Catching Zs: Gen Z Insights and How Brands Connect with Them

Brian Berner is an advertising media and technology executive with over a decade and a half of experience. He is the Head of North America Advertising Sales for Spotify, the popular streaming service, where he leads nearly 160 employees across various departments in all matters related to advertising sales and revenue within the United States and Canada.

Discovering his passion for advertising as a college student, Berner began his career at MySpace, the premier social media site at the time. He quickly grew from his role as an individual contributor to a managerial position, jumpstarting sales efforts for MySpace on the West Coast, eventually doing the same on the East Coast and in the Midwest before moving on. After a stint as the Vice President of Midwest Sales for marketing solutions company Centro, Brian Berner was approached by Spotify for the position of Regional Vice President of the Midwest, and soon advanced to Head of Advertising Sales in the US. As a result of his continued excellence, he subsequently became Head of Advertising Sales for North America in its entirety.

Brian Berner’s wide breadth of experience in areas such as information, data, technology and advertising have given him a distinct advantage in his career, providing him with a detailed understanding of digital-driven strategies long before they became the norm. His background in management information systems and informational hierarchies has also contributed heavily to his reputation as a well-respected leader with a proven track record of cultivating talent.

In looking forward, Brian Berner intends to continue excelling and achieving in his career, with hopes to one day start his own entrepreneurial efforts. Brian also has a passion for philanthropy and education, and his desire in this regard is to help build upon Chicago’s start up culture, where he grew up.

Sheryl Goldstein is the Executive Vice President, Chief Industry Growth Officer at the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). In her role, she oversees engaging the IAB’s 650+ members across all of the IAB’s vast initiatives, activities and thought leadership programs. Under Sheryl’s watch are the Member Engagement, Centers of Excellence, Research and L&D teams. She also spearheads talent development, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and runs the IAB CRO Council.

Sheryl Goldstein is a “net vet” with over 20 years of driving meaningful revenue growth through consultative selling in the dynamic digital landscape (Yahoo, AOL, About.com). She is adept at building successful teams, developing go-to-market strategies and gaining consensus across key stakeholders. Her background includes a wide variety of digital media platforms and technologies and numerous leadership roles.

In addition to her experience as a sales leader, Sheryl brings years of talent development and training to her role and is committed to making the digital media landscape a great industry for diverse talent to thrive and have a long and exciting career.

Sheryl is a current board member for 212NYC, Makers and was a past Board member of She Runs It. She serves on the Rutgers Business School Advisory Board for Marketing and is helping RBS craft a digital marketing graduate program. In addition, she has served on Boards and Committees for the NY Ad Club, Women in Communications, Inc. and the IAB and is a member of Chief. She is an award-winning sales leader (Yahoo Accelerator Award, AOL Best Media Partner presented by Verizon, AOL Presidents Club, AWNY Crystal Award Winner).

Sheryl is a graduate of Syracuse University Newhouse School and lives in New Jersey with her partner Cindy and dogs Pancho and Camden. On the weekends, you can catch her on the pickleball court or riding around the Jersey Shore on her new electric bike. Her daughter Sarah-Jaana lives in the Boston area with her husband Michael.

Kathleen is Founder and President of Sports Media Challenge, and WeRGenZ, nationally renowned reputation management, and social media consulting firms. After nearly a decade as an award-winning television anchor, reporter and talk show host, Kathleen changed competitive arenas. Since 1989, she has been reputation management consultant to Fortune 500 CEO’s, Olympic gold medalists and college gridiron greats. She has counseled those in the ranks of the NBA, NFL, PGA, and MLB.

Kathleen’s social media leadership gained international acclaim as “the woman who taught Shaquille O’Neal to tweet.” In 2008 she also spearheaded the first social media feature on ESPN’s Sports Center.

In 2015 Hessert developed the social media campaign on behalf of Pope Francis’ historic visit to the US, leading an influencer team of 60 millennials to cover the Pope. In addition, she created the global sensation known as “Pope Emoji.” The free app garnered more than half a billion impressions the first month and was a finalist for the coveted Shorty Awards.

In 2017, Kathleen launched WeRGenZ, a research consultancy specializing in helping brands understand and effectively engage with Generation Z. With a GenZ think tank of over 1000 U.S. based teens and young adults, WeRGenZ offers keynote speeches, custom research, training and content marketing campaigns for brands. She also provides teens an opportunity to become authentic voices for their generation.

Clients have included, Adobe, KPMG, the NFL, NBA, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, ESPN, The Rockettes, Fox Networks, EA Sports, Venus and Serena Williams, Miami Heat, Phoenix Suns, PGA TOUR, MLB, Super Bowl MVPs Peyton and Eli Manning, baseball great Derek Jeter, NASCAR’s Jeff Gordon and Danica Patrick and Olympians Kerri Strugg and Kristi Yamaguchi, as well as premiere college programs.

Kathleen is in wide demand as a speaker, consultant, media interviewee, and social media influencer.

