of being the Digital Agency of the year for India for three years running from2015-2017 as well as south asia for two years which is given by Campaign Asia, Isobar has also won Digital Agency of the Year India Silver awards in 2012, 2014 and . Isobar also debuted at number 4 on top digital agencies in the Brand Equity Agency reckoner for 2015. He also oversees the AMNET operations in India. Shams is also a board committee of Dentsu Aegis Network's Management in India as well as leading the charge on digital as a part of the Digital Council for Dentsu Aegis Network. During his tenure with Isobar, he has overseen two successful acquisitions.
He's been named an A-Lister on Campaign India's top 500 people in advertising and marketing list and has featured on e4m's Impact Magazine's Digital Power100 list last two years in a row. He was also voted by brand equity as one of media's valued players by brand equity across media's. He is one of the few people who has an experience as a Media Owner, agency and client.
Sabyasachi Mitter
Managing Director, Fulcro
Samir Bangara
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Qyuki Digital Media
Co-Founder & Managing Director, Qyuki Digital Media
Shouneel Charles
Senior Vice President & Business Head
Senior Vice President & Business Head, Timesnownews.Com
"Shouneel is presently the business head of timesnownews.com, India's fastest growing digital news publisher. Previously, he was the head of Revenue, Marketing and Sales for the global digital media business of NDTV. He has over 16 years of experience in the media industry and has previously worked with Yahoo!, Time Warner and News Corp. In his current role and based on his experience in the television broadcasting space, he specializes in taking traditional TV broadcast content to the internet and mobile and creating successful monetization models and strategies as audiences move to consuming content on new digital platforms. Shouneel has an MBA from The ENPC Business School in Paris, where he majored in International Finance.
Suveer Bajaj
Co-founder, FoxyMoron
As one of the Co-founders of FoxyMoron, Suveer's responsibilities include building across Strategic Alliances, Corporate Developments, Media Buying and Planning, Data Analytics and Content Production.
A management graduate from Mumbai University, Suveer also possesses a Bachelor's degree in Law and looks after the corporate functions of the agency as well.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suveerbajaj
Twitter: @suveer_b
About FoxyMoron
FoxyMoron is a leading digital marketing and media solutions agency. By placing innovation above all, this agency aspires to make every campaign a unique one. Founded in 2008, the company has grown to become one of India's leading independent digital marketing agencies that offers a wide suite of digital marketing services including social media marketing, website and app development, search marketing, media planning and buying, video production and PR. With a talent pool of over 200 employees across Mumbai, Gurgaon and Bangalore, FoxyMoron continues to deliver effective digital marketing solutions for some of the most sought-after clients in India including Castrol Group, Aditya Birla Capital, L'Oreal Group, SAB Miller Group, Turner International, Bennett Coleman Group, Kraft Heinz India, OLX, Burger King, COTY, Celio, HOOQ and GoAir, among many others.
Vikram Tanna
VP, Head of Advertising Sales and Business Head of Regional Clusters, South Asia
VP, Head of Advertising Sales and Business Head of Regional Clusters, South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific
An industry veteran, Tanna brings with him over two decades of experience spanning the broadcast, gaming and online industries. Prior joining Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, Tannawas with Star India where he was working as Senior Vice President leading Product & Revenue strategy for three of the major channel clusters- Hindi Movies & Music and HSM Regional Channels (West Bengal & Maharashtra). He has grown in various roles at Star from heading revenue for Channel V, Star Digital & V Events. Prior to Star, Tanna was the revenue lead for Zapak Digital Entertainment that operated the online gaming portal. Earlier in his career, he worked with MTV for two years and with Star Movies and Star World.
Tanna has done MBA in marketing from Mumbai University and is a visiting faculty at management institutes in Mumbai. Tannais based out of Mumbai and reports to Karan Bajaj, SVP and GM-South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia Pacific.
Vinod Thadani
Chief Digital Officer South Asia
Chief Digital Officer South Asia, Mindshare
Vinod Thadani joined GroupM in 2004 as a 5 th employee in Digital Team & today it's a 500+ member army. For over 17 years he has been championing the digital ecosystem & adapting himself to the changing market needs. His foresight about a mobile first approach helped him launch Madhouse – A mobile solutions company - a JV btw WPP & Madhouse China in 2012. Managing to break even and stabilize the company in 2 years he understood the need to integrate digital within overall communications vs a specialized function and since them has lead the digital practice @ Mindshare – South Asia.
Key achievements:
1. Driving digital accountability
2. Tech incubation
3. Innovation
4. Industry representation
5. Business impact & making sure MS is the most awarded Digital Agency from 2014 onwards
1. Ankit Desai profile is already mentioned on Online Jury link. Kindly pick from there.
2. Will be sending for Ankush Manchanda
3. Rest Amisha is in touch with Devendra
Vishal Chinchankar
Chief Digital Officer, Madison
Vishal Chinchankar is a senior leader with 20+ years of experience in domestic and International markets managing marketing & sales, P&L responsibility, new product development, involving both startup and growth organizations. He's currently the Chief Digital Officer at Madison Media & in the past he has worked in Group M - MEC, Reliance ADA Group in a digital marketing role & VAS business for Reliance DTH, Mindshare Singapore, Mediaturf, & Business World
High energy, inclusive people leader with proven success in marketing services and business development for multi-million-dollar digital advertising organizations. Track record of increasing PBT in multiple folds. Exceled in dynamic, demanding and matrix environments & Also an active speaker in Digital Marketing events like Ad-tech, Nasscom, IAMAI, Industry Forums & B-schools.
Vivek Bharagava
CEO, DAN Performance Group
© 2018 exchange4media. All Rights Reserved.
WINNING CASETUDIES 2017
IDMA 2017


Baroness King of Bow - My speech to Parliament January 9th 2014 – on the need for affordable childcare.
When I previously had two pre-school children, the cost for me to place them in the local children's centre was £880 per child, or £1,760 per month. That is why, as my noble friend Lady Prosser said, once you have two pre-school kids it is simply impossible for most people to afford that childcare. At the time I had what most people would consider to be a really good job. I was senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister but still I could not afford to spend £1,760 a month on childcare. So I left Downing Street and got a job where I could afford more childcare. So what? Who cares? My point is this: if you are a woman working in the Prime Minister's Office and your employment choices are governed by the lack of affordable childcare, then you know that women with fewer resources and fewer networks have no chance at all of being able to pay for childcare out of their salary. They are forced to stay at home or make arrangements for their children that put those children at risk and do not take care of them.
