Ian Kennedy

Profile

Online media executive with experience across the ecosystem. From publishing, distribution, integration through to partnerships, the teams I lead use technology to amplify impact. Optimistic on the promise of supervised AI to enhance content production provided it is both transparent and correctable.

Experience

VP, Partner Success, SimpleFeed, NYC

• Helping publishers integrate into Apple News, Flipboard, Microsoft, SmartNews and more.
• Advisor on distributed publishing best practices.

Director, Media Operations, SmartNews; SF & NYC — 2015-2023 

• Ran team that onboarded and monitored thousands of publisher feeds into SmartNews for integrity and completeness.
• Designed and built custom CRM in Notion to manage publisher relationships and configuration details.
• Designed and built self-serve portal for prospective publishers using WordPress and Airtable, increasing number of publishers and reducing onboarding time.
• Managed rule set that helped classify articles and maintain quality and relevance for SmartNews users.
• Collaborated with editorial teams to configure content mix on local and topic-specific channels increasing user acquisition and engagement.
• Worked on initial process and tools for breaking and scheduled push notification products.
• Introduced initial monetization in SmartNews US Edition using Facebook Audience Network.
• Designed and ran multiple a/b tests to improve user on-boarding.

Director of Product, Gigaom; San Francisco — 2011-2015

• Designed and managed redesign of free and premium websites with new branding, improved ad-placement logic, integrated newsletter sign-up flow, and premium content subscription funnel.
• Leveraged MailChimp API and WordPress categories to produce hundreds of topic-specific newsletters matched to user-interest expressed via reading behavior.
• Converted mobile application to responsive mobile web site, integrated acquired site, paidcontent.org

Head of Innovation, Nokia; Helsinki — 2008-2011

• Ran team that hosted several internal and one external Hackday event.
• Lead Product Manager on a connected address book prototype built out of Berlin.

Senior Product Manager, Yahoo; San Francisco — 2005-2008

• Product Manager for MyBlogLog, a distributed social network that developed one of the first implementations of a newsfeed and innovative friend-finder product.
• Rolled out branded blogs across multiple Yahoo properties.
• Two-time winner of corporate hackday contest.

Director, Sales & Partner Development, Six Apart; SF — 2004-2005

• Set up channel sales group that prospected, trained, and launched corporate blogs for many Fortune 500 and top media companies.
• Worked with NBC to create first mobile photo blog to help their reporters publish stories on aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Product Manager, Dow Jones; Tokyo & Princeton, NJ — 1994-2004

• Inaugural Product Manager for Factiva.com, an enterprise news database combining legacy products from Dow Jones and Reuters.
• Launched partner network that integrated Factiva APIs into corporate portals.
• Regional Sales Manager for Japan and South Korea.

Education

University of California, Berkeley – BA, Social Sciences