Founder, Creative Director of Creative Consultancy - Novio

Throughout his years in advertising, Jay has been a media analyst, an account executive, an editor, a strategist, a writer, and a creative director—and more often than not, all at once. At BBDO, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and Eleven Inc., Jay had the opportunity to lead brand storytelling for an amazing collection of brands, including FedEx, Apple, Peet’s, Kodak, UCSF, HP, Isuzu, AAA, and Robert Mondavi Winery, to name just a few. With Novio, Jay is doing what he loves most, which is solving business problems by working directly with clients who are as passionate about creative as he is. Jay is the rare native San Franciscan. He’s married to a very patient and wise woman, with whom he shares three boys.

Founder, Creative Director of Creative Consultancy - Novio

Paul has been setting design bars in hard-to-reach places for the better part of three decades. As a creative director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in the ’90s, he received the Marget Larsen award as the Bay Area’s best designer. He cofounded Eleven Inc. in 1999, and led creative on a profusion of acclaimed work for clients such as Visa, Virgin, Barclays, Disney, Callaway Golf, Sun Valley, and Williams-Sonoma. He has plenty of awards, more than need be listed here, but what really drives Paul is the power of relationships—connecting clients with consumers in meaningful ways. When he’s not fussing over all the finer details, Paul spends time surfing and traveling around Latin America with his wife.

Advertising Strategic Planning Leader

I’m passionate about researching, understanding and creating culture. I push brands into positions of leadership and growth by making them a part of the conversation, from developing snack monsters to putting new terms into the popular lexicon to describe millennial angst (Honda CR-V “The Leap List.”) Culture serves as a source of inspiration, and illustration—whether it’s teaching a CEO about millennials through an analysis of Lady Gaga, or a case study of what we can learn from the endearingly terrifying Philadelphia Flyers mascot, Gritty. My idea of a great creative briefing involves hot dog puppets. When work is over, I’m a defacto guide to LA, dragging friends along to art openings, exhibits, concerts, or to explore a new neighborhood.

Documentary Filmmaker, Cardamon Productions

A San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker, Sharon Wood’s most recent credits, Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest (producer/writer) and Pleistocene Park (supervising writer), are currently in festivals. Sharon’s own early films, Kheturni Bayo: North Indian Farm Women and Outside in Sight: The Music of United Front led to serving as writer on Oscar nominees Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press, and Super Chief: The Life and Legacy of Earl Warren, along with the Peabody and Columbia-duPont award winning The Celluloid Closet and Paragraph 175. From 2003 to 2011, Wood was producer/director/writer for Lucasfilm’s documentary department, making 18 shorts on subjects from Leo Tolstoy to John Ford to the Turkish feminist writer Halide Edip, as well as Manifest Destiny, a series on U.S. foreign policy, which aired on Public Television. Recent producing and/or writing credits include The Battle of amfAR, And the Oscar Goes To… and Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly. In 2012, Praeger-ABC Clio published “The Art of Nonfiction Movie Making,” which Sharon co-authored with Oscar winners Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein.

Documentary Filmmaker, Cofounder of Yalla Media

Marilyn founded Yalla Media with Alex Lee (Co-director and Founding Trustee of the Documentary New Zealand Trust, and Director of the Oscar-qualifying Doc Edge International Film Festival) to support creative talent whose cultural roots embrace Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, and the Pacific. UK born, Kiwi raised, Marilyn’s experience started on the NZ studio floor, but a move to Singapore led to international projects taking her all over the world, with multiple-language crews, in often trying physical conditions. Clients include BBC, Nat Geo, The History Channel, Discovery Networks, Channel News Asia and TVNZ. She was author, researcher and editorial lead on “Veil of Dreams”, a feature film that penetrated the secretive world of women’s football in Iran. She researched, wrote and directed a 3 part series on unknown stories of WW2 in Asia for The History Channel, directed the Australian and Asian episodes of “Ecopolis”, with Darlow Smithson London, for Discovery Channel and produced/directed a series of five shorts for the Asian launch of BBC Knowledge.