OZY Media Announces Key Hires From Wall Street Journal and Rosetta Stone to Drive Sales and Marketing

Mountain View, CA—August 8, 2017— OZY Media, the daily information source for important stories told nowhere else, announced today that it has named TJ Hunter Vice President of Audience. Hunter, who most recently served as Senior Director of Consumer Marketing at Rosetta Stone, will lead OZY’s marketing effort, overseeing audience development across channels.

OZY also announced the hiring of Midwest Sales Director Julie Kirner. Kirner joins OZY from The Wall Street Journal, where she worked for nine years and earned distinction as one of its top performing sales representatives. Previously, Kirner has served as a sales manager at leading publishers including Condé Nast, Meredith and Hearst.

Additional new tribe members include Senior Integrated Marketing Manager Natalie Archibald and Audience Development Director Adam Needs, who also join OZY from The Wall Street Journal and Rosetta Stone, respectively. Account Management Director Matt Jacobs from UrbanDaddy also joins the team.

The spate of new hires comes on the heels of smashing success of the second annual OZY Fest and just before the launch of OZY’s new prime-time show with PBS, Third Rail With OZY.

OZY Fest, which took place Saturday, July 22, in Central Park, attracted over 5,000 attendees, generated 1.8 billion media impressions, and featured speakers and performers including former Vice President Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, Jason Derulo, Samantha Bee, Mark Cuban, former Gov. Jeb Bush, RuPaul and many more.

Third Rail With OZY premieres Friday, September 8, at 8:30 p.m. ET on PBS. The show, hosted by Carlos Watson, co-founder and CEO of OZY Media, will pose powerful and provocative questions, convening a panel of celebrity guests to debate in front of a live studio audience.

“OZY is quickly becoming one of the greatest cultural influences of our time, with four prime-time television shows and events across the nation and soon, around the world,” says Watson. “We are thrilled to welcome these bold, ambitious, and creative leaders who will help propel us forward and keep OZY clients and consumers ahead of the curve.”

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About OZY Media

With 25 million monthly unique users and 2 million subscribers, OZY brings readers “the new and the next,” offering 100 percent original content with a focus on the future, via unique OZY News, OZY Magazine, OZY TV and OZY Events products. Called “the new media magnet for the news hungry” by Fortune magazine, OZY’s in-depth and high-quality journalism has attracted a number of high-profile media partners including The New York Times, NPR, PBS NewsHour, TED, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post and many more, as well as guest editors including Bill Gates, President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Founded in 2013 by Emmy Award–winning journalist Carlos Watson and co-founder Samir Rao, the OZY team is based in Mountain View, California, and backed by