About Us

Ashley joined the Mediabistro marketing team in 2012 after 7 years of wrangling with physics, astronomy, and chemistry authors as development editor for Pearson Science. When she’s not working marketing magic, you’ll find her in the kitchen whipping up delectable pastries, writing in a café, cursing at a sewing machine, or losing herself in a fantastical book. As a recent transplant to New York from San Francisco, she still marvels at commonplace miracles such as snow, high-volume foot traffic, and old buildings.

Brandon brings a variety of programming skills to the team at Mediabistro. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2009. He took many Web development jobs during college to stay current with the latest technologies. After graduating, he developed training simulations for the Navy at Lockheed Martin. Brandon is also an avid gamer and enjoys playing many games competitively. He was once featured on SpikeTV for drumming in the best plastic instrument Rock Band in the world.

David Cohen is not related to the editor of AllFacebook.com, but he does cover for Jackie when she’s off duty. He also edits Mediabistro's Morning Media Newsfeed and has more than 20 years of journalism experience, including more than 10 in the online sector at publications like Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable. He is a New York University graduate who lives in Hoboken, N.J.

John is a Web developer and information junkie. Sports interests include playing racquetball, skiing, and destroying friends in fantasy sports leagues. He roots hard for the Philadelphia Eagles from deep within New York Giants country. John recently taught a cat to roll over on command after being told it couldn't be done. His Tivo is always overloaded, and he has probably seen every episode of Seinfeld at least 10 times. John's work has nothing to do with chemistry or beakers.

Devon Glenn left Southern California for New York City in 2008. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, Kirkus Reviews, and the now-defunct mobile magazine, U+Me. She lives somewhere between Brooklyn and the weird part of YouTube.

Tiffany Kesden, Senior Operations Associate
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Tiffany joined the Mediabistro team in 2009, right after graduating with a BA in Marketing and Finance from Binghamton University. She makes use of neither of these two degrees in her ad operations role, but enjoys it none-the-less. Currently living deep into the far end of Brooklyn (just blocks from her childhood home), she typically dreads the long hour+ commute to work each morning on the Q train; but refuses to leave the neighborhood for a more convenient location - "it just wouldn't be home". On the plus side, the long commute does allow her time to catch up on a good amount of reading with some of her favorite authors: Robert Heinlein, Ken Follett, Isaac Asimov (along with the occasional girly romance novel - just for a good balance).

Tatyana Kuznetsova, Interactive Art Director
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Tatyana joins us as our Interactive Art Director. She came from NBC where she was leading various design initiatives including London 2012 Olympics and NBC Local Media City Site redesign. Prior to that, she worked for a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Thomson Reuters, Real Networks, and Boeing. She moved to New York from Seattle in 2008, and has been enjoying all the amazing things this city has to offer.

Rachel joined the Mediabistro team in March, 2013. Since Rachel was 15, her dream has been to live in the Big Apple and work hard in the Media industry. After graduating early from SUNY Oswego with a Communications degree, she took up two internships involving PR and Entertainment. One year later she went in for the kill and landed the perfect job at Mediabistro. Rachel is more than excited to be a part of the Mediabistro team and she looks forward to years to come.

As Education Manager, Eva will focus on building our roster of online courses and conferences. She has a background in news media, coming to us from Forbes where she worked as a Web Producer for the Technology channel. When she wasn’t working on homepage editing or recruiting new writers, she led the educational webinars for the staff. In her spare time, she writes about education technology among other things. Originally from South Florida, she misses the beach and warm weather, and tries to return home as often as possible.

Stewart joined the Mediabistro team in 2010 and currently curates the live events and conferences. Previously, he played a leadership role in running the Search Engine Strategies (SES) events as part of the original content team at Incisive Media. Prior to that, Stewart worked with Jupitermedia and was responsible for launching emerging technology events such as the Jupiter/IAB Advertising Forum, Plug.IN, Game Market Watch, Enterprise Linux Forum and ClickZ Online Video Advertising. Stewart has also worked closely with the open-source Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), and the Object Management Group (OMG), an international not-for-profit computer industry consortium. Earlier in the dot-com bubble, Stewart worked with 101 Communications and SIGS Publications, overseeing their object-oriented programming portfolio of events, including Java DevCon, XML ONE and C++ World. Follow him on Twitter @stewq.

Betsy Rothstein, Editor, mediabistro Washington, D.C.
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Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, Betsy has been covering or torturing (depending who you ask) Washington media for the past two years. Early on, she studied journalism in England, interviewing punk rockers in Piccadilly Circus who promptly stole her notebook and ripped it up. After graduating from Union College with a B.A. in Spanish she began her journalism career in Cambridge, Mass., working for a Cuban newspaper where she conducted man-on-the-street interviews in which she asked Latinos about their love lives. "Do Latinos make better lovers or what?" She then moved out west to Denver where she worked for two rival Hispanic weeklies, one year respectively at each. Next stop: J-school at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism where she earned a Master’s degree. In the years following grad school she worked at the Boca Raton News as a business reporter followed by a brief stint as a press secretary for former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). She spent the next decade on Capitol Hill covering hard news, features and gossip for The Hill Newspaper. In 2009 she quit and moved to Portland, Ore. and wrote about the many long-haired men who resemble Jesus. They weren’t all kind (one was fat and confrontational) but she got her story.

Emily Schwartz, Event Manager
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Emily joins Mediabistro after two years of working in Washington D.C. in event planning and public relations. She graduated from The George Washington University with a BBA in Marketing and Sports & Event Management. When she’s not planning events for Mediabistro, Emily can be found exploring New York City and cheering on her favorite Philadelphia sports teams.

Tim Sohn, Editor, Morning Social Media Newsfeed
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Tim joined mediabistro on April 30, 2012. He is editor of the Morning Social Media Newsfeed and occasionally writes for SocialTimes. Tim also covers media, technology and social media for a variety of websites. Before becoming a full-time freelancer in May 2011, Tim was editor of LH! Weekly, a startup weekly newspaper/digital media company in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. And previously, Tim worked for several daily newspapers and news sites, including The New Jersey Herald in Newton, New Jersey, and Daily Record, a Gannett paper, in Parsippany, as copy desk chief and copy editor.

Melissa Sumida, Production Assistant
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Melissa has created, managed and published online content for TheLocalLife.com city sites, img Media's Vogue.tv's Model.Live, JeffGordon.com, and MariaSharpova.com. She lives in Jersey City with a four-legged beast named Camilla, has a band, loves oil painting, and adores the simple things in life like binary code and a pretty interface. Melissa will be handling email production.

Heather Frank Turk, Director of Event Operations
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Heather comes to Mediabistro with a diverse background in conference and event planning. After graduating from The George Washington University, she stayed in D.C. long enough to learn she wanted to be in NYC. Once in NY, she worked at Ziff Davis' Enterprise Group, IQPC, and Wine Enthusiast. When not lurking behind the scenes at seminars and conferences, Heather skis, works on puzzles, eats at "the" newest spot, or enjoys the artistry of a skilled mixologist.

Gretchen VanEsselstyn, Director of Curriculum, Community, and Education Technology
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Gretchen comes to Mediabistro with a background in magazine publishing and online education. She spent the last four years editing Chile Pepper Magazine, a spicy food lover's journal, and is always available for hot sauce recommendations and chili judging. Before following her bliss to culinary school, Gretchen founded and established the distance learning division at Kaplan Educational Centers. She's excited to have the chance to merge her passion for Web-based education with her longstanding obsession with magazines that dates back to such titles as Cricket, Dyn-o-mite! and Tiger Beat.

Alex Weprin, Senior Editor, TVNewser and SportsNewser
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Alex Weprin is editor of TVNewser and editor of SportsNewser. Before joining Mediabistro, he was a reporter and online editor for television trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable. At B&C he covered the intersection of new media and the television business, as well as cable networks and programming. He has a degree in Government & International Relations from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Mona Zhang, Editorial Assistant & Social Media Coordinator
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Mona joined Mediabistro in August, 2012 after being an intern there and writing for 10,000 Words. She graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism and East Asian Studies. Before moving to NYC, she lived in Beijing, London, Madrid and (the suburbs of) Chicago. She loves to travel, and has journeyed to all the continents (except for South America and Antarctica—next on her list). She also enjoys playing and listening to music and eating and cooking food.