2018 judging panel

A former marketing professional in both Toronto and Chicago, KIM COOK has spent the last ten years as a freelance journalist based in New York, covering international and national design, décor and lifestyle stories for several print and digital entities. Her regular “Right at Home” columns for the Associated Press focus on trends and topics across the Home categories. She writes about design directions, and profiles industry professionals, for both the National Kitchen & Bath Association’s Innovation + Inspiration magazine and the American Association of Interior Designers NY Metro magazine. Kim was also part of the judging panel for NY Now’s Best New Products awards this summer.

Bio and photo coming soon

Currently a contributing editor for Chip Design Magazine, DAVE BURSKY has over 40 years experience working as an engineer and editor. Dave is president and founder of PRN Engineering Services, a technical writing and market consulting company and from 2006 through early 2011 was the technical editorial manager at Maxim Integrated Products. Prior to Maxim, Dave had over 33 years of experience as an editor, writing for publications such as Electronic Design and EE Times. In 2005 he was inducted into the Communications Society Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement at the City College of New York. Additionally, in 1988 he was described by an article in the San Jose Mercury News as one of the 100 most influential people in Silicon Valley. Dave has served on the program committees of numerous IEEE and commercial conferences, and has authored six books on topics ranging from personal computers to semiconductor memories. Dave holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the City College of the City University of New York.

NAOMI EIDE is the editor for CIO Dive, responsible for covering the enterprise tech industry, from the rise of the cloud to Big Data in business. Prior to joining CIO Dive, she spent time covering federal contracting and Maryland state news. Naomi holds a B.A. from Providence College and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

MARK HUFFMAN is a reporter for ConsumerAffairs.com. Since 2004 he has covered issues ranging from consumer product defects to developments in consumer technology. In 2007 he served on a Federal Trade Commission workshop panel examining negative option marketing practices. He has been a correspondent for Marketwatch.com, Westwood One Radio Networks and Associated Press Radio. He has also been a science and technology writer for United Press International and written about technology for Reuters New Media. He has been interviewed as a source on stories for NBC News, Forbes, Smart Money, and The Wall Street Journal. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Kentucky.

JACK M. GERMAIN has been writing about computer technology since the early days of the Apple II and the IBM PC. Over the past four decades, Jack has worked on both sides of the editorial desk for numerous organizations as writer and editor. His feature articles, technology blogs, and specialty columns are published by ECT News Network in TechNewsWorld, The E-Commerce Times, and LinuxInsider. Jack’s blogs on cloud computing technology are published on Linode Cube.

FRANK J. OHLHORST is an award winning technology journalist and professional speaker with over 25 years of experience in the technology arena. Frank has written for several leading technology publications, including ComputerWorld, TechTarget, PCWorld, ExtremeTech and Toms Hardware. Frank has also contributed to business publications, including Entrepreneur and BNET, and to multiple technology books, and has written several white papers, case studies, reviewers’ guides and channel guides for leading technology vendors.

KELLY PHILLIPS ERB is a senior contributor at Forbes Media, where she writes about tax and tax policy, including tax-related security & technology issues. Kelly has published four books together with Forbes, including the best selling “100 Things You Need To Know About Money.” She authors the award-winning Taxgirl blog, recognized by the ABA Journal as one of the top blogs written by lawyers. In addition to writing, Kelly has been tapped for her ability to explain taxes in plain English by Esquire, National Public Radio’s Marketplace, CBS Radio’s Marketwatch, The New York Times, and the BBC. Kelly is a graduate of Meredith College and earned her law degree and her Masters of Law in Taxation from Temple University School of Law. She lives and works in southeastern Pennsylvania. Kelly is also a mom to three children, so she can add coffee drinker, cupcake baker, and hockey mom to her resume. Follow Kelly on Twitter.

HUGH MCINTYRE is a freelance journalist who covers all things related to the music industry, primarily for Forbes. He has also written for several dozen other publications, including Billboard, Mashable, The Huffington Post, MTV, Mic, and Noisey, to name just a few.