Many others can hold down a job only if they have a sympathetic boss. Working mothers and working parents, therefore, often become unfairly beholden to the individual views of their boss. I was in a situation—a lot of us have been—in which I had a sympathetic boss. My boss in Downing Street was, after all, the first Chancellor and then Prime Minister to recognise the importance of massively increasing funding for childcare. He recognised that it was a national investment, as important in terms of infrastructure—certainly to women—as, say, transport.
Notwithstanding that, when I arrived at the local childcare centre that I mentioned and found a sign on the gate saying, "Closed due to staff sickness", I felt sick in my stomach because I was due to have my first one-to-one briefing with the Prime Minister on my policy area. It was Sod's law. I arrived in Downing Street with a 16 month-old on my hip and was shown in to see Gordon Brown, who had a face like thunder. To be fair, he often has a face like thunder, so I was not entirely sure if it was because I had a baby on my hip. However, I knew that I would not be pleased if a member of my staff turned up with a baby on their hip for a meeting. The baby started to cry, I was jiggling him and when I turned back, Gordon had disappeared. I thought, "Oh my God! He's just walked out and is going to sack me. He is outraged and I do not really blame him that much". Then his head popped out from the side of his desk. He was on his hands and knees and he said, "Maybe your son will like this little train set. My sons play with it". He pushed it round and round for 10 minutes, and then said, "I think he's settled now; we can get down to business".
The point is that even though he was a sympathetic boss, let me get away with bringing the baby into the office, presided over a sea change in funding for childcare, and created and funded Sure Start, the fact is that now we see the gains falling back. Too often we see Sure Start being used as a political football or, indeed, not being used at all. When Labour was in power, Michael Gove said, "The Tories may well be wary of Sure Start because they believe it is the nationalisation of childcare". If childcare is affordable and of high quality, I frankly do not mind who provides it, whether it is the voluntary sector, the private sector or the state. In reality, it is only the Government who can ensure that affordable, quality childcare is available to all children who need it. I thought that the point made by my noble friend Lady Prosser about the role that trade unions have played in providing childcare was important. I am reminded of the school run that I do each morning. Every day I pass a small blue plaque at the bottom of my street saying that this is where Sylvia Pankhurst set up the first crèche for working women—those otherwise known as the matchstick girls. Of course, times have changed since then, but not enough. Although we have poured in that money—and I recognise some of the very important points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin—we need to be smarter about how we invest it. We need to do as well as or better than our European competitors. However, I imagine that as well as spending the money more smartly, if we are to deal with all those children—and parents—who need childcare we are also going to have to bite the bullet and invest more.
This is where we come to the nub of this debate. What is the case for increasing access to affordable childcare? We have the economic case and we know that it is worth £15 billion to £23 billion per annum to the Exchequer, but what is the social case? In my few remaining minutes, I want to talk about how childcare impacts on tackling inequality and on improving social mobility, and how it can also improve parenting across social classes. I hope that we will also take note of the early intervention debate and how we can improve outcomes.
"by age 3, there are already large gaps in cognitive and other areas of development between children with high-income or well educated parents and those with low-income or less well educated parents. These gaps get harder and more expensive to tackle as children get older".
The point is that if we cannot come to a political consensus in this country that we need to invest in this area then we will just spend more and more of our money at the other end of the system in crisis, and that is not an intelligent way for us to spend our money. The OECD has stated that greater spend and higher enrolment in early education is correlated with increased social mobility. Universal, affordable and high-quality childcare helps in two ways. First, it lifts maternal employment rates and, secondly, it improves child development for the most disadvantaged children. I hope that we will note the report of the Early Action Task Force, entitled The Deciding Time—Prevent Today, or Pay Tomorrow, which reinforces those points.
In summary, investment in early years education and childcare is possibly the single most effective policy that government can implement. That is why I am proud of Labour's vision on this issue, and I am glad to hear that we may have cross-party consensus here. However, over the long term what we need is more radical than what we have heard mentioned. Over the long term, we need free universal pre-school childcare. As Labour's shadow Minister for Childcare, Lucy Powell MP, has stated, there is a clear economic argument for it: it will pay for itself over time.
Therefore, my only question for the Minister is a big, overarching one: does she agree with Labour—and, by the sound of it, the Liberal Democrats—that in the long term we must deliver free universal pre-school childcare? I hope that she does. I would certainly get a bit more sleep at night if she were able to consider that.


Released at the end of 2015 by Realtime Gaming, Lucky 6 stood out for being the first innovative 6-reel video slot. The idea of the additional reel comes from the number of letters composing the name Lucky, which can bring you free spins when the word is composed by the reels by collecting the letters in a line. Offering a total of 10 pay-lines, Lucky 6 brings you in the Irish world through its graphic contents and special music, welcoming you to a planet full of surprises. This alternative video slot brings a huge amount of bonuses that will captivate the players, especially those who get the chance to play 25 free spins after hitting the LUCKY word.


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Top Edtech Startups 2022
A place for kids to explore and discover, together. Whether you're into coding or chess, drawing or astrophysics, there's a club and a community ready for you here.
Backed by Founders Fund
Historically, education technology has not been an area of high interest for entrepreneurs or investors. It's a difficult industry with lots of regulatory hurdles, insufficient financial resources and a general sluggishness to adopt new platforms. But when the pandemic forced schooling to adapt to the digital age, an influx of technology and funding has fueled an edtech renaissance.
Last year, $20.8 billion was funneled by venture capitalists into edtech startups (compared to only $7 billion in 2019). The shift has breathed new life into an industry that has typically been regarded as a poor fit for venture capital. Here's a look into six of the top education startups — up to Series D — that are leading the way and making an impact in the edtech revolution.
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Wonderschool
Series A backed by Founders Fund.
