Meet ICON’s Media & Fulfillment Directors
Tom Bartholomew has the pleasure of guiding and directing a team of creative, driven individuals with long and impressive resumes in the agency, media and corporate-barter industries. Each has a keen understanding of the marketing, advertising and promotional world. The team combines that with a thorough knowledge of corporate barterThe creation of value by exchanging a client's unwanted or undervalued asset for the promise to purchase over a period of time from the corporate-barter company a defined set of goods and/or services, called fulfillment. (Sometimes mistakenly referred to as Corporate Trade.) transactions to help ICON clients creatively apply fulfillmentThe process through which ICON delivers the goods and services clients have purchased from ICON using trade credit or cash or both. Also referred to as the back end of a corporate barter transaction. obligations to their best advantage.
Ed Gentner
Senior Vice President, Director of National Broadcast
Ed Gentner oversees ICON’s entire national broadcast group. He uses his strengths in negotiating and managing teams to develop trade opportunities with national media properties. “My first encounter with barter,” says Mr. Gentner, “was putting together an RFP for a client looking to learn about the business back in 2006. I was immediately intrigued, because it allowed me to do the things I do best: exploring mutually beneficial solutions to complicated business problems with partners, and keeping up on media trends.”
Prior to joining ICON, Gentner was most recently with MediaVest as senior vice president, group client director, video investment and activation (VIA). During his tenure there, he executed upfront negotiations with key media companies on behalf of all MediaVest clients, oversaw the VIA research team and was responsible for management and strategy of Kraft’s media investment. Gentner started his career in media in the national broadcast unit of TN Media (formerly known as FCB) buying national television for Nabisco and Coors Brewing Co.
Gentner graduated from Siena College in Loudonville, New York with a BS in marketing/management.
Most People Don’t Know That… Gentner still plays the occasional rugby match, though not as competitively as in his younger years!
Reid Steinberg
Senior Vice President, Director of Broadcast
“I have always had a love for TV and the broadcast business,” says Reid Steinberg, “I studied marketing and advertising in college [Loyola University, New Orleans, 1994] and right out of school wanted to go into media buying/research.” He has been with ICON since 1998.
Before joining ICON, Mr. Steinberg was a national broadcast supervisor at TN Media (formerly known as FCB). During his tenure there, he negotiated both upfront and scatter on numerous accounts including Mattel, Nabisco, Merck, Janus Mutual Funds, Frito-Lay and Blue Cross.
Steinberg oversees a broadcast media group of 65 people and continues to log extensive experience in formulating creative, integrated media programs for all ICON clients such as the award-winning Mazda 6 ESPN launch campaign.
Steinberg takes pride in the fact that he is available to clients 24/7 and always lines up the right expertise to provide valuable insight for any media needed.
Most People Don’t Know That… Steinberg plays in professional poker tournaments.
Dan Carroll
Senior Vice President, Director of Digital Media
“I like algorithms,” says Dan Carroll, SVP, Director of Digital Media. Though math isn’t his only hobby, his free time is more limited these days as the new leader of ICON’s expanding digital team. Dan’s in-depth digital knowledge and ability to translate tech into understandable solutions provides ICON and its clients with numerous opportunities to capitalize on the rapidly increasing demand for efficient online media.
Most recently, Carroll was the founder and CEO of AdPredictive, an innovator in the field of “demand‐side” advertising platforms (DSPs) and “just-in‐time” behavioral targeting and retargeting.
The execs at ICON got to know Dan while attempting to structure a partnership with AdPredictive. Bringing Dan "in-house" allows ICON to capitalize on the AdPredictive model; offering clients an alternative opportunity to dramatically reduce the cost of online advertising and receive high‐quality, measurable, guaranteed results.
Additional to his knowledge of the digital media world, Dan brings experience from the magazine and book publishing industry, and more interestingly, labor organizing and public policy making. He sits on the boards of AdPredictive, Sentry Pay Point, and Leap2. He is also an advisor to Indie Ventures, Ice Mate, and SkyPop. Dan holds patents in digital media distribution and is a writer and speaker on the issues of privacy, media influence and recommendation. “I try to stay involved with a number of diverse projects”, says Carroll, “it keeps things interesting.”
Dan holds a B.A. in English and Urban Studies from St. Olaf’s University and has completed some graduate work at Stanford University.
Most People Don’t Know That… Dan has studied and traveled to 34 different countries.
Joanne Cancro
Vice President, Director of Trade Development
Joanne Cancro works with each of ICON’s media disciplines to create trades with its media vendorAny company that delivers goods or services to another company through a business transaction. partners. A 14-year veteran of a competing barter firm, she was that company’s first hire in the print-media group and, along with the department head at the time, built it into a respected voice in the industry.
There, Ms. Cancro worked on a seemingly endless list of household name brands including Unilever, Pfizer, Coty, Timex, Georgia Pacific, Warner-Lambert, Warnaco (Ralph Lauren/Chaps, Calvin Klein, Warner’s Brands, Speedo), McCormick, Pioneer, ConAgra, Beiersdorf, Rustoleum and Callaway Golf.
Leveraging her education from Bergen Community College (AAS degree) and Ramapo College of New Jersey, Cancro has been an integral part in laying the foundation and lending credibility to the barter industry through working with and educating magazine publishers and media professionals about how barter works and the benefits it brings to the marketplace.
Most People Don’t Know That… Cancro was named a recipient of AWNY/Working Mother Magazine’s 2008 Working Mother of Year award.
Diane Werner
Vice President, Director of Local & Canadian Broadcast
Diane Werner uses her considerable people skills, organizational aptitude, negotiating acumen and large-group management abilities to purchase and manage local broadcast media for ICON’s large and diverse client base.
A veteran of the media industry, Ms. Werner began her career at MMT Sales Inc., transitioning to a 13-year career at The Mediators Inc. in New York City. There, she became a vice president at just 30 years of age. At The Mediators Inc., Werner received the only merit award for outstanding performance given by Kodak, in recognition for personally negotiating Olympic sponsorship packages in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego. Her next stop was with Media, Inc. Then following a six-year stint with another corporate-barter organization, Werner joined ICON in 2002.
Since then, she has combined her extensive media experience with a BS in Business Administration from American University’s Kogod School of Business to grow and manage ICON’s Local Broadcast Group, doubling the department’s billings and tripling its trade usage.
Most People Don’t Know That… Werner is a self-confessed techie whose favorite store is Best Buy.
Lori Greenbaum
Director of Travel and Merchandise
Lori Greenbaum specializes in hotel negotiations, group travel and meeting planning. A graduate of SUNY Albany (BA, with a minor in business), she’s also an ICON veteran, starting with the company in 1992 as its 14th employee. Before that, she had successful stints as a sales assistant at the Doral Tuscany Hotel in NYC and as a sales manager at David Green Associates, a national sales office representing independent and franchise properties to groups, associations and corporations.
During her time at ICON, Ms. Greenbaum has built the scope and awareness of the firm’s travel and merchandise departments, obtaining and remarketing significant amounts of domestic and international hotel and airline inventoryWhile this can refer to a client's physical inventory of merchandise (which, if it represents an undervalued asset, could form the basis of a corporate barter transaction), in the corporate barter world, inventory more commonly refers to a supply of advertising time/space purchased in advance by the barter company, which client companies use as fulfillment to complete their side of a corporate barter agreement.. Under her direction, ICON has become the only full-service IATA-accredited travel department in the corporate barter business. She says, “Our reputation for dependability, excellent service and value has made us the industry’s premier travel service.”
Greenbaum is a member of International Association of Travel Agents (IATA) and American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA).
Most People Don’t Know That… Greenbaum plays a mean game of mah-jongg.
Laura L. Mentekidis
Director, Direct Response Marketing
With 11 years under her belt Laura Mentekidis manages and oversees the company’s direct response television competencies.
A self-described multitasker, Mrs. Mentekidis is always finding new ways to develop and grow the direct-response capabilities ICON offers its clients. Prior to joining ICON, she honed her skills at direct-response agencies such as ID Media, OMD and Lockard & Wechsler on major national accounts, including Verizon, Bristol Meyers, NY Times, Dannon, E-surance, Fidelity and Reckitt Benckiser – experiences she nearly missed. “Early on in my career, I took a significant reduction in pay to pursue my career in advertising,” says Mentekidis, “I was very close to going back to another position outside the industry but instead worked through the financial and personal challenges. I’m very happy I did!”
After stepping away from the professional world for a little more than a year to start a family, Mentekidis is back, concentrating on her major professional goal, growing the direct-response group at ICON and putting her associates degree (SUNY Cobleskill) and bachelor's degree (Pace University) in business administration into daily use.
Most People Don’t Know That… Mentekidis is a certified personal trainer.
Benjamin A. Kriegler
Vice President, Corporate TradeAn inaccurate term, sometimes mistakenly used to mean corporate barter. The word trade refers to a different industry.
At ICON, Benjamin Kriegler is directly responsible for all aspects of corporate trade transactions, including new business development and more. His efforts allow clients to use trade creditAn alternative currency used in the corporate barter industry; one of ICON's financial options. (Note that this term is properly used only in the singular, i.e., never trade credits.) with new and existing vendors and products and services that are essential to their business. Or, to put it in his own words, he “works well with individual clients to develop sensible yet financially meaningful business transactions.”
With a strong sales and management background, as evidenced by past positions that include a senior vice president of sales at American Progressive Life & Health Insurance, a managing directorship at Bickenstaff & Knowles and senior vice president of sales with Boutique D’ Elite USA, Mr. Kriegler has played a vital role in growing ICON’s business. Kriegler has also been senior vice president of sales at Commercial Industrial Equipment and a vice president of marketplace development with Argent Trading LLC.
Over the past seven years Kriegler has worked with many of ICON’s long-term clients, including Georgia Pacific, Ross Stores and NCR, to deliver innovative solutions that help clients achieve their desired results. His experience and education (BS in economics/animal science from Cornell University) make him an indispensible part of the ongoing new-business and account-development efforts at ICON.
Most People Don’t Know That… Kriegler has three cousins all named Benjamin. “It was very confusing when we were youngsters!”