KAREN ASP is a leading journalist who covers fitness, health, nutrition, pets and travel for major print and online publications. A former contributing editor for Woman’s Day, she writes regularly for dozens of publications, including Better Homes and Gardens, Cooking Light, Cosmo, Delta Sky, Diabetic Living, Eating Well, Family Circle, Forks Over Knives, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, Martha Stewart Living, O, Oxygen, Prevention, Real Simple, Redbook, SELF, Shape, USA Today, WebMD, Weight Watchers and Yoga Journal. In addition, she’s the co-author of Understanding Your Food Allergies and Intolerances with two Harvard physicians. Karen is also a certified personal trainer, health advocate (who uses a height-adjustable desk in her office and is certified in plant-based nutrition), and a plant-powered athlete with six Nordic walking world records to her name. Follow her on Twitter at @karenaspwriter or visit her web site at www.karenasp.com.

KEVIN CASEY writes about technology and business for a wide variety of publications and companies. He won an Azbee Award, given by the American Society of Business Publication Editors, for his InformationWeek.com story, “Are You Too Old For IT?”. He’s a former community choice honoree in the Small Business Influencer Awards. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

ERICA LAMBERG is a business and travel writer. She has been a correspondent for Gannett for over 15 years, writing business features, book profiles, special section features and travel articles. Under Gannett’s news umbrella, Erica was named a lifestyle and travel expert for USA Today’s 10 Best platform. Erica also currently writes for NBC News, Ladders and Reader’s Digest. Erica’s writing credits also include Bankrate.com, Fodor’s Travel and Cruise Critic. Erica is also a former education and travel correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is also a writing consultant and is retained by corporations in the real estate, higher education and healthcare industries. Married and the mother of a daughter and a son, Erica is based in suburban Philadelphia. Erica is a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park. Follow Erica on Twitter.

ANDREW SEALE is a Toronto-based freelance journalist and storyteller who has spent 15 years reporting on people – from seahorse enthusiasts and tech CEOs to mining magnates and reality television casting directors – and the things they do. He’s devoted the better part of a decade to covering Toronto’s meteoric rise as a hub for tech innovation and the players there. His writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Yahoo Canada Finance, Profit Magazine, enRoute Magazine, StartupHERE Toronto, StarMetro, and The Toronto Star.

DAVID ISRAELSON is a writer, editor, consultant and non-practising lawyer. He is Principal of Eon Communications and Research, which he founded after more than a decade as a senior public relations executive. David is a busy freelance writer and advisor who contributes regularly to major newspapers, magazines and online sites. He also provides strategic consulting services, writes speeches, video scripts and corporate material and conducts communications training programs in Canada and internationally. His longer works include two books and an academic paper on energy policy. David served as Senior Writer for the Premier of Ontario and is an active volunteer board member with several not-for-profit organizations. He lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

DICK YARBROUGH is in his 20th year as a syndicated newspaper columnist. With his opinion pieces seen in more than a half-million homes weekly, he is the most widely-syndicated columnist in the state of Georgia. The Georgia Press Association has recognized him with its first-place award for Best Humor column four times in the past eight years. He has received the Freedom of Information Award from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association for his advocacy of government ethics.

When not pricking the egos of the self-important in his column, Yarbrough has developed a growing reputation as an artist, with one of works hanging in the State Capitol and others in private collections. Dick Yarbrough is a graduate of the University of Georgia, past president of the National Alumni Association and has been named the university’s Outstanding Alumnus. He is a Fellow of Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at UGA and has a room named in his honor at the college. He recently endowed the Yarbrough Professorship in Crisis Communications Leadership at UGA.

MARI EDLIN is editor of Population Health News, Healthcare Innovation News and Accountable Care News. A graduate of Stanford University, she has more than 25 years of experience in journalism and has been a freelance writer since 1988. She has specialized in healthcare since 1993, writing regularly for Managed Healthcare Executive, to which she contributes a monthly article on pharmacy issues, Drug Topics and other national healthcare and pharmaceutical trade publications. She also works closely with many companies and organizations, helping to develop issue briefs, white papers and reports. She serves on numerous media panels and has taught a variety of communications workshops at Stanford University.