For homeschooled students, one of the most difficult challenges is the lack of a real network of peers. Enter Primer: an online community for kids to explore interests ranging from coding to drawing to astrophysics. Having raised $18 million from investors like Founders Fund, Primer's cofounder and CEO Ryan Delk recently launched its first microschool in Miami. The new microschools blend small in-person learning with hybrid courses that provide flexibility for students to explore their unique interests.
Primer is not the type of company Ryan's mother would have envisioned for him, having served as a public school teacher who wrote her college thesis on why homeschooling should be illegal. But, the Delk family's views on homeschooling changed drastically when they moved from an affluent Atlanta school district into a struggling Orlando school district that ranked one of the worst in the nation. Dismayed by the state of the school, Ryan's mother elected to stop working and spend her time homeschooling Ryan.
For Ryan, Primer is a chance to build the type of homeschool network he wished he had when he was a kid. "The downside of my education experience was that I was limited to the 10 or 12 kids we knew were homeschooled in the area," explains Ryan. "With Primer, the idea that I could've had like a little mini cofounder when I was 12 years old to work on projects together would've been so fun."
Series A backed by Insight.
Though Saturn only recently emerged as a buzzy startup, an early version of the company's tech went viral back in 2015. A junior in high school at the time, Saturn cofounder Dylan Diamond convinced his peers to eschew Snapchat and Instagram in favor of his social calendar app.
After a brief stint as a software engineer at Tesla, Dylan joined forces with Max Baron in 2018 to officially found Saturn (named after the Roman god of time). The app lets students share their school and personal calendar, as well as chat and plan in the social network. Today, the company has raised $44 million from investors like General Catalyst, Coatue, Marc Benioff and Ashton Kutcher.
Series B backed by a16z.
Early childhood education can do wonders for educational outcomes later in life. However, many cannot afford to send their youngsters to pre-K and about 50% of people live in a "childcare desert". Backed by $56 million from investors like a16z and Goldman Sachs, Wonderschool is increasing access to affordable early-childhood education by helping individuals start their own childcare programs or preschools. They do this by handling the barriers to opening for business, like licensing, program setup, website development and marketing.
Cofounder and CEO Chris Bennett was inspired by his own early-childhood education program, which was run out of a local woman's home. Bennett credits the program as a key differentiator that enabled him to be the first in his family to attend college. By enabling more caregivers to open preschool programs in their own homes, Bennett hopes to increase equitable access to the important service.
Series C backed by Sequoia.
Course Hero was founded back in 2006 while CEO Andrew Grauer was an undergrad at Cornell. The platform was initially founded to provide courses for subjects not typically taught in university. Today, it has expanded to become a place for students to access 100 million course-specific study resources.
The majority of the company's relatively long history was operated with very little venture capital (Andrew waited 8 years to raise the company's Series A). But late last year, Course Hero surprised many by raising a massive $380 million Series C, bringing total funding to over $475 million. The surprise fundraise reflects Andrew's new vision for the company to become the destination for every type of learning, primarily through the strategic acquisition of other education companies.
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Series D backed by General Catalyst.
For the vast majority of ClassDojo's decade in business, it did not generate revenue. Instead, it spent nearly its entire existence gathering tens of millions of free users to help parents and teachers communicate about students. But with over $190 million in funding from firms like General Catalyst and Signalfire, ClassDojo has ramped up its expansion and revenue-generating mission.
The new growth is thanks to an investment in the metaverse. ClassDojo cofounder Sam Chaudhary has played the long game by generating favor with users before truly monetizing a virtual reality space for kids (similar to the hyper-popular virtual game Roblox).
Series D backed by Softbank.
It's notoriously difficult for companies to sell directly to schools. Regulations and red tape present massive barriers to widespread adoption. Despite that fact, Montreal-based Paper has raised $390 million for its educational software that provides 24/7 tutoring support for students in onboarded school districts.
The majority of tutoring services cater to the private market, which means the majority of them cater to students from affluent backgrounds. Paper cofounder and CEO Philip Cutler opted to go after the remaining market (which is significantly larger) by primarily going through public school systems. The online platform connects students with unlimited live tutoring on-demand.
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Hart & Bruce Funeral Home
Samuel A. Struhl, 47, formerly of Watertown
WATERTOWN, NY — Samuel A. Struhl, 47, formerly of Watertown, passed away March 22, 2019, in Harker Heights, Texas.
Sam was born May 5, 1971, in Plainfield, New Jersey. He was adopted at birth by Bernard and Judith Struhl. As an adult, Sam was reunited with his birth mother, Carlyn Furno.
He married Elizabeth Roshia on June 22, 2001, in Dexter, NY.
Sam was in the U.S. Army from 2000 to 2002. He was most proud of being a wildland firefighter out of Idaho. He had dreamed of starting a wildland truck company called Black River Fire Suppression. Sam lived all over the United States and has friends everywhere. He was grateful to all of them.
Sam's friendships meant the world to him. Some special mentions: Mateja Jestrovich (extra dad) and his son Alex Jestrovich (extra brother), and dearest friend, Jethro Nisson who were his oldest and most cherished friendships that lasted a lifetime.
Sam loved his daughter, Aly. He would talk about her to everyone.
Sam is survived by his daughter Alyce Struhl, her mother, Elizabeth (Roshia) Struhl, his loving girlfriend Laura Dodd Joss, Harker Heights, Texas, his mother, Carlyn Furno, Bayville, New Jersey, three sisters, Lisa Falcone, Jackson, New Jersey, CaraMia Warfle, Quinton, New Jersey, Anjelica Furno, Bayville, New Jersey, a brother, Len Acken, Forked River, New Jersey, nephews, Corey, Phoenix, and Blake, nieces, Taylor, Talia, and Leokadia, and many friends.
He was predeceased by his father Bernard Struhl and step-father John Furno.
There will be a memorial service for Sam on April 27, 2019, at 11 a.m. at Anglican Church of Christ the King, 129 N. Rutland St., Watertown, NY.
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$1 trillion lost to cybercrime in 2020, yet companies remain ill-prepared
Derek B. Johnson December 7, 2020
Cybersecurity experts often say it's hard to quantify all of the financial hits a company takes in the wake of a bad security incident. A new report and survey from the Center for Strategic and International Studies attempts just that, paying attention in particular to the hidden costs that don't always show up on in the annual budget.
