MS Word format

Jo Ann Mandinach – a Biography

Jo Ann Mandinach is one of the pioneers of the new media industry, with a strong track record in product development, content acquisition, and market/business development for such industry leaders as The New York Times Information Bank, Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service, Knight-Ridder Information, Apple Online Services, Information Access Company, Verity, Personal Library Software (acquired by AOL) and Autonomy. She is the founder of Need To Know^tm Information Solutions, a consulting company that provides Market, Content & Product Development services to the new media industry. Recent long-term clients include ON24.com, a streaming financial portal and syndication broadcast network, GeoTouch.com, a location-based platform integrating content with geographic searching for use on the wired and wireless web, and Biz360, Inc., a Granite Ventures-backed company applying business analytics to news and information for their Market360 service aimed at pr and corporate marketing professionals.

Millions of people regularly use the World Wide Web and online services she helped create. In her role as "rainmaker", she has established strong business relationships with targeted content providers, helping them leverage their brands as new media properties and effectively use the latest technologies to build customer loyalty. As a product developer, she has extensive in-depth experience helping Web and online services utilize community building, in-depth searching, convenient agent delivery and portal creation to develop and enhance compelling branded services. She believes users benefit from the "push" delivery of agents, the personalized "pull" of interactive community, and the in-depth information retrieval and analytic capabilities necessary for informed decisions.

At Dow Jones News/Retrieval (now Factiva), she managed product development from the content acquisition and design phases through product launch and enhancement. At The New York Times, she pioneered the development of services for executive decision makers, including Advertising & Marketing Intelligence (AMI), a vertical market service co-branded with J. Walter Thomson, and Key Issues Tracking co-developed with The White House. At Dow Jones and Apple, she championed and developed personalized news services that conveniently – and profitably -- deliver information people need to know on a regular basis. She was Editorial Director of Reader's Access Corporation, which was founded by Jim Rutt (most recently CEO of Network Solutions) and later sold to NewsEdge/Individual Inc.

Working with leading providers of intelligent searching and content management technologies, Jo Ann's understanding of publishers' needs makes her an effective evangelist. As Autonomy's Director of New Media, Jo Ann's efforts generated new business from Internet.com, LookSmart, Portera, Reuters, leading newspaper sites, and other web portals such as XOOM (NBCI) and Talk City, 80% of Autonomy's US business in its first year in the United States. As Verity's Manager of Information Provider Relations, Jo Ann brought Verity many new content sales prospects and helped partners develop such popular services as Factiva's Clip Serviceand The San Jose Mercury News's Newshound® and Jobhound®. As PLS's Director of Information Industry Partnerships, Ms. Mandinach strengthened PLS's industry standing and acquired many high-quality content partners for @1, a Web-based SuperDirectory portal, including: America Online, Apple, Associated Press, Baseline, Bertelsmann, Christian Science Monitor, Congressional Quarterly, Dow Jones, Data Times, Editor & Publisher, Electionline, Electronic Newsstand, Financial Times, Footage.Net, Gale, Grolier's, Hewlett-Packard, International Thomson, the Internet Company, Knight-Ridder, Macmillan, McKinley, MecklerMedia, National Public Radio, NewsNet, Open Market Inc., PBS, Prodigy, Simba, Time-Warner, USA TODAY, US House of Representatives, Washington Post, The Well and Ziff. Jo Ann was Director of Affiliate Relations for New Century Networks and its NewsWorks portal with responsibility for business development, contract negotiation and account management for a Web network of 150 newspapers. Using her experience as a former indexer, Jo Ann spearheaded and managed a network-wide project to leverage affiliate content for syndication and delivery. At Information Access Company, she developed Cognito., a service integrating hundreds of carefully selected reference books, news sources and magazines. In the consumer online area, she developed communications, conferencing and shopping services on Dow Jones, Dialog, The Well, Genie, Apple's eWorld service and America Online. She was co-publisher of America West-- one of the first regional online conferences -- created for visitors and residents alike.

Jo Ann currently serves on the advisory board of Biz360, Inc., a business analytics ASP backed by Granite Ventures (formerly Hambricht & Quist.). Ms. Mandinach earned her B.A. from Case Western Reserve University and an M.A. from Cleveland State University. She loves email and can be reached at JoAnn@Needtoknow.com.