2024 IAB Tech Lab Council Meeting

Dr. Andrei Lapets is a contributor to IAB Tech Lab PETs initiatives and an entrepreneur focused on bringing PETs to market. He also serves as a board member and chairs the Technical Committee for the MPC Alliance, a consortium of over 50 companies offering MPC-enabled products and services, and is a member of the WFA Halo Industry Technical Advisory Group.

Andrei was formerly Associate Professor of the Practice in Computer Science at Boston University, where he also served as Director of Research Development at the Hariri Institute for Computing and Director of the Software and Application Innovation Lab. He has led and co-led multiple research efforts supported by sponsors such as the National Science Foundation and IARPA that involved the development, production deployment, and evaluation of PETs, with a focus on usability and web-based delivery. Andrei has over 15 years of industry experience consulting both large organizations and small start-ups focused on bringing new technologies to market. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Boston University and S.M. and A.B. degrees in computer science and mathematics from Harvard University.

Anthony Katsur is a media technology veteran with more than twenty-five years of executive leadership and technical experience at innovative technology companies in the digital media industry.

Most recently, Anthony was SVP, Strategy, Operations and Corporate Development at Nexstar Media Group, Inc., the largest local broadcaster in the United States. Anthony was responsible for overseeing strategy, technology platforms and corporate development across Nexstar’s portfolio of digital assets.

Prior to Nexstar, Anthony served as President of Sonobi, where he implemented their product and go to market strategy around people-based marketing. Anthony recruited, and led highly effective teams while driving strategic partnerships with leading media companies, agencies and brands.

Prior to Sonobi, Anthony held global leadership roles at Rubicon Project as EVP of Business Operations and General Manager of Buyer Cloud. He also held global executive roles at MediaMath and Maxifier, where he served as CEO. Earlier in his career, he joined DoubleClick via the acquisition of NetGravity where he lead multiple engineering divisions and also fulfilled several product leadership and general management roles.

Anthony is an active participant at industry conferences, speaking about the latest ends in advertising at the National Association of Broadcasters, AdAge’s Brand Summit, Advertising Week, Broadcasting & Cable, AdMonsters and GABBCON. He has been quoted on industry trends and provided thought leadership in The Wall Street Journal, AdAge, Adweek, AdExchanger, MediaPost, Econsultancy and Digiday, among others.

Curt Larson has over 20 years of career experience in technology and product management. After spending 5 years at Deloitte Consulting managing large-scale systems implementation projects, he led the rollout of new mobile handsets and services for Vodafone Japan.

He then moved to Silicon Valley and led several product management teams, including as a founding employee at Jibe mobile (now Google), growing and taking RingCentral public, and 8 years at Sharethrough, where he led the creation of the first native exchange and guided Sharethrough to a programmatic business model.

He has co-authored numerous programmatic specs with the IAB and is active in the industry.  He has experience leading product, UX, analytics, business development, operations, marketing, and publisher sales.

Hill is a dad joke aficionado, avid reader, podcast junky, and boasts a 995-day streak on Duolingo. She comes to Tech Lab from Epsilon where she was the product lead for their partnership with The Trade Desk and the Disclosed offering. She got her start with the IAB TechLab in the Distributed Ledger working group via her role at GroupM as the Assoc. Director of Product Management on the Global Investment Systems team. She has varied experience on both the buy and sell side of the industry and enjoys nerding out about all things ad tech.

Kale Smith manages the privacy products at Roku, spanning across ad integrity, consent management, and regulatory compliance. Prior to joining Roku, Kale led the privacy and identity strategy at Nielsen, tackling cookieless attribution and GDPR requirements to support a diverse range of global clients from television broadcasters, tech giants, and digital-native publishers. His experience launching Nielsen’s first CTV measurement platform has given him valuable insight into the intricacies of the shifting digital ecosystem and the challenges it faces. He lives in New York and holds an Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from Cornell University, where he worked in a behavioral economics lab researching the valuation of privacy.

Mark McEachran is the VP of Product for the Platform at Yieldmo. He focuses on developing new markets for the online advertising ecosystem. McEachran is currently focusing on auction mechanics, privacy compliance and bringing media owners, buyers, and technology providers together to accelerate feature development and expand the capabilities of their marketplaces. He has been digital advertising for over 25 years and championed the transformation from traditional ad networks to Real-Time Bidding (RTB) architecture. An entrepreneur at heart, Mark also owns a blueberry farm with his family in Oregon.

Dr. Neal Richter has worked in the software industry since 1996 and since 1999 focused on data science, machine learning, and AI applications. He is currently Director, Advertising Science for Amazon DSP. He oversees a team of data scientists and engineers focused on RTB bidding algorithms and systems across display, mobile, audio, and video. Prior roles include Chief Scientist at SpotX, a streaming CTV ad platform; Chief Technical Officer at Rakuten Marketing; and CTO and Chief Scientist at the Rubicon Project.

Within Tech Lab, Neal has served on the Board going back to the initial incarnation as the IAB Ad Technology Advisory Council. He has been a contributor to the development of the OpenRTB protocol, the deal_id, OpenRTB Native, ads.txt, ads.cert, sellers.json, and other associated standards.

Neal grew up in a log cabin in a rural area of Montana and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Montana State University.

When not sifting through data or designing high-scale systems and learning algorithms, Neal enjoys fly fishing, skiing, and living in the Rockies in Salt Lake City Utah with his wife, four teenagers, and an extremely furry dog.