Craig Forman

Career and sale of WHERE Inc. to Ebay Inc.

Forman has served on a variety of public and private company boards. He is executive chairman at mobile app advertising network Appia Inc., and an investor and board member at several other high-tech startups in telecom, technology and media. Appia was acquired in early 2015 by Austin, TX-based Digital Turbine (Nasdaq: APPS) in a transaction valued at $100 million. Along with colleagues Gordon Crovitz and Jim Friedlich he co-founded and is a general partner at NextNews Ventures, an early-stage private investment fund.], which invests such media, technology and telecom startups as Skift and Watchup. Forman was Executive Chairman and a member of the Board of Directors of Where.com Inc., a leading location-based mobile commerce company that was acquired by EBay Inc. in April 2011. Forman joined the WHERE board in 2009 and remains on the board of directors for McClatchy as well as Montreal-based local advertising leader Yellow_Pages_Limited (TMX: Y).

Senior Operating Roles at Yahoo! Inc. and EarthLink Inc.

Prior, as EarthLink Inc's executive vice president and president of its Access and Audience division and chief product officer, Forman drove more than $1.2 billion in annual revenue with responsibility for the internet service provider's Access, PeoplePC, Voice, and Value-added Services businesses. He also led such shared services as Operations, Information Technology and Customer Support. EarthLink is America's sixth-largest ISP, measured by subscribers.

Forman joined EarthLink in March 2006 from Yahoo! Inc., where he headed its Media and Information division from 2004. Forman's responsibilities included most of the internet portal's leading properties including Yahoo! News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, as well as its Health, Weather, Education, Kids, and other news and information businesses. Forman led a technology-driven content strategy that kept these properties as No. 1 in their categories despite external challenges from such competitors as Google, Microsoft and major media companies.

PBS Television and CNN Roles

As a business executive and entrepreneur, Forman's career has been at the intersection of media, technology, and telecommunications. Forman served for four years as CEO and co-founder of Success Television LLP and MyPrimeTime MyPrimeTime Inc., a television production and venture-backed Internet company. Forman and his team produced two business and lifestyle PBS television series, "Great Entrepreneurs" and "Great Leaders," as well as broadband programming and an award-winning Internet site targeted at 35- to 54-year-old baby boomers. Forman is non-executive chairman of Success Television. "Great Entrepreneurs" was produced in association with WPBT, a PBS affiliate in south Florida.

Earlier, Forman served as a senior operating executive at Time Warner's CNN Group and Time Inc. divisions, and at The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones. He also was a member of the management team that took early search-engine Infoseek public. As VP at CNN Financial News, Forman led the team that made CNNfn.com one of the leading financial websites, and one of the first news sites to turn profitable. As VP-Worldwide Development at Time Inc. New Media, Forman managed the Internet businesses of Fortune and Money magazines while also serving as CEO of Thrive, a healthy-living joint venture with AOL. He also played an influential role in helping Time Warner develop a viable independent internet strategy before its troubled combination with AOL in 2000. Previously, as Infoseek's first editor and VP of Product Management, Forman helped build one of the pioneering search engines.

Forman is also the author of Be Luckier in Life[2], an Amazon top-selling book, a career guide for business success. He is a contributor to Atlantic Media's Quartz online news and economic site.

Early Career at The Wall Street Journal and Pulitzer Nomination

For 13 years prior to his joining Infoseek, Forman served as a general manager, editor, bureau chief, and foreign correspondent at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. As director of DJ's Business Information Services International unit, Forman helped develop the Online Journal globally, and expanded the electronic-publishing division to over 50 countries. As Tokyo Bureau Chief of the Journal, Forman diversified the output of the bureau into broadcast as well as print. While based in London as the Journal's Deputy Bureau Chief, Forman was a member of the 1991 Persian Gulf War reporting team that was finalist for a Pulitzer Prize [3].

Education

Forman has a master's degree in law from Yale Law School and an undergraduate degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.