In 2018, the organization estimated that cybercrime was siphoning more than $600 billion from the global economy; two years later that number is inching towards $1 trillion in total losses. While some of that can be attributed to better reporting around cybersecurity incidents, it also comes at a time when the volume of e-crime and ransomware attacks have exploded across industry, government and school systems.
One of the most puzzling findings from the survey is that more than half of organizations reported not having plans in place to both prevent and respond to a cyber incident.
Some of that can be explained by companies reporting having one but not both. However, it also demonstrates how many companies tend to emphasize security prevention over response. For instance, companies in the U.S. were twice as likely to have a plan to prevent IT security incidents than they were an incident response plan, and three times more likely in the United Kingdom. Even among those who have IR plans, few were confident in them, again speaking to a lack of investment and organizational buy-in around cybersecurity.
"Out of the 951 organizations that had a response plan, only 32 percent said the plan was actually effective. Usually, the board or the c-suite was not involved in developing the plans," wrote CSIS authors Zhanna Malekos Smith, Eugenia Lostri and James Lewis.
It speaks to the startling lack of overall preparedness that remains within the business ecosystem, even as digital threats reach record heights.
"A lot of organizations say 'I want to have the absolute, lowest potential to have a cyber incident, so I'm going to be all about prevention,'" said Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at McAfee, who underwrote the report and contributed research. "What we found is, even the best defended companies will still have gaps, still have issues like humans, where people become the intrusion vector through spear phishing or misconfiguration and therefore it's critical you not only have a protection plan, but…how you recover."
The report also calculates and details a range of other hidden costs that are often difficult to quantify: how much a business loses in damage to their brand, lost opportunity costs, downtime and loss of productivity within the company. If employee data or internal communications are leaked publicly – as was the case during the 2014 Sony hack – it can lead to further embarrassment, air the company's dirty laundry and sap employee morale.
Other data breach post-mortems have found additional costs in the form of lawsuits, increased insurance premiums, victim notification services, emergency crisis communications or PR and other activities.
The hit a company's reputation takes in suffering a breach can often be compounded by how they choose react, both internally and with the public. Only about one in four level with their customers about the impact following a compromise, and defensiveness, secrecy or attempts to downplay an incident can all lead to significant decreases in consumer confidence and loyalty going forward.
"There has been increasing awareness by consumers of the use and misuse of their data, and expectations regarding data protection are increasing," the authors write. "Transparency and informing customers when their financial or personal data may have been compromised are essential to maintain trust and manage a crisis."
Downtime can also impact the productivity of certain departments – particularly engineering – and upend tightly regulated business schedules. During the 2017 WannaCry attacks, the U.K.'s National Health System had to take a third of their systems offline and cancel approximately 19,000 appointments. Overall the nation's health system took a £92 million ($123 million) hit in known costs. In addition to security improvements, Anthem, ranked 29 among the Fortune 500 list, reported spending $2.5 million on consultants, $112 million on credit protection and $31 million notifying customers following their 2015 data breach.
The impacts of the COVID-19 on the IT operations of businesses and the behavior of threat actors has been well documented over the past nine months. A significant number of organizations have moved their operations from analog to online or the cloud. They tend to have less digital experience and are increasingly viewed by threat actors as soft targets in the post-pandemic landscape. The report's pandemic section touches on how these dynamics have particularly affected the health care and education spaces.
Less often discussed is which dynamics will endure past next year, when a vaccine is expected to be widely distributed and the original impetus for widespread telework dissipates. Grobman said the virus reset baseline security processes for a huge chunk of industries and cited cloud migrations, secure remote access tools, secure cloud edge and increased use of multifactor authentication as trends that would survive long beyond the pandemic.
However, he flagged one problem not many are talking about: the millions of unused, unmaintained desktop computers and IT assets that have been collecting dust in empty offices over the past year since businesses sent their workers home in March. As IT and security teams face a return to in-person working in 2021, they will have to have a plan in place to slowly bring those machines on and patch them without putting their enterprise at a heightened risk.
"There's a lot of equipment that's been powered off for a year. That has a year's worth of vulnerabilities that is going to [cause problems] if you just start turning stuff on," Grobman said.
Derek B. Johnson
Empathy, Bitwarden, Lexmark, Exchange, Dragonbridge, & Derek Johnson Talks About Hive – SWN #269
This week Dr. Doug discusses: Empathy, hacking back, typosquatting, Bitwarden, Lexmark, Exchange, Russians, Iranians, Dragonbridge, Derek Johnson talks about Hive and more on the Security Weekly News.
Novel Mimic ransomware strain detailed
English and Russian-speaking Windows users are being targeted by the novel Mimic ransomware, which has been leveraging the APIs of the Everything file search tool to identify to-be encrypted files, reports BleepingComputer.
New attack techniques employed by North Korean APT
North Korean state-sponsored advanced persistent threat group TA444 has engaged in a credential harvesting campaign targeting the U.S. and Canada with OneDrive phishing emails beginning last month, according to SecurityWeek.
2023 CISO Cybersecurity Priorities
Stay Ready so you don't need to Get Ready


Several lines of evidence indicate that G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) may exist in a state that allows a tonic level of stimulation in vivo (constitutive activity). Several native forms of GPCR, when expressed in recombinant cell lines, display significant signal transduction stimulation in the absence of activating ligand. Many GPCR, including three serotonin receptors, display robust constitutive activation upon the mutation of a single amino acid, indicating mutations producing inappropriate constitutive activation may be etiological factors in diseases. If constitutive activity of GPCR is as common a phenomenon as some researchers suspect, this would suggest significant alterations in the classical model of ligand-receptor interactions. One of the most significant implications of constitutive activity for pharmacologists and medicinal chemists, is the possibility of developing drugs that lower the level of constitutive activity. Such compounds have been termed "inverse agonists". These drugs, in theory, would have different physiological effects, and therefore possibly different therapeutic potential, than classical competitive receptor antagonists ("neutral antagonists"). Theoretical issues concerning constitutive activity in the GPCR family and some of the evidence supporting the existence of constitutive activity in the GPCR family is reviewed. Studies are presented demonstrating the procedures for producing and characterizing constitutive activated forms of serotonin receptors, including the demonstration of inverse agonist activity of drugs on these receptors.


