Keynote Speaker

Jonah Lehrer

Author, How We Decide; Editor, Wired

Jonah Lehrer, the New York Times bestselling author of How We Decide and editor at Wired, will discuss The Emotions of Online Shopping Decisions during his keynote presentation at LinkShare Symposium East.  

Lehrer will explore neurological and social psychology studies that explain how people make decisions and how to use those insights to become better online marketers.  Lehrer’s gift for turning scientific research studies into interesting stories has led to his widespread publications in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Nature, The New Yorker and Wired.  He contributes regularly to the Science Channel’s TV program Brink, NPR’s science program Radio Lab and has appeared on CBS and The Colbert Report. Jonah Lehrer is a graduate of Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Wendy Hutter

Vice President, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, LLC

Wendy Hutter will announce the results of a specially commissioned study of online consumers making Symposium East a must-attend event. She has been a Vice President at Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, LLC. since 2007 and currently oversees the RIM (Blackberry) account with projects ranging from segmentation to online media consumption.  Other work includes branding projects for consumer brands such as Cole Haan, a subsidiary of Nike, Estee Lauder and Elizabeth Arden.   She has over 19 years of advertising, branding and marketing experience managing branding initiatives for Fortune 500 brands. 

Previously, Ms. Hutter was the US director of business development and marketing for Hill & Knowlton, a sister WPP company.  At H&K, Ms. Hutter was a member of the executive management team and reported directly to the chairman.  She was responsible for the business development strategy and marketing of the company and its practice areas. 

Before H&K, Wendy was Global Director of Brand Management & Marketing for Standard & Poor’s (S&P), where she managed global branding, marketing and communications.  She was also a founding member of WINS (Women’s Initiative for Networking & Success) for The McGraw-Hill Companies, the parent company of S&P. Wendy also worked at Sotheby’s auction house, where she managed branding and marketing for several divisions and launched new brands for the jewelry and wine departments. 

Before working on the client side, Wendy was a brand strategy consultant at Interbrand, a global branding consultancy, where she managed corporate identity, brand strategy and brand equity research projects for the utility, technology, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, insurance, chemical, education, arts, and banking industries.  She began her career at Grey Advertising, working on P&G and then left to work on luxury brands at Publicis Bloom. 

Wendy received her MBA in Management and Finance from Fordham University and her BA in Humanities and English from the University of Southern California.   She is also sits on the marketing advisory board for the Fordham Graduate School of Business.