Susan Mernit has more than 10 years of senior executive experience with P&L responsibility in building profitable new brands and products. As an entrepreneurial, creative leader skilled in managing media brands and services from concept to launch, she has led development of leading consumer brands for Scholastic, Parade Magazine, Advance Publications, Netscape and America Online. Her consulting company, 5ive, focuses on new product development, product innovation and rethinking businesses to create new revenue streams. She works with established companies, nonprofits and technology startups. A former magazine journalist and online news editor, Mernit's products have won industry awards from, among others, the Newspaper Association of America, Folio magazine, Clarion Women in Communications, The American Journalism Review, the Software Industry Association of America and Editor and Publisher magazine.

As vice president of programming, design and production at Netscape.com, she transformed the site into the number one daytime work/home content destination on the Internet, tripling advertising, e-commerce and search revenues. At Advance Internet, she was founding editor of New Jersey Online and creator of several community tools, including Community Connection. With Jeff Jarvis she developed The Yuckiest Site on the Internet, an award-winning science entertainment site now owned by Discovery. Mernit's business skills and creative energy successfully and repeatedly created Internet operations that became core to off-line businesses' identity and branding and improved their bottom line. A published poet and journalist, she is passionate about media, community and next generation tools, as well as the new capabilities they help create.

Session: Gender and the social web: new tools, same...stuff?