DOUG CANTOR is a senior editor at Inc.com. Over his career, he has served as an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, and Esquire, and written for publications including Men’s Journal, ESPN The Magazine, Departures, BlackBook, Time Out New York, Mental Floss, and many others. Doug holds a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and a master¹s degree from Northwestern University¹s Medill School of Journalism.

MELANIE WADDELL is the Washington Bureau Chief for Investment Advisor magazine and ThinkAdvisor.com, part of ALM Media LLC. She has been a columnist for Investment Advisor since 2002, has served as New York Bureau Chief for the magazine, and has been a financial journalist/editor since 1994. Her column, The Playing Field, appears in Investment Advisor Magazine and on ThinkAdvisor.com, and she also writes for ALM’s National Law Journal and Law.com. Early in her career, Melanie covered financial issues at American Banker in Washington. Since 1997, she has been covering investment-related issues, holding senior level editorial positions at American Banker/Thomson Media/Thomson Financial in both Washington and New York. After seven years at Thomson, now Reuters, Melanie joined Investment Advisor. Melanie holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Towson University; while at Towson, she interned at The Baltimore Sun and its suburban edition.

DALE DAUTEN has been researching achievers and innovation since his days at Arizona State and at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. His early work prompted a government publication to call him a “guru” to White House staffers, and during the past four decades, his six books have been published in a dozen languages and have developed a large following worldwide. Dale writes newspaper columns nationally syndicated by King Features. For many years, he wrote “The Corporate Curmudgeon,” and he continues to write “JT and Dale Talk Jobs” with employment expert, Jeanine “JT” O’Donnell. Their work appears weekly in dozens of newspapers, including The Denver Post, Arizona Republic and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

JIM GAINES is a business reporter for the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel, covering regional economic development, Sevier County tourism, TVA, and Oak Ridge National Labs. Since 2000, he has worked as a reporter or editor at alt-weeklies and daily newspapers – seven publications in five states. He holds bachelor’s degrees in print journalism and history & government from Western Kentucky University.

LAURIE SULLIVAN is the search editor of Search Marketing Daily, a MediaPost publication, and serves as the chairperson for the Search Insider Summit, a twice yearly think-tank search conference . A technology and marketing geek since 1985, Sullivan also writes about the electronics supply chain for EBNOnline.com, a UBM publication. She has contributed to Advertising Age, BNet, and wrote full-time for Red Herring, InformationWeek, and EBN, among other media publishers and university publications. Prior to becoming a journalist in 2000, Sullivan wrote copy, produced content, and published marketing material for clients like Microsoft and Computer Associates while working for 10 years in the in-house advertising and marketing agency at computer distributor Ingram Micro. She holds a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Chapman University. You can follow her on Twitter at @LaurieSullivan.

Bio and photo coming soon

DAVID BARBOZA is a correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York. In 2013, Mr. Barboza was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting “for his striking exposure of corruption at high levels of the Chinese government, including billions in secret wealth owned by relatives of the prime minister, well documented work published in the face of heavy pressure from the Chinese officials.” He was also part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.

David was a freelance writer and a research assistant for The New York Times before being hired in 1997 as a staff writer. For five years, he was the Midwest business correspondent based in Chicago. From 2008 to 2015, he served as the paper’s Shanghai bureau chief. Mr. Barboza won two awards in The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) 2007 Best in Business Journalism Contest. He was also part of the team that won the 2008 Grantham Prize for environmental reporting. In 2002, he was part of a team that was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Enron scandal. In 2008, Mr. Barboza won The Times’s internal business award, the Nathaniel Nash Award. He has twice won the Gerald Loeb Award for business reporting. Mr. Barboza graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in history and attended Yale University Graduate School.