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Republicans locked down every statewide office on the ballot Tuesday almost as soon as the polls closed. Gov. Rick Perry held off four challengers with relative ease, his fellow incumbents coasted to victory, and up-and-coming Republicans won the open jobs of agriculture commissioner and state comptroller. But for Fred Baron, arguably the Texas Democratic Party's most influential donor, it was all going according to plan. Even better, actually.
Republicans locked down every statewide office on the ballot Tuesday almost as soon as the polls closed. Gov. Rick Perry held off four challengers with relative ease, his fellow incumbents coasted to victory, and up-and-coming Republicans won the open jobs of agriculture commissioner and state comptroller.
But for Fred Baron, arguably the Texas Democratic Party's most influential donor, it was all going according to plan. Even better, actually.
Democrats held on to all of their seats in the Texas House and gained five more. They defended their congressional seats, picked up the one last held by Tom DeLay and took control of county governments in Dallas and Hays while staying strong in Travis County.
The election returns in some ways vindicated Baron, a retired Dallas trial lawyer who over the past two years has given about $1.7 million to Democratic causes to rebuild the once-mighty party from the ground up. Though he would have loved for Democrats to capture statewide offices, he has focused on nourishing the party's roots so that it can win offices such as governor and lieutenant governor in four years.
"This is not Utah," Baron, 59, said over breakfast at Las Manitas before the election. "This is a state that has a Democratic base that's very large. The party has just over the last several years defaulted on getting people involved in the process."
His name might not be as familiar to Texans as those of GOP moneymen James Leininger, the San Antonio voucher supporter, and Bob Perry, a Houston homebuilder, but Baron is about as close as Democrats come. A report earlier this year from Texans for Public Justice, which monitors campaign spending, showed that Baron was the state's top individual donor among Democrats, although Leininger and Perry each had outspent Baron 4-1 at that point.
Still, Baron has poured about $1.7 million into the Texas Democratic Trust, which he set up last year and has largely funded by himself. The trust doled out more than $1.4 million to the state party and two like-minded organizations leading up to Tuesday's elections.
That money, along with the efforts of candidates and other political groups, put Democrats in a position to make gains this year and, party officials hope, laid the groundwork for bigger wins in the future.
"There's enough credit for everyone involved in the effort," state Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie said. "But certainly the trust created an atmosphere where we could organize, plan and execute."
But winning statewide offices is a far cry from picking off House seats.
"Until they have credible, experienced statewide candidates, it's awfully difficult to organize a political shift in the state," Republican consultant Ray Sullivan said. "They may be able to win legislative or judicial races here and there largely on personalities or local issues in most cases, but in order to really be competitive, they need to be competitive statewide."
Sullivan said Democrats are more likely to compete for statewide jobs in 2014 instead of 2010.
Fred Baron grew up in the Midwest and moved to Smithville in Bastrop County with his mother after she remarried when he was 15. A Ralph Nader speech in Austin one evening in 1970 inspired Baron, then a University of Texas law student, to think about how to use the law to regulate corporate conduct in ways government couldn't. He went on to set up a practice focused on protecting workers from asbestos and other hazardous materials, and his Dallas law office became one of the country's most successful asbestos firms.
A major player in Democratic presidential campaigns dating back to Bill Clinton's 1992 run, Baron stopped practicing law at the beginning of 2003 to head fundraising for John Edwards, then a U.S. senator from North Carolina eyeing the presidency. Edwards fell short but became John Kerry's running mate, and Baron coordinated efforts between the Kerry-Edwards ticket and the Democratic National Committee.
It was in the battleground state of Florida that Baron had his eureka moment that would ultimately establish his path back home in Texas.
Democratic volunteers and operatives stormed Florida in the final 120 days of the 2004 election, and Baron joined them in October. Because George W. Bush and Al Gore virtually tied there in 2000 with about 2.9 million votes apiece, Baron said, Democrats thought they could capture the state with about 400,000 additional votes. They did even better than that, picking up more than 700,000.
But the Republicans increased their 2000 total by 1 million in Florida and helped give Bush four more years in the White House. Baron realized that, while he and other Democrats dropped into Florida in the closing days, his GOP counterparts had been there since 2000, finding like-minded voters, developing a message and ultimately taking voters to the polls. During the same four years in Texas, meanwhile, Republicans had continued to dominate Democrats in fundraising, organization and candidate recruitment.
During a private dinner in early 2005, Baron explained what he saw in Florida to Howard Dean, the newly elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean told him most state parties lacked money and organization, and he encouraged Baron to restructure and revive the party in Texas.
Baron reached out in spring 2005 to Washington political consultant Matt Angle, a longtime aide to former U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, a Dallas Democrat who had just lost his race for re-election in a newly drawn district. Baron sent Angle to talk to Democratic volunteers, operatives and officeholders about how a reworked party should look.
Angle found that the state party had been a vehicle for whoever Texas' alpha Democrat was, Baron said. Angle advised Baron to help the state party hire more employees and upgrade its voter history records so it could help candidates, no matter who was in office. They also talked about the need for an independent research group that could help candidates, so they put money into the fledgling Texas Progress Council, and they decided to send money to the House Democratic Campaign Committee because they believed the party could quickly increase its ranks in the Texas House.
Baron began talking to major Democratic donors in Texas about helping him out. It didn't go so well.
"I got a lot of healthy skepticism from people who said, 'I don't think you can get this accomplished,' " Baron said. "So I thought to myself, 'You know what? They may well be right. And rather than put at risk everybody else's money, let me see if I can just do this myself.' "
Signs of a turnaround began appearing in 2004. The underfunded state party picked up one seat in the state House, in the process defeating the powerful GOP chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and a few Democrats who were close allies of Republican leaders lost their primaries.
"The party wasn't in shambles," said Mike Lavigne, who left the state party as chief of staff in 2005. "The party was broke."
That's where Baron's money came in. In early 2005, he set up the Texas Democratic Trust to distribute his money, which has helped the state party boost its political staff from three people to 11 (including several former Frost aides and four field workers paid for by the national party). The party hired someone to help with Spanish language media, expanded its voter history files and launched a vote-by-mail campaign for older Texans.
