Connected Experiences

Mark Beal spent more than 25 years in public relations, building and running campaigns for one of the nation’s top consumer PR agencies around properties like the Olympic Games, the Super Bowl, the World Series, the US Open, and The Rolling Stones.

Today, he’s a full-time professor of practice at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, where his research on Gen Z has made him one of the most sought-after voices on the generation, with keynotes for the American Marketing Association, the Association of National Advertisers, and the Public Relations Society of America.

Mark has authored eight books, including Decoding Gen Z, Engaging Gen Z, Gen Z Graduates to Adulthood, and his latest, ZEO, along with a career-transition trilogy co-authored with Frank Kovacs. His writing has turned into keynotes for corporations, brands, agencies, universities, industry associations, and pro sports leagues and teams nationwide.

Mark returns to NJDMC 2026 as host, bringing his research on the next generation of talent, consumers, and leaders to the Bell Works stage.

Kelsey White leads client services and delivery at GNW Consulting, a marketing operations agency that helps B2B companies implement, integrate, and optimize their martech stacks. She specializes in turning messy, fragmented marketing data into clear, defensible measurement, helping teams replace guesswork with real, data-backed decisions about where to invest.

Before moving into leadership at GNW, Kelsey built her career on the revenue and marketing analytics side of martech, with roles at Adobe, Snowflake, and CaliberMind. She’s spoken on account-based marketing and attribution at events including the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, and has been a featured guest on the Funnel Lab Fridays podcast discussing how to organize target accounts for ABM at scale.

Kelsey joins the “Building the Connection” panel at NJDMC 2026, where brand and media leaders talk about how to build real trust and lasting connection in an AI-driven world.

Dan Van Tran (DVT) is CTO of Collectors, the multibillion-dollar company behind PSA and the world’s largest authenticator of trading cards, coins, and collectibles. Since joining after the company’s $850 million take-private in 2021, DVT has led a technology transformation that helped grow Collectors to a $4.3 billion valuation, scaling the engineering org from 22 to 220+ people along the way.

His team has shipped a patented machine-learning system for counterfeit detection and the AI-powered card scanner in PSA’s mobile app. In one experiment, a fully autonomous AI “employee” his team built picked up a data engineering ticket that would normally take a person 2-3 days, and finished it in 40 minutes for less than a dollar in compute.

DVT previously spent a decade at FactSet, helped scale Flatiron Health from a startup through its acquisition by Roche, and founded Zenauction, later acquired by Goldin. He’s also Founder and CEO of Myth MVP and Chair of the Raritan Valley Community College Foundation.

DVT joins NJDMC 2026 to deliver “Agentic AI, Explained: How Machines Went From Answering to Acting,” a plain-English breakdown of what agentic AI can actually do, and how to start experimenting with it at your own organization.

Over the past decade, Karen has worked at the intersection of entertainment, advertising, and influencer marketing, supporting brands including Disney/Hulu, Paramount Pictures, Activision, and Kraft Heinz. Over the past two years, she’s helped QYOU and its brand partners earn more than 16 industry honors, including recognition from the Webby Awards, the Telly Awards, ANA Brand Catalyst, and the Clio Awards. QYOU Studios was also named Most Innovative Studio at the 2026 Digiday TV & Video Awards.

Before joining QYOU, Karen led marketing and communications at BENlabs, where she positioned the company’s product placement and influencer marketing capabilities across the U.S. and U.K. Her earlier experience includes marketing leadership roles with AOL and strategic consulting for immersive technology company Trigger XR.

Karen holds a Master of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Global Business from Rider University and was named to Direct Marketing News’ 40 Under 40 in 2018.

Karen joins the “Building the Connection” panel at NJDMC 2026, where brand and media leaders talk about how to build real trust and lasting connection in an AI-driven world.

Denis Scott has built marketing functions from the ground up at some of the biggest names in tech and retail. He’s currently CMO of Larridin, an Andreessen Horowitz and Bloomberg-backed AI measurement platform, where he leads go-to-market strategy and helps companies replace AI guesswork with real, data-backed ROI.

Before Larridin, Denis was CMO at CharterUp, where he built the brand and growth engine that helped make it the second fastest-growing private company in the U.S. He launched Fanatics’ Betting and Gaming brand from scratch, ahead of its first customer, as SVP of Integrated Marketing. As CMO of SurveyMonkey, his team won a Gold ANA Reggie Award for B2B marketing excellence. He was also Gap Inc.’s first-ever online marketer, driving early e-commerce growth across Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic, and later led the consumer business at OpenTable.

Denis has keynoted Google Marketing Next and Salesforce Dreamforce, and serves as a board advisor to Hangtight, an AI-powered social planning app.

Denis joins NJDMC 2026 to deliver “Measuring AI ROI and Turning Adoption into Business Outcomes,” a session on why marketing’s AI spend is some of the least measured in the business, and how leaders can connect that investment to real results.

Olivia Geiger is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, where she works on positioning, go-to-market strategy, integrated marketing, and customer storytelling for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the company’s B2B sales intelligence product. She’s especially interested in how sellers and marketers can build authentic, trusted relationships with buyers as AI continues to reshape the way people discover, evaluate, and engage with brands.

Olivia has spent her career in strategic marketing and communications roles across travel, technology, and education. She holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is based in Monmouth County.

Olivia joins “Inside Influence” at NJDMC 2026, going behind the scenes with brands, creators, agencies, and platforms to explore how influence is being built across both B2C and B2B.

Eric Farkas leads product marketing at Pinterest, where he’s driving adoption of the company’s programmatic ad tech business, including its acquisition of tvScientific. He’s spent his career turning platforms into demand engines, with leadership roles at Twitter, WeWork, Experian, and Apple along the way.

At WeWork, Eric grew wework.com into the company’s single largest marketing channel, generating 269,000 leads and $85 million in revenue in one year. At Experian, he led an eight-person marketing team behind $45 million in marketing-influenced revenue. At Twitter, he led global positioning for video ad products that drove more than half of the platform’s total ad revenue.

Eric joins the “Building the Connection” panel at NJDMC 2026, where brand and media leaders talk about how to build real trust and lasting connection in an AI-driven world.

Monica Violet Joy is an award-winning author, artist, creator, writer, director, showrunner, and producer, best known for the hit series CoComelon. Her work for Blue Sky Studios, Disney, DreamWorks, Netflix, and Nickelodeon spans writing, developing, and producing on titles including Go, Dog. Go!, Blue’s Clues, Bubble Guppies, Ferdinand, Future Chicken, Ice Age 5, Nimona, Spies in Disguise, SpongeBob, Team Umizoomi, The Peanuts Movie, and Wallykazam. She’s published eight books and has lectured at NYU, UPenn, SVA, PCA&D, and Montclair State University. Her company, Monica Violet Joy Productions, is dedicated to creating empowering, diverse, original, and heartfelt content for all.

Monica joins “Inside Influence” at NJDMC 2026, going behind the scenes with brands, creators, agencies, and platforms to explore how influence is being built across both B2C and B2B.

Kellie Matzen is the Senior Vice President of North America at Influencer, where she leads the company’s largest market with responsibility for regional growth, profitability, and overall business performance. She oversees sales and client services across the region, driving new business, client retention and expansion, and operational excellence while partnering closely with global leadership to accelerate growth across North America.

Kellie brings more than 15 years of experience across digital media, brand marketing, commercial strategy, and client leadership. She joined Influencer in 2023 as Executive Director of Brand Partnerships and was promoted through VP of Brand & Platform Partnerships before stepping into her current role, leading rapid revenue growth while building strategic partnerships with some of the world’s leading brands. Before Influencer, she held leadership roles at Vice Media Group, Refinery29, and Martha Stewart Living, including seven years at Refinery29 helping scale its account management and sales organization. She’s passionate about helping brands connect culture, community, commerce, and technology to turn creator-led influence into measurable business outcomes.

Kellie joins “Inside Influence” at NJDMC 2026, going behind the scenes with brands, creators, agencies, and platforms to explore how influence is being built across both B2C and B2B.

Eva Press is Chief Growth Officer at 37Arc, a company that helps sales and marketing teams redesign how work gets done so they can capture more growth, move faster, and remove waste. Pairing experienced sales and marketing executives with an AI platform trained on thousands of sales and marketing workflows, 37Arc finds the hidden places where work gets stuck across people, processes, and tools, then embeds AI agents alongside existing teams so the changes hold.

Eva spent 14 years at Meta, most recently as Vice President, Global Business Group, leading the US Consumer Packaged Goods, eCommerce, Retail, Healthcare, and Restaurants teams and helping large, complex advertisers navigate the disruptions shaping the marketing landscape. Before Meta, she spent 10 years in brand management at Kraft Foods, leading iconic brands including Planters, Jell-O, and Oreo.

Eva is a member and past President of She Runs It, the nonprofit dedicated to helping more women lead at every career level, and previously served on the board of the National Retail Federation. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and undergraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School.

Eva joins the “Building the Connection” panel at NJDMC 2026, where brand and media leaders talk about how to build real trust and lasting connection in an AI-driven world.