VITO PILIECI is an award winning technology reporter who has covered the Canadian landscape for close to two decades. His work regularly appears in PostMedia newspapers across the country. He has been on the forefront of reporting on issues pertaining to copyright and privacy, social media as well as Canada’s wireless and wired Internet industries. He is particularly active in covering Canada’s technology startup space. In 2018 he was recognized by the Canadian Association of Journalists with a nomination for “exemplary reporting” due to his investigation into a $49.5 million loan to small Northern Ontario town for a project that was never completed. He was named winner of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance’s 2012 Award for Excellence in Science and Technology reporting.

IRIS DORBIAN is a prolific and versatile business and arts journalist. Currently, she is a contributor/blogger for Buyouts Insider’s PE HUB and also contributes content to its sister publications Venture Capital Journal and Buyouts. Previously, Iris served as group editor of the PR/media group at Access Intelligence where she worked on PR News, Media Industry Newsletter and Min’s b2b. And before that, she was editor-­in­-chief of Stage Directions, a technical theater trade publication. As a freelance journalist, her articles have appeared in a wide number of publications, including Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CFO.com, DMNews, Backstage, Theatermania, Jerusalem Report and Bank of America’s Small Business site. She is the author of two books: “Great Producers: Visionaries of the American Theater,” which was published by Allworth Press/Skyhorse Publishing in August 2008; and “Love, Loss and Longing in the Age of Reagan.” A New Jersey native, Iris has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

MARCIA PLEDGER is a business journalist, with experience covering topics ranging from small business and technology to manufacturing and Corporate America. As a long-time Plain Dealer reporter and columnist in Cleveland, she enjoys sharing stories of “Reinvention.” She has freelanced for magazines with topics as diverse as golf to personal finance, ranging from Links magazine and Business Executive to Money Magazine and Black Enterprise. She’s a ghostwriter and editor for executives in various roles including books, and the author of a book and 10-year-old column, called “My Biggest Mistake…And How I Fixed It.” The book offers a glimpse from the top at the ups and downs of running companies. As a long-time columnist on various business topics, her most successful feature involved sharing stories of more than 450 entrepreneurs: setbacks and comebacks. Marcia is a former regional director of the National Association of Black Journalists and founder of the Las Vegas chapter. She’s covered tourism, public companies, stocks, marketing, the workplace, and business etiquette before taking a year-long mid-career sabbatical at the University of Michigan in 2014 as a Knight Wallace Fellow.

Bio and photo coming soon

KEITH SHAW has been a fan of computers, technology and video games for more than four decades, and his obsession with technology, large and small, has never waned. With a 30+ year career in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, he’s always on the lookout for “the next big thing”, whether it’s a smartphone, gadget or power adapter. He wrote the Cool Tools personal technology column for Network World for more than 15 years, and created the company’s annual “Cool Yule Tools” holiday gift guide. His gadget empire extended into the video world, where he created several videos for the IDG Enterprise brand (including Computerworld, CIO.com and CSOonline.com). He is the co-creator of the snack food blog Taquitos.net, as well as the geek parenting blog “Mom & Dad are Geeks”. He continues to write product reviews at www.cooltools-reviews.com.

J. MONEY is an award winning blogger, consultant, experimenter, and daddy. With over nine years building communities online, Jay’s projects have reached 25 million views and are routinely featured in the media. He is best known for the personal finance blog, BudgetsAreSexy.com, as well as his curation site – RockstarFinance.com. He loves coffee, hip-hop, and collecting coins, and is on a mission to make personal finance fun.

A ceaseless appreciation for interactive entertainment is what drives ROBERT ALLEN, Tech-Gaming.com’s editor and podcasting personality. Having written over two thousand reviews, and interviewed a wide swath of the industries’ luminaries, Robert aspires to share his appreciation for the medium with an ever-growing audience interested the intersection of technology, gaming, and culture. When a controller isn’t in hand, he can usually be found clutching a dry-erase marker- instructing classes in writing, communication, and technology at two Southern California colleges.