The state party gave $7,500 to Valinda Bolton of Austin, who captured the last state House seat in Travis County held by a Republican. Bolton also got $14,500 from the House Democratic Campaign Committee, which has received about $450,000 from Baron's Texas Democratic Trust in the past two years.
The Democratic Trust did not give money directly to statewide candidates, though Baron gave gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell $25,000. The $25,000 was significant, but one of Bell's major problems was a lack of money, and the amount pales in comparison to what Baron gave to other causes.
In light of the gains made in the state House and the national mood, as well as the fact that Gov. Rick Perry got just 39 percent of the vote in a crowded field, some Democrats wonder whether the party should have done more to directly help Bell.
"There's no question there was an opportunity wasted here," Lavigne said. "Bell proved himself to be a tremendous candidate, and most of the Democratic establishment was late to the party."
But Bell campaign manager Jason Stanford said Bell won Dallas County because Baron paid for an effort there to push straight-ticket voting.
"It's impossible to complain about someone 'only' giving $25,000 or so to a long shot challenger," Stanford said. "But it would be idiocy to complain about someone who has found a piece of the puzzle to winning statewide. Chris Bell carried Dallas County by 4 percent in part because of the great work Fred Baron did."
Baron's trust and the state party pooled money with local candidates and groups in Dallas to push straight-ticket voting and find Democrats who might not vote without a little prodding.
Republicans have long attacked Democrats in Texas for their ties to trial lawyers, a charge that is likely to endure with Baron providing so much of the party's money. His wife, Lisa Blue, also is a trial lawyer.
"Karl Rove became what he is today by defining and successfully running candidates against plaintiffs' lawyers and their hand-picked candidates," said Sullivan, the Republican consultant.
The trial lawyer smear irks Baron, who says he has no personal financial interest in the Democrats' success. "I'm not reliant on the Texas government for anything whatsoever, nor ever will I be. And I have made it very clear that I'm not looking to run for public office myself."
In fact, Baron is gearing up for another Edwards presidential campaign, should Edwards decide to run. Baron said he'll continue over the next couple of years to pour money into the Democratic Trust, and he expects other large donors to join him. He touts the young operatives working at the party and the other groups he helps fund, and he's encouraged by a party e-mail list that has grown from about 3,000 to 55,000. Those people, Baron hopes, could become the small donors that the party will need to sustain itself.
"It's great to have large donors," he said. "But the party really needs to be funded and run by real Democrats who give $10 a month. That's the name of the game. And I think we can put the party into that position much quicker than I thought."


The Furies play in the spring, summer, and fall, with skills and fitness work throughout the winter.
In the spring and fall, the Furies field competitive Division 1 and Division 2 club rugby teams.
During the summer, the Furies play in 7s tournaments at both the competitive and social level.
Practices take place within the Washington, D.C. metro area.
Whether you're new to rugby or just to the furies, here's what you need to know to join the team.
And the game is called. 9 minutes early. 32-5.
I REPEAT THE SIR IS DOWN. Pause in game.


Buy All Mine! Keychain from $12.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond. Keep everyone away from your keys with the All Mine! Keychain. Choose between 2 color options, and add any name in alternating colors on the front on the keyring with a pinstripe pattern for a personalized touch. Add 3-line message in back.Keep everyone away from your keys with the All Mine! Keychain. Choose between 2 color options, and add any name in alternating colors on the front on the keyring with a pinstripe pattern for a personalized touch. Add 3-line message in back.
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Supermoon glow in the sky this weekend
By Danielle Hamilton on March 31, 2021
According to NASA, the worm Supermoon glow in the March sky this Sunday. The will be fullest at 2:48 p.m. ET. It appears opposite the sun in Earth-based longitude. People who miss this moment will still be able to see a big, round Moon. The rocky satellite will appear full for three days, from Saturday morning through early Tuesday morning.
The term supermoon was coined in 1979 by astrologer Richard Nolle. He said that it refers to either a new or full that falls within 90% of perigee when the is closest to Earth. In The Hindu month of Phalguna, this month's marks the Holi FestivalThe Native American tribes in the South call the March full moon the Worm because of the earthworm casts, soil that the worms digest, become visible as the ground thaws. According to the Western Washington University Planetarium website, many Native American tribes have different names for the full in March that still relate to animals.
According to the western Christian ecclesiastical calendar, this is known as the Paschal which is used for determining the date of Easter. The word "Paschal" is the Latinized word for Pesach. Usually, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full of spring. There are differences in the Eastern and Western church calendars. In 2021 Easter will fall on two dates: April 4 for Western Christianity. The views March's as the first full of spring, and May 2 for the Eastern Orthodox Church, which views the next full as the Paschal moon.
Published in Science and News
astrologer Richard Nolle
Paschal
rocky satellite will appear full
Washington University Planetarium website
Danielle Hamilton
Danielle has emerged as one of the core members at Orbis Research News. Having served briefly as a contributing writer, she has soon found her place in the editorial team and continues to be a writer and sub-editor here. Her area of interest remains science and innovation, owing to the master's degree she holds in Chemistry. Besides science, Danielle also enjoys writing for AI, robotics, computers, and fashion. In her leisure time, she freelances as a writer and also has a blog which is a melting pot per se having trendy content from various industries.
More from ScienceMore posts in Science »


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National Institute for Public Health and the Environment Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
RIVM Committed to health and sustainability
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National Prevention Agreement's ambitions for smoking may be feasible, more measures necessary to reduce overweight and alcohol use
The ambitions of the National Prevention Agreement for smoking in adults can probably be realised through the proposed measures. This, however, does not apply to young people and pregnant women.
The Dutch Diet is slightly healthier
Recent years show a cautious improvement in the Dutch diet. The Dutch have started to eat more fruit and it seems to be heading in the right direction with vegetables.
Citizen Science Magazine; everyone's a scientist
"RIVM is committed to being innovative, and becoming a key player in citizen science is fully in line with that goal," says Danielle Timmermans, Chief Science Officer for Risk Communication at RIVM
Work in progress - new look and feel RIVM website
As of today, the RIVM website looks different than you are used to. This is because we are now using a new content management system and have implemented an enhanced design.
