NEW YORK, Dec. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Operative has announced the recent addition of Lindsay Van Kirk, SVP of Product, Mike Pollard, SVP of Strategic Partnerships, David Dembowski, SVP of Sales and Peter Schultz, VP of Digital Sales. Earlier this year, Operative welcomed CEO Michael Grossi and Chief Commercial Officer, Ben Tatta to lead the next phase of Operative’s growth with a focus on product development, client development, and international expansion. These recent hires join the new leadership team to drive the company’s strategy forward.

“Lindsay, Michael, David, and Peter are invaluable additions to the Operative leadership team. Each brings years of relevant experience and track records of success delivering powerful digital technology for media companies and the world’s largest brands,” said Michael Grossi, CEO at Operative. “This is a critical time in advertising, and Operative sits at the forefront of technology innovation for media companies globally, starting with our industry-leading AOS platform. With our new expanded team, we can scale faster to meet our next phase of growth as global media companies across network, local, MVPD, OTT, CTV and Digital adopt our next-generation, cloud-native sales management system.”

Global media companies use AOS to access inventory across their portfolio and manage the entire advertising sales lifecycle for linear, digital, and advanced audiences in a converged and unified way in one single solution. AOS delivers next-gen advertising capabilities including near-real-time ad creative substitution, automation of rate cards and multiple currencies, optimization capabilities and enabling the convergence of assets across all content verticals and platforms.

The new hires bring decades of digital experience and leadership to the company and will be critical to driving the continuing adoption of AOS at a global scale: 

Lindsay Van Kirk brings a proven record of delivering innovation to the media industry. As the head of product management, Van Kirk will lead product strategy and roadmap for Operative’s industry-leading portfolio of advertising, content, traffic, and subscription solutions. Van Kirk brings several years of Media ISV experience leading product teams, strategy, and portfolio P&L at Xandr and AppNexus. Alongside Operative’s deep engineering capability, Van Kirk aims to accelerate Operative’s growth and customer innovation.

Mike Pollard will be responsible for developing and leading product, data, and vendor partnerships across both linear and digital media markets. Pollard will work with partners to create scalable solutions that are natural extensions of Operative platforms. For the past two decades, Pollard held leadership roles at the Walt Disney Company, most recently as Senior Vice President, Media Engineering for Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution. He has experience at Credit Suisse, and with Creative Artists Agency and Market Burnett Productions. His career started at ABC where he was a member of strategy, broadcast operations, engineering, and technology teams.

David Dembowski joins Operative as the head of global sales and account management for the company. In this role he will spearhead the expansion and growth of Operative across existing and new markets on a worldwide basis. Dembowski is an accomplished sales leader with extensive digital media and adtech experience. Most recently Dembowski led data analytics and SaaS sales across leading linear, CTV/OTT, DOOH, and digital ecosystems for Standard Media Index. He has also held leadership sales roles at IgnitionOne, NetMining and Yahoo!. Dembowski has also served on a variety of boards for industry organizations including the IAB and the ANA. 

Peter Schultz will serve as the head of digital sales for Operative, responsible for sales of Operative’s portfolio of solutions for the digital media sector including publishers, OTT/CTV providers and retail media networks. Schultz has held a variety of sales leadership roles for companies including Pactera EDGE, Plexure and AffinityX. Earlier in his career Schultz was the Director of Advanced Digital and New Media Advertising for Cox Media. 

About Operative
Operative makes advertising work for media companies. Hundreds of the world’s top brands rely on Operative’s family of solutions to automate digital and linear revenue workflows, streamline ad operations, and deliver audiences & outcomes to their buyers. Processing more than $50 billion in annual advertising revenue, Operative unlocks the full value of media. For more information visit www.operative.com.

Contact:
Emily Riley
emily@rileystrategic.com
914-330-1128