Bios

Gianni Catalfamo
Chairman, Pleon, Italy

Gianni Catalfamo is the Web 2.0 evangelist for Pleon, as well as co-leader of the European Technology Practice. Gianni is active as international account director for some of Pleon’s largest technology clients. He led the IBM account for Europe for four years and is currently European account director for Lenovo. His client teams benefit from his role as executive coach and communications strategy adviser.

Prior to joining Pleon, Gianni founded, in 1986, the Italian operation of Lotus Development Corp., setting up the first Lotus office in Milan. He also gained valuable field experience at Olivetti, where he spent two years in sales and marketing in the finance sector, and at IBM, where he started his career as a systems engineer.

Cynthia Chan
Senior Account Manager, Corporate and Technology Practice, Ketchum
Hong Kong

Cynthia Chan has eight years of experience in public relations, contributing her strong strategic media relations and solid bilingual writing and corporate communications skills to counsel a diverse range of corporate and technology clients, including De Beers, FedEx, Kodak, Nokia Siemens Networks, Visa and Wharf Holdings.

Cynthia graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Arts with honors in translation. She also completed a Bachelor of Law (LLB) from the University of London with honors in 2006. She is fluent in Cantonese, Putonghua, English, and conversational French. She tweets at www.twitter.com/cynthiamania or can be followed at Friendfeed, http://friendfeed.com/cynthiamania.

Darryl Chu
Senior Flash Designer, Ketchum Digital
New York

Darryl has 20 years of creative experience, anchored by a background in industrial design and a passion for 3D and motion elements. His broad range of talents include consumer product and package, graphic, motion graphic, and interactive design. Prior to joining Ketchum, Darryl was a new media specialist/interactive developer at DDB Worldwide.

Rosa Fernández Conde
Associate Director, Ketchum Spain
Madrid

As associate director for Ketchum Spain, Rosa is responsible for communications campaigns and events for various clients, including Procter & Gamble (Max Factor, Olay and Pantene for P&G Beauty; Hugo Boss and Rochas for P&G Prestige Products; Ariel and Fairy in P&G Home Care); MTV Networks; Kraft Foods; and Kellogg, among others.

With more than 18 years of public relations experience, she has experience that includes PR plans for brands and products from Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Dyson Appliances, the Disney Store, the Disney Channel, Polaroid and 24 Hour Fitness, among others.

Daniel Dworkin
Consultant, Stromberg Consulting
New York

Daniel works with Stromberg clients across industries to inspire optimal individual, team, and organizational performance. Stromberg Consulting is a Ketchum firm specializing in employee engagement and change management.

Daniel was previously a member of the New York City Teaching Fellows, where he served as a third-grade bilingual teacher. He holds a master’s degree in bilingual education from the City College of New York and a second master’s degree from NYU in industrial and organizational psychology.

Ralf Langen
Managing Partner, Germany, and European Head, Change & Transformation, Pleon
Munich

Ralf has been a communications management professional for almost 20 years, both on the corporate side and as a consultant. Today, he specializes in change management and issues and crisis management and provides expertise as a strategic adviser for large corporations and institutions in the financial, pharmaceutical, telecommunications and other industry segments. Among his assignments in the change and transformation area were the spinoff of Ciba Specialty Chemicals from Novartis, the merger of Siemens Automotive and Mannesmann VDO, the acquisition of BHW by German retail bank Postbank, and recently the merger of the networks businesses of Nokia and Siemens to establish Nokia Siemens Networks.

Ralf has won several national and international awards for communications excellence. He is the founder and board member of the European Centre for Reputations Studies (ECRS) and co-editor and author of Change 2.0 – Beyond Organizational Transformation, published in 2008 (Springer publishing house). Ralf started his career as PR manager for the Dow Chemical Company in Germany after finishing his studies at the Universities of Cologne and Frankfurt. He joined Pleon in 1999, having worked for Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum before that.

Tera Miller
Senior Vice President and Creative Director, Ketchum Midwest
Chicago

Tera provides strategic planning and creative thinking for clients and account teams. She conducts training on strategic program development using the Ketchum Programming Process and helps teams facilitate productive meetings, including cross-agency integration, team building and brainstorming.

Before joining Ketchum, Tera provided internal marketing communications counsel for Ralston Purina Company (Nestlé Purina). At Purina, she conducted public relations outreach for Purina Pet Food, Energizer Batteries, Keystone Ski Resort and Continental Baking Company.