New data on antimicrobial resistance in European countries
New data on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in European countries is now available in the fourth annual report of the Central Asian and Eastern European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (CAE
Framework Agreement signed between INERIS and RIVM to strengthen cooperation
On 7 November 2018, Raymond Cointe, Director-General of INERIS and Hans Brug, Director-General of RIVM, signed a Framework Agreement. RIVM has been working with the French National Institute for In
Public Health Foresight study 2018 now available in English
The prospects for future public health in the Netherlands are good. Our life expectancy is steadily increasing, and most people feel healthy and do not experience activity limitations.
Coen van Gool named co-chair of WHO Family Development Committee
Coen van Gool was named co-chair of the Family Development Committee (FDC) at the Annual Meeting 2018 of the WHO Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC) Network in Seoul.
Construction officially starts on new accommodations for VWS / RIVM and CBG
Hugo de Jonge, Dutch Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, marked the official start of construction on the new accommodations for RIVM and for the Medicines Evaluation Board (CBG).
A critical look at the European Union Observatory for Nanomaterials
On 14 June 2017, the European Commission launched the "European Union Observatory for Nanomaterials" (EUON). As registration is not mandatory, the EUON is limited in detailed information.
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Instituto de Biociências (IBRC) - Rio Claro
Departamento de Biologia
Artigos - Biologia - IBRC
A single nucleotide deletion at the C1 inhibitor gene as the cause of hereditary angioedema: insights from a Brazilian family
Ferraro, M. F.
Moreno, A. S.
Castelli, E. C.
Donadi, E. A.
Palma, Mario Sergio
Arcuri, H. A.
Lange, A. P.
Bork, K.
Sarti, W.
Arruda, L. K.
Closed access
Background: Hereditary angioedema is an autosomal dominant disease characterized by episodes of subcutaneous and submucosal edema. It is caused by deficiency of the C1 inhibitor protein, leading to elevated levels of bradykinin. More than 200 mutations in C1 inhibitor gene have been reported. The aim of this study was to analyze clinical features of a large family with an index case of hereditary angioedema and to determine the disease-causing mutation in this family.Methods: Family pedigree was constructed with 275 individuals distributed in five generations. One hundred and sixty-five subjects were interviewed and investigated for mutation at the C1 inhibitor gene. Subjects reporting a history of recurrent episodes of angioedema and/or abdominal pain attacks underwent evaluation for hereditary angioedema.Results: We have identified a novel mutation at the C1 inhibitor gene, c.351delC, which is a single-nucleotide deletion of a cytosine on exon 3, resulting in frameshift with premature stop codon. Sequencing analysis of the hypothetical truncated C1 inhibitor protein allowed us to conclude that, if transcription occurs, this protein has no biological activity. Twenty-eight members of the family fulfilled diagnostic criteria for hereditary angioedema and all of them presented the c.351delC mutation. Variation in clinical presentation and severity of disease was observed among these patients. One hundred and thirty-seven subjects without hereditary angioedema did not have the c.351delC mutation.Conclusion: The present study provides definitive evidence to link a novel genetic mutation to the development of hereditary angioedema in patients from a Brazilian family.
Ferraro, M. F. et al. A single nucleotide deletion at the C1 inhibitor gene as the cause of hereditary angioedema: insights from a Brazilian family. Allergy. Malden: Wiley-blackwell, v. 66, n. 10, p. 1384-1390, 2011. Available at: <http://hdl.handle.net/11449/19745>.
bradykinin
C1 inhibitor
serine protease inhibitors
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)
Fundação de Apoio ao Ensino, Pesquisa e Assistência do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da USP (FAEPA)
Mantecorp


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Russians Hold Protests Against Possible Kuriles Handover
21 Jan 2019, 17:07 GMT+10
Russians in Moscow and other cities across the country have protested against the prospect of transferring the disputed Kurile Islands to Japan.
The January 20 protest on Suvorovskaya Square, just outside Moscow city center, was sanctioned by authorities and was organized by a coalition of groups including Left Front, the Party of Action, the Other Russia, Novorossia, and other left-leaning and nationalist organizations.
Organizers said some 2,000 people showed up for the Moscow protest, while municipal officials put the figure at 500.
The Soviet Union seized the four southernmost Kurile Islands from Japan in the closing days of World War II. The dispute over them has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending the hostilities.
In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to accelerate negotiations based on a 1956 Soviet proposal to return the two less populated islands, Shikotan, and a group of islets called Habomai.
'Any mention of handing over the Kurilesis nothing but an act of treason,' speaker Igor Skurlatov told the rally in Moscow, during which the participants chanted slogans such as, 'The Kuriles are Russian soil.'
'Today we give away the Kuriles, tomorrow we give away Crimea,' he added, referring to the Ukrainian region that Russia occupied and annexed in 2014.
Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov posted photographs from the Moscow protest on Twitter, saying the demonstrators 'were actively chanting patriotic slogans.'
In the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, about 500 people participated in the demonstration chanting the slogan, 'The Kuriles are ours! Down with Putin's government.'
Small demonstrations were reported in the Far Eastern port of Nakhodka and the western exclave of Kaliningrad.
On January 19, about 300 people demonstrated in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of the Far Eastern island of Sakhalin.
Putin was set to hold talks on the territorial dispute with Abe in Moscow on January 22, according to the Kremlin, following a meeting last week between foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov and Taro Kono.
In remarks both before and after the January 14 talks with Kono, Lavrov said the two countries still had 'substantial disagreements' despite some progress in bringing their positions closer.
Lavrov also warned not to expect progress toward an agreement unless Japan first recognizes Russian sovereignty over all the islands of the Southern Kuriles.
RFE/RL's Russian Service
RFE/RL's Radio Svoboda is the leading international broadcaster in Russia. As Russia witnesses increasing control of the media by state authorities, Radio Svoboda has become a key forum for those who lack access to other means of free expression.
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Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Republished with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036


The Valentine lamp is a high-fired stoneware body, pictured here with our Dappled Platinum pattern of hand applied Lustre and white gloss glaze. Handmade and signed by Paul Schneider. Allow 4-6 Week lead time--all lamps are made to order.


Recently we've observed that some spam zombie machines are smarter than others, and do SMTP retrying which means that they bypass greylisting. These machines have been reponsible for a large number of "stock scam" spams that include random text and an attached gif. Between Oct 17 to Oct 20 we were trying out a new greylisting policy that involved taking feedback from the spam scoring system, and re-greylisting systems with an increased delay if they had delivered emails that had been detected as spam by the scoring system. Our testing suggested that this quickly and effectively blocked the zombie machines.
Unfortunately it also blocked a small number of poorly configured real email servers that were being used for forwarding because they would also forward all spam emails, and thus be judged as the source of the spam. This caused some emails to be delayed for many hours or in some cases over a day. We've now removed this policy totally. While the concept seems a good idea, unfortunately the small number of incorrectly configured hosts out there mean that this just causes too much of problem for them.


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DNA study debunks a long-held theory about how ancient Britons lived – Inverse
When you imagine life for ordinary people in ancient Britain, you'd be forgiven for picturing quaint villages where everyone looked and spoke the same way. But a recent study could change the way historians think about early medieval communities.
Most of what we know about English history after the fall of the Roman Empire is limited to archaeological finds. There are only two contemporary accounts of this post-Roman period. Gildas (sixth century) and Bede (eighth century) were both monks who give narrow descriptions of invasion by people from the continent, and neither provide an objective account.
My team's study, published in Nature, changes that. We analyzed DNA from the remains of 460 people from sites across northern Europe and found evidence of mass migration from Europe to England and the movement of people from as far away as West Africa. Our study combined information from artifacts and human remains.
That meant we could dig deeper into the data to explore the human details of the migration.
Journey into England's past
This paper found that about 76 percent of the genetic ancestry in the early medieval English population we studied originated from what is today northern Germany and southern Scandinavia — continental northern European. This number is an average taken from 278 ancient skeletons sampled from the south and east coasts of England. It is strong evidence for mass migration into the British Isles after the end of the Roman administration.
One of the most surprising discoveries was the skeleton of a young girl who died at about ten or 11 years of age, found in Updown near Eastry in Kent. She was buried in typical early seventh-century style with a finely made pot, knife, spoon, and bone comb. Her DNA, however, tells a more complex story. As well as 67 percent continental northern European ancestry, she also had 33 percent West African ancestry. Her African ancestor was most closely related to the modern-day Esan and Yoruba population in southern Nigeria.
Evidence of far-reaching commercial connections with Kent at this time is known. The garnets in many brooches found in this region came from Afghanistan, for example. And the movement of the Updown girl's ancestors was likely linked to these ancient trading routes.
Two women buried close by were sisters with predominantly continental northern European ancestry. They were related to Updown girl — perhaps her aunts. The fact that all three were buried similarly, with brooches, buckles, and belt hangers, suggests the people who buried them chose to highlight similarities between Updown girl and her older female relatives when they dressed them and located the burials close together. They treated her as kin, a girl from their village, because that is what she was.
The aunts also shared a close kinship with a young man buried with artifacts that implied some social status, including a spearhead and buckle. The graves of these four people were all close together. They were buried in a prominent position marked by small barrow mounds (ancient burial places covered with a large mound of earth and stones). The visibility of this spot, combined with their dress and DNA, marks these people as part of an important local family.
The site studied in most detail — Buckland, near Dover in Kent — had kinship groups that spanned at least four generations.
The Buckland family tree. On the left-hand side is the plan of the cemetery and the location of each grave, illustrated by generation. On the right is the family tree with artifacts added. Duncan Sayer and Joscha Gretzinger, Author provided
One family group with continental northern European ancestry is remarkable because they quickly integrated with western British and Irish people. Within a few generations, traditions had merged between people born far away from each other. A 100 percent western British and Irish woman had two daughters with a 100 percent continental northern European man. Western British and Irish ancestry entered this family again a generation later, in nearly 50/50 mixed-ancestry grandchildren. Objects, including similar brooches and weapons, were found in graves on both sides of this family, indicating shared values between people of different ancestries.
This family was buried in graves close together for three generations. That is, until a woman from the third generation was buried in a different cluster of graves to the north of the family group. One of her children, a boy, died at about eight to ten years of age. He was buried in the cluster of graves that included his maternal grandparents and their close family, and she laid her youngest child to rest in a grave surrounded by her family. But when the mother died, her adult children chose a spot close to their father for her grave. They considered her part of the paternal side of the family.
Another woman from Buckland had a unique haplotype, a set of DNA variants that tend to be inherited together. Both males and females inherit their haplogroup from their mothers. So her DNA suggests she had no maternal family in the community she was buried with.
The gold bracteate from grave 250 at Dover Buckland. Duncan Sayer, Author provided
The chemical isotopes from her teeth and bones indicate she was not born in Kent but moved there when she was 15-25. An ornate gold pendant, called a bracteate, which may have been of Scandinavian origin, was found in her grave.
This suggests she left home from Scandinavia in her youth, and her mother's family did not travel with her. She very likely had an exogamous marriage (marriage outside of your social group).
What is striking is the physical distance that this partnership bridged. This woman traveled 700 miles, including a voyage across the North Sea, to start her family.
Rethinking British History
These people were migrants and the children of migrants who traveled in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. Their stories are of community and intermarriage. The genetic data points to profound mobility within a time of mass migration, and the archaeological details help to complete the family histories. Migration did not happen at the same time, nor did it all come from the same place.
The early Anglo-Saxon culture was a mixing pot of ideas, intermarriage, and movement. This genetic coalescing and cultural diversity created something new in the south and east of England after the Roman empire ended.
This article was originally published on The Conversation by Duncan Sayer at University of Central Lancashire. Read the original article here.
100 years later, scientists still haven't solved the mystery of King Tut
By Jenefer Metcalfe and The Conversation
Scientists are struggling to figure out how space transforms our gut microbiome
By Undark and Doug Johnson
114 years ago, this super-rare microorganism was discovered — only four people have seen it since
By James Weiss, Genoveva Esteban and The Conversation


Helen Wang translates fiction and essays from Chinese, both for adults and younger readers. Her most recent translation for children is Bronze and Sunflower by Wenxuan Cao, published in 2015 in the UK by Walker Books. She, together with Anna Gustafsson Chen and Minjie Chen, create a blog—Chinese books for young readers to make it easier to find Chinese books for children, in various places and in various languages.