Today’s post is dedicated to my good friend Heidi Lehmann. The occasion is that the company she works for, Third Screen Media, was just acquired by AOL. Heidi and I worked together side by side for years at a company I founded in 2000 called Emerging Interest. Emerging Interest’s business model was connecting technology vendors with the decision makers at advertising agencies. For years we ran The Advertising Road Show where we brought up to 5 vendors to present on site at agencies and for brand marketers. The success of the program was in large part due to Heidi’s organizational skills and more importantly, her ability as a people person. Heidi makes everyone around her feel special like they are the center of the universe. And our business couldn’t have run without her.
When I first started working with Heidi, she lived in Boston and my company was in New York. She had been working for me for a few months but we had yet to meet face to face. She finally decided to make it down to New York for our first in person meeting and took the train down. The date? September 11, 2001. Needless to say, we didn’t meet face to face that day, as Heidi’s train turned around just outside of Manhattan.
In 2003, when I started building what became Email Analyst, I made the decision to shut down the event business. It was particularly hard because it meant that Heidi would be moving on to greener pastures. She may have been concerned about her future but I wasn’t. Within weeks she was offered a job a small start-up: Third Screen Media. Heidi opened the New York office and hung in there during the early days, but soon became a superstar in the field of mobile marketing. Just like I knew she would.
The amount of the AOL deal was undisclosed but I hope she gets a real nice payday out it. Martini’s are on YOU next time Heidi. Congratulations.
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