Lance Pressl
President, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and Co-Founder, InnovateNow
Chicago

As president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Lance is charged with developing and implementing programs and events supporting the Chamber's mission to create a long-term business growth and prosperity agenda for the Chicagoland region. In this capacity, he helped found InnovateNow, a public-private partnership that promotes business innovation.

Lance previously served as director of corporate affairs and issues management for Kraft Foods, Miller Brewing, and Philip Morris USA, divisions of Philip Morris Companies. In 1996, he was named president of the Civic Federation, the nation's oldest taxpayer watchdog organization in the United States, and was widely credited for revitalizing the organization and developing a nationally recognized, nonpartisan, research agenda. He also formerly served as vice president for federal relations and public policy at the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington, D.C.

Ryan Rasmussen
Associate, Zócalo Group
Chicago

Ryan develops digital strategies and best practices for sustainable word-of-mouth programs at Zócalo Group, a Ketchum company. He is also the chief architect of the Digital Footprint Index, Earned Digital Engagements, and the Ad Equivalency methodologies for measuring the impact of social media. As a member of Zócalo’s Digital Influence Group, Ryan demonstrates a knack for tying together seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts into client strategies that incorporate his passion for emergent technologies and in-depth understanding of the living Web.

He has co-authored two books on digital influence - The Age Of Conversation and The Age Of Conversation II, his work as an early innovator in digital word-of-mouth (DWOM) was featured in Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, by Andy Sernovitz -- and has been widely quoted on the topic of co-creation and the value of collaborative innovation through social technologies. In 2008, Ryan was the recipient of Ketchum's first-ever Innovation Idol competition for his work with augmented cognition and subthreshold extreme gradual change video.

Petra Sammer
Partner and Managing and Creative Director, Ketchum Germany
Munich

Petra is responsible for the strategic and creative development of Ketchum in Germany. She has more than 15 years of experience in counseling clients in classic public relations, marketing and corporate communications. She and her team concentrate on reputation management, product and business-to-business communication, brand identity and positioning, crisis and issue management, and change management.

Petra also is a lecturer at the Bayerische Akademie für Werbung (BAW, Bavarian Advertising Academy. Prior to joining Ketchum, she studied film philology (German), economics and politics, was an editor in the daily press, and worked in two advertising agencies.

Bhavana Singh
Innovation Associate, Ketchum
New York

Bhavana is an associate in innovation, harnessing and sharing the creative work of Ketchum through an animated comic strip, an innovation contest and other initiatives designed as creative catalysts. She is also instrumental in supporting the go-to-market planning and marketing for new products and services launched by Ketchum.

Bhavana is a graduate of Baruch College with a master’s degree in corporate communication, and also has a master's degree in mass communication and a bachelor's degree in economics from colleges in India. She has lived in five countries and brings a global perspective to her work. She is fluent in Hindi.

Karen Strauss
Partner and Chief Innovation Officer, Ketchum
New York

Karen acts as an evangelist for adapting to changes in the communications landscape by creating new products and services to better reach niche audiences. Some of her recent initiatives include the creation of the first media planning discipline in the public relations business, the addition of social network analysis to the process of identifying and activating influencers; the creation of Ketchum's Well-Connected specialty, which builds brands that make health and wellness promises, and the formation of "passion panels," which harness people with specialized interests to help shape creative ideas for clients. She is also responsible for introducing The Innovation Chronicles of Kaptain Clairvoyant cartoon and the Innovation Idol competition to Ketchum – programs that contribute to the company’s creative culture.

Karen is also a professional facilitator, specializing in catalyzing and synthesizing strategic and creative thinking in group settings. She designed the Ketchum Programming Process, a proprietary methodology for goal setting, audience insight, strategic planning, creative development and measurement. She began her career at Ketchum building its Brand Marketing and Healthcare Practices.

Ruth Yearley
Planning and Development Director, Ketchum Pleon
London

Ruth has more than 20 years of marketing experience, which includes work on both the agency and client sides. Trained as a market researcher, she brought a specialty in new product development and brand and corporate strategy and positioning when she joined Ketchum.

Ruth facilitates group sessions that use a combination of questioning and logical and strategic thinking to help teams focus their approach and expedite the developmental process.