SPEAKERS
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Shari Redstone
Chair, Paramount Global; Chair, CEO and President, National Amusements; Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Advancit CapitalShari Redstone is a media executive with wide-ranging experience in the entertainment industry and related ventures. This includes serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of Paramount Global, a leading global media and entertainment company that creates premium content and experiences for audiences worldwide across its iconic networks, studios, and streaming services. Ms. Redstone also serves as Chair, CEO, and President of National Amusements, a world leader in the motion picture exhibition industry and through which she and her family are the majority voting shareholders of Paramount Global. In addition, Ms. Redstone is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Advancit Capital, an investment firm that focuses on early-stage companies at the intersection of media, entertainment, and technology.
In addition, Ms. Redstone leads and is actively involved with a range of charitable, civic, and educational organizations focused on fighting hate and intolerance as well as improving equality in education. Specifically, through the Redstone Family Foundation she is focused on combating racism and antisemitism primarily through civics and cross-cultural education for children, youth, and families while also including the broader community. Her Foundation's work supports curriculum development, youth forums, family events, content creation and storytelling, policy initiatives, and symposiums designed to spark conversation and drive positive change.
Ms. Redstone earned a BS from Tufts University and a JD and a Masters in Tax Law from Boston University. She practiced law in the Boston area before joining National Amusements.
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Jo Ann Ross
Chairman, Paramount Advertising SalesJo Ann Ross is Chairman of Paramount Advertising. Previously, Ross served as President and Chief Advertising Revenue Officer at Paramount. She was promoted to this role in December 2019 following the close of the merger between CBS Corporation and Viacom. In this role, Ross led advertising sales for the company's portfolio of iconic brands across all platforms as well as its ad-supported streaming services Paramount+ and Pluto TV. Additionally, Ross oversaw the company's robust suite of data-driven advertising capabilities and creative marketing solutions, including EyeQ - Paramount's premium video advertising platform.
An industry trailblazer with over three decades of experience in advertising, Ross became the longest-tenured sales head in broadcast television and the first woman to ever serve as sales chief of a broadcast network. Throughout her career, she built strong relationships with the world's biggest advertisers and agencies. Prior to her roles at Paramount, she served as CBS' President and Chief Advertising Revenue Officer since October 2002, overseeing all sales for CBS Entertainment, Sports, Daytime, News and Late Night. She also oversaw CBS' multiplatform advertising sales effort beginning in August 2017.
Before being named president of the CBS sales division, Ross served as Executive Vice President of Sales from September 1998 to October 2002, where she oversaw all sales for CBS' primetime schedule. She also played a major role in creating new ways to sell Network programming, including reality, scripted, news and late-night genres. She joined CBS in 1992 as Vice President of Olympic Sales, in charge of Network sales for the Lillehammer Winter Olympics in 1994 and the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998.
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Karen Phillips
EVP, Head Of Agency PartnershipsKaren Phillips is the Executive Vice President, Head of Agency Partnerships for Paramount Advertising. Based in the New York office, she maintains relationships with the most influential clients and agency decision makers in the industry.
Phillips oversees client needs assessments, and aligns sales strategies with meeting those needs in unique, creative ways that set Paramount apart from the competition. Phillips is responsible for ensuring that all of Paramount's assets are utilized in the execution of sales strategies, partnering with channel executives (Linear and Digital), Integrated Marketing and Research to create convergent or platform-specific content and integration products for our key clients. She is responsible for some of the largest convergent Upfront partnerships at Paramount, moving digital and mobile video with the television Upfront.
Prior to her current role, Phillips served as Vice President, MTV Linear Sales, and headed to national sales efforts for MTVU, VMN's non-rated college network. She began her career in the industry at Viacom in 1996, responsible for the direct sale of MTV to leading agencies such as OMD, PHD, Zenith, Opti Media, Media Edge, and Mediacom.
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Linda René
EVP, Primetime Sales and Brand Partnerships, Paramount AdvertisingLinda René is Executive Vice President, Primetime Sales and Branded Partnerships at Paramount. In this role, René leads all aspects of Primetime Sales including planning, pricing, strategy, revenue and client supplied programming. She also oversees branded entertainment partnerships and synergies across all CBS dayparts.
Throughout her career, René has been instrumental in driving CBS' industry-leading position with clients by encouraging and spearheading innovative ideas and solutions that are both organic to programming and additive to client's advertising campaigns. Prior to her role at Paramount, René was named Executive Vice President of Primetime Sales, Entertainment Innovation & Partnerships, CBS Television Network, in December 2013. She previously served as Senior Vice President of Primetime Sales and Innovation at CBS Television Network since 2002, and also held the position of Vice President of Primetime Sales since 1994. René has also held the network positions of Director of Primetime Sales, Account Executive as well as Manager of Planning.
Before joining CBS, René was with Doyle Dane Bernbach West for four years, starting as a planning assistant and working her way up to Director of Media Planning on the Universal Pictures account and Account Executive on the CBS account.
René has been recognized for her industry leading work with Cablefax's Most Powerful Women in Broadband in Media award.
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Amanda Renner
Amanda Balionis Renner is a star broadcaster at CBS Sports, leading national coverage across both the PGA Tour and NFL. She joined the team in 2017, and has quickly become a fan favorite as the face of CBS' primetime coverage including Masters and became the network's inaugural social media correspondent for Super Bowl LIII. Based in Southern California, she is a certified yoga instructor and recently founded Puppies & Golf, a 501(c)(3) supporting and promoting shelters across the country with a focus on connecting humans & dogs for a lifetime of purpose.
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Mel Reid
The 2020 ShopRite LPGA Classic champion and a six-time Ladies European Tour winner, Mel Reid has been a star since she turned professional in 2007. Quickly becoming one of the most popular players in the game, Reid earned the coveted LET Rookie of the Year honor in 2008 and has continued to become a global steward of the game playing in the 2020 Olympics and making four Solheim Cup appearances in 2011, 2015, 2017 and as a leader and star on the 2021 winning team. Off the course, Mel is an action sports fanatic and avid snowboarder. She's also a strong advocate in the in LGBTQ+ community and dedicates her time to fighting for equality and inclusion in the sport.
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Bianca Gates
Bianca Gates is the Co-Founder and CEO of Birdies, the company that created a new category of footwear with the stylish flats that are secretly slippers. Prior to Birdies, Bianca was a Sales Executive at Meta, where she worked with retail and gaming Executives to help them leverage their data and the social graph to scale their businesses. Bianca grew up in Southern California as the oldest child of Latin American immigrants and is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine.
Bianca is passionate about bringing women together to help them achieve their dreams and started the first Lean In Circle with Sheryl Sandberg in 2013, which has now scaled to more than 75,000 Circles in 181 countries around the world. Bianca also advises early-stage founders and serves on the Board of Trustees at The Hamlin School, an all-girls independent school in San Francisco where she lives with her husband and two children.
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Miko Marks
After living what seems to be multiple lives over, Miko Marks has finally come into the life she was born to live. Her life as a Black woman in country and roots music is only a small part of the story. As she readies her latest album, Feel like Going Home, for release (October 14, 2022 via Redtone Records), it's beyond time to dig deeper.
Miko was born in Flint, Michigan by a single mother who raised her to fight for equal rights for all. Her mother would protest on a local level in their town and would travel to Detroit for larger demonstrations. This impacted Miko greatly as she grew and was pivotal in Miko finding her own voice. Her mother would spend nights working 3rd shift at the automotive factory, while Miko's grandmother would watch over her, helping raise her for most of her young life. For Miko, the women in her life were of utmost importance to her and their hopes and dreams for her were cautiously optimistic while being pragmatic due to the barriers they faced in their own lifetime.
Miko grew up traveling around in the family van to sing at various church conventions, but even with a show-stopping voice, it seemed singing was mostly just a hobby - not a career to pursue. She studied Political Science at Grambling State University and planned on becoming a criminal defense attorney, but her law degree was put on hold after she married young and gave birth to her son Justin. After some encouragement from her husband, she began to sing again and she released two country albums - “Freeway Bound (2005)” and “It Feels Good” (2007). She received great critical praise and was a regular participant at CMA Fest in Nashville, but the growth was stymied by industry gatekeepers.
After over a decade-long hiatus, with no grand vision of success, Miko recorded a few songs with some bandmates (Justin Phipps & Steve Wyreman). That collection of songs became “Our Country” & it was released on Justin's small non-profit record label, Redtone Records. They enlisted the help of Brooklyn Basement Records to take it to market. Due to the success of “Our Country” they put out an EP of covers 6 months later called “Race Records” which shined a light on the arbitrary divisions forced upon artists and audiences in the early days of music marketing in the 1940s. Her unique sound deftly blends country, blues, southern rock and even gospel to create a sound and experience that has literally brought every audience to its feet. This new sound along with her warm and soulful spirit catapulted her into a community of change.
Feel Like Going Home is an amalgamation of where Miko has been and where she is going. What she has learned and what she wants to teach. It's an innermost look at the ebb and flow of her past, present and future. It's the stories she wants to tell but hasn't been able to speak into existence ever before. The messages are profound: healing, restoration and distinctly individual. Feel Like Going Home released on October 14, 2022.