Peter Naylor is Vice President of Americas at Snap, responsible for driving the growth of the company’s advertising business across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Previously, Peter served as SVP and Head of Advertising Sales at Hulu, where he worked for over six years. Prior to Hulu, Peter was EVP of Digital Media Sales for NBCUniversal (NBCU) where he ran digital advertising sales for NBCU’s entertainment, news and sports digital properties. Before NBCU, Peter served as the SVP of Sales for the iVillage Properties, which was acquired by NBCU in May 2006. Prior to joining iVillage, he served as Vice President of Sales for Terra Lycos. He started his internet sales career at Wired Digital.

Peter is on the Board of Directors for the IAB, Ad Council, the IRTS Foundation and the TD Foundation, an not-for-profit organization that provides aid to children of wounded warriors.

Lauryl Schraedly is an executive at Snapchat who leads the Global Consumer Insights and Strategy team. The team is comprised of insights, analytics and strategy partners who identify and illuminate trends among the global Snapchat Generation for internal marketing and product development and external thought leadership. Prior to Snapchat, Lauryl led Consumer Insights at PepsiCo for Gatorade.

Zoe Soon has 10+ years of experience building products in technology-driven businesses with a heavy focus on mobile. Six years ago Zoe flew 21 hours from Sydney to NYC for a 30min coffee meeting which led to her first job in NYC. Since then she’s worked with three major New York based media companies, The New York Times, Condé Nast and Business Insider on projects ranging from location-based apps to paywalls. Zoe began her career as a user researcher and UX design consultant working with three of the top five banks in Australia. She was then hired to establish a user insights practice at Fairfax Media, a leading Australian news and media conglomerate. Here she led the user research for the flagship news apps which won Best Mobile News Product at the 2012 Australian Mobile Awards and went on to become product lead for the news sites. In this role she launched a content paywall and a unified user data system to diversify revenue and enable more targeted marketing.

Prior to joining the IAB Zoe was General Manager of apps and email at Business Insider where she was charged with defining the go-to market strategy for these platforms. In this role Zoe launched Insider Inc’s first OTT apps across Apple, Amazon Fire and Roku offering advertisers cross-platform video digital distribution and access to an audience that generates over 2 billion views each month.

Zoe has a Masters in Organizational Psychology and lives in New York. She enjoys burning pancakes, Cuban salsa dancing and talking to strangers in line.

17-year-old high school (incoming) senior who lives in Evanston, Illinois, an eclectic urban/suburban hybrid city bordering Chicago. Some of my passions include enjoying various types of music, new and old, mainstream and underground, cycling (trail and road), spending time with friends and family, and serving within my church community. I use social media regularly to communicate with my friends and to update them on significant events in my life. I also use it to consume content such as memes and news. I plan on attending college, but I am exploring an alternate path of taking a gap year beforehand to work and learn more about myself.

Lydia Laramore is a student at Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga. Majoring in International Studies and minoring in French, Lydia loves to study language’s capacity to bridge the gap between different groups of people. Because she loves to read and write, she helps people improve their arguments and writing in her role as a peer tutor in her campus writing center. As a 2018 United Nations associated Millennium Fellow, she worked to advance SDG #5, gender equality, by helping young African American women enter the tech industry. As a leader in the WeRGenZ think tank, she’s had the opportunity to write articles, contribute to podcasts, and present at Adobe about how Generation Z will make its mark on the world. Lydia spent a summer working at Spelman as a program assistant for Spelman’s summer programs for high achieving high school students and interning with Coca Cola Company and Coca Cola United. In February 2019, she attended the Harvard Public Policy Leadership Conference and contributed to an Adobe sponsored think tank on the Future of the Digital Workplace. Last summer, she interned in DC and took class at George Mason University as a Leadership Scholar in The Fund for American Studies Summer 2019 Academic Internship Program.

Quinn McKenna is a rising sophomore at the University of Notre Dame. She is majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies (PLS), a major that strongly emphasizes literature and the humanities. Quinn also minors in Education, Schooling, and Society (ESS). In high school, she was selected to participate in the renowned Cambridge University Scholar Program. Quinn was also the only member of her generation to be asked to speak on GenZ and sports at the University of Notre Dame’s Play Like A Champion Today National conference for educators and coaches. This semester, she has been named an ambassador representing her dorm on campus issues. Originally from North Palm Beach, FL, Quinn enjoys reading, debating, and having good conversations with friends and family.

I’m a 16-year old rising junior at Saint Peter’s Prep (Jersey City, NJ). I am very passionate about athletics and sports participation, and I am a Division 1 prospect in football, with two current scholarship offers from Temple and Syracuse. I am also very passionate about video games and music. My favorite video games are: NBA 2K ’20, Brawlhalla, and Madden ‘20, and my favorite music artists are Kanye West, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar

Isaiah Quintana is a content creator for Social Magnets. He is fluent in memes, music, marketing, and mastery. Applying growth hacking to school, he will graduate High School 2 years early while also being a full-time gamer. He is a polymath with an IQ of 127 and is passionate about mastering everything he does from social and digital media, photography, art, gaming, coding, poetry, writing, beatboxing, and snowboarding. He has an empathetic worldview and loves to bridge generational gaps and help people understand GenZ. He is developing his first talk, “Squading up with GenZ” which helps brands understand and integrate with the next big generation.