Board of Advisors

Brent Hurley is an entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley and an adviser to several technology start-ups. He recently earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Hurley is best known as a founding team member of YouTube, serving in a variety of roles during his tenure, most notably as director of finance and operations. After the company was acquired by Google in October 2006, he led YouTube’s syndication efforts with consumer electronics companies while managing the strategic partner development team.

Before his groundbreaking work at YouTube, Hurley was a head securities trader at Fisher Investments, a multibillion-dollar asset management firm. His roots in the startup world trace back to his early work at PayPal, the Internet payment service. He is a graduate of Albright College in Reading, Pa.

Howard Kurtz is the D.C. media guy—not his official title, of course, but that’s how he’s known in the business. He is the new Washington bureau chief for the Daily Beast and the guy you often see chiding the news business as host of CNN’s Reliable Sources. Howard virtually created the media-criticism racket over the last two decades as a Washington Post reporter and columnist, and drilled deeper into the subject in his five books.

Jim Brady is the Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media (DFM).  Brady oversees 75 daily newspapers, 292 non-daily publications and 341 online sites owned by Journal Register Company and MediaNews Group. He is also overseeing the launch of Project Thunderdome, which will redefine how DFM produces journalism by centralizing the production of non-local content so that local papers can focus on their local communities. In January, Brady was elected President of the Online News Association’s (ONA) Board of Directors – the world’s largest association of digital journalists. He is the former General Manager of TBD.com and Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com.

Sharon Waxman is the founder, CEO and Editor in Chief of The Wrap. An award-winning journalist and best-selling author, she is a former Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times. Waxman previously served as a reporter for The Washington Post and began her career as a foreign correspondent, covering Europe and the Middle East for a decade. She is the author of two books, including Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System.