Mary Beth Jowers is Managing Director at Olson Zaltman Associates (OZA), a research-based consultancy that uncovers deep insights to help its clients develop and implement effective strategies. Ms. Jowers is involved in all phases of research from project design through interviewing and analysis to consulting with client teams on uses of the findings. She is also responsible for much of the training of new OZA staff and licensees both domestically and abroad. Over the past 4 years, Ms. Jowers has worked with public and private clients on a variety of medical and health topics including positioning of pharmaceutical products, public health messaging, and the evaluation of messages aimed at donors and users of a non-governmental public health organization. As the OZA client base is quite broad, she also has extensive experience in other sectors including food and beverages, consumer packaged goods, and cosmetics/perfumes.

J. Walker Smith, Ph.D., is President of Yankelovich, Inc., a leading marketing services and research company specializing in database marketing solutions and consumer lifestyles trends. Dr. Smith is a recognized authority on marketplace trends and consumer buying motivations. Described by Fortune Magazine as “one of America’s leading analysts on consumer trends,” Dr. Smith is a much-sought-after speaker and authority on social trends in America whose quotable insights appear regularly in the national media and business press. He is the co-author of three books, including Rocking The Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing and Life is Not Work, Work is Not Life: Simple Reminders for Finding Balance in a 24-7 World, selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the ten best work-life books of 2001. His next book, Generation Ageless, about aging baby boomers will be published in October 2007. Dr. Smith and his wife Joy make their home in Atlanta.

Jeff French, Ph.D., M.B.A., has extensive experience as a senior policy analyst strategist and advisor. Jeff is has an extensive CV that encompasses the development and leadership of public sector projects, social marketing programmes and communication strategy at international, national, regional and local levels. With 29 years experience at the interface between the government, private and NGO sectors Jeff has a broad practical and theoretical understanding of national and international social development issues.

Jeff has had over 40 chapters and articles published in the fields of community development, health education, health promotion, communications and social marketing. Jeff is a Fellow at Kings College, University London and teaches a four other universities. Jeff is a member of a number of national policy and programme committees and regularly contributes to senior level policy roundtables and seminars. Jeff was the Director of marketing and policy at the Health Development Agency for five years. Since March 2005 Jeff has been the Director of the National Social Marketing Centre.

Esther Thorson, Ph.D., is Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, and Director of Research for the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Dr. Thorson has published more than 100 scholarly pieces on news effects, advertising, media economics, and health communication, and has edited six books. She has headed grant and research contracts totaling nearly $3 million and is the only female Fellow of the American Academy of Advertising.
She applies research, both hers and that of her colleagues, in newsrooms and advertising agencies across the United States and abroad. She serves on eight journal editorial boards. She is the recipient of the American Advertising Federation’s Distinguished Advertising Education Award, the American Academy of Advertising Outstanding Contribution to Research Award, a Missouri Alumni Association Faculty Award, and the Missouri Curator’s Award for Scholarly Excellence.

Robert E. Spekman, Ph.D., M.B.A., Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business
Administration at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, is an internationally recognized authority on business-to-business marketing, supply chain/channels management, and strategic alliances. His consulting experiences range from marketing research and competitive analysis to strategic market planning, supply chain management, channels of distribution design and implementation, and strategic partnering. In addition to teaching MBA courses, his executive program experience includes general marketing strategy, sales force management, channels strategy, creating strategic alliances, and business- to-business marketing strategy. He has edited/written seven books and has authored and co-authored more than 80 articles and papers.