Q&A with Bill Jensen and Jon Brod

Director of New Media Bill Jensen drives all content, development and social media for Village Voice Media (VVM), a chain of 14 city-specific websites (e.g., LA Weekly, Village Voice, Miami New Times, SFWeekly) and national blogs (e.g., Topless Robot) that has quadrupled in traffic since winter of 2007. After earning a BA from Boston University and a Master’s degree from the University of Kansas, Jensen played professional roller hockey and painted houses while writing and producing his hockey fight zine. The Fight Card was spotted by the Village Voice, which assigned him a story for the first issue of its Long Island edition. He rose through the editorial ranks, before moving on to help launch the Long Island Press weekly as managing editor, where he hired Amy Fisher as a crime columnist. He came back to Village Voice Media in January of 2007, and has overseen all web and mobile platforms. Since then, digital media revenue has grown more than 400%, and now represents close to 40% of the chain’s overall income.

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As President of AOL Ventures, Local & Mapping, Search, Jon Brod is responsible for the company’s global innovation efforts including investing in promising start-ups with exceptional leaders, incubating and supporting employee-originated innovations, and growing recent acquisitions of early-stage companies, as well as our local initiatives including Patch.com. He is also responsible for AOL’s Search business.

Brod has more than 15 years experience as a senior executive with media and technology companies, both at the start-up and Fortune 500 levels. He joined AOL in 2009 through the company’s acquisition of community news and information site Patch, which Brod co-founded and served as CEO. Prior to that, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Polar Capital Group, was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Portals Division of InterActiveCorp (IAC), was Senior Vice President and a member of the Executive Committee at Ask Jeeves, and was the first employee and Senior Vice President of Operations for Interactive Search Holdings, which was purchased by Ask Jeeves in 2004.

During his career, Brod also spent time in sports, including six years at the NBA where he held various marketing and operations positions and where he established NBA Canada and launched the Raptors and Grizzlies expansion franchises.

Brod graduated, cum laude, with a BS in History and Government from Bowdoin College.