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7 of the Most Influential Women in Digital Media Advertising

This month we celebrate Women’s History Month. Since the beginning of advertising, women have made a significant impact, whether they were recognized for their successes or not. As a female in the advertising, I look up to those women like Mary Wells Lawrence who paved the way for women in the industry. To this day, the world of advertising remains a male-dominated field. In fact, only 3% of creative leadership positions are held by women, while ironically women control 80% of consumer spending in America.

With that being said, in honor of Women’s History Month I would like to celebrate women today who are making a difference in the field of digital media advertising. You may have never heard their names, but their work more than likely impacts your day-to-day activities.

Sheryl Sandberg: Chief Operating Officer at Facebook

When first joining Facebook in 2008, Sandberg’s first goal was to make it profitable. This lead to the creation of Facebook’s first advertising platform of “ads discreetly presented” and by 2010 the company become profitable. Today Sandberg oversees all of Facebook’s operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy and communications. As a reward for her great efforts, she was invited to the board of directors. The first women on Facebook’s board.

Kim Luegers Morse: Product Consultant at LinkedIn

Before landing her current position as Product Consultant at LinkedIn, Kim was the Director of Mobile and Emerging Media at Pandora. There, she was partially responsible for the company’s $100 million-plus in mobile advertising sales revenue. Currently at LinkedIn, she works to help higher education institutions leverage LinkedIn media effectively to achieve their marketing objectives. The social network, which is primarily used by business professionals world-wide, has over 300 million active monthly users (and counting.)

Susan Wojcicki: CEO at YouTube

Susan become Google’s 16th employee and marketing executive in 1999. She was able to license their search technology and led initial development of Google’s image search. Later on, she advanced to Vice President of Advertising & Commerce and created the advertising and analytic products offered by Google including: AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and Google Analytics.

Arianna Huffington: Co-Founder/Editor-In-Chief at Huffington Post


Arianna boldly took on the world of digital media in 2005 with Huffington Post, an American online news aggregator and blog. Today, her creation has flooded our Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter timelines to become a household name with viral post after viral post. It’s likely worth an estimated $100 million.



Sara Clemens: Chief Strategy Officer at Pandora



As Chief of Strategy at Pandora, Sara works towards global expansion along with perfecting the internet radio company’s business strategy. Prior to landing her Pandora gig, Sara held leadership positons at Greylock Partners, LinkedIn and Microsoft.



Lisa Utzschneider: Senior VP, Sales, Americas at Yahoo

Lisa certainly has an impressive resume, which presumably helped her land the job as Senior Vice President at Yahoo in February of 2014. She started out as a General Sales Manager at Microsoft where for ten years she led several advertising initiatives for product development and sales. Lisa then joined Amazon in 2008 as their President of Global Advertising. As President of Global Advertising, she assumed the role of operating all of the company’s owned websites including Amazon, IMDb and DPReview. She developed long lasting sales strategies and advertising solutions for the ecommerce conglomerate.

Carolyn Everson: VP, Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook

With previous experience from Walt Disney Imaginnering, MTV Networks and Microsoft, Carolyn brings innovation and leadership to Facebook. Her efforts have cultivated Facebook into the leader of mobile advertising. She’s responsible for growing Facebook’s ad revenue, which recently accounted for 62% of the $2.7 billion the social network made last year-not to mention mobile ad revenue alone was up 151% from the year before.



Who are the women that inspire you?

The women above represent some of the most successful digital brands in the world. Not only have they helped lay the foundation for digital media success, they continue to build up to make the internet more enjoyable and entertaining. We’d love to hear about more women who are making an impact in digital media advertising! Please leave a comment below to continue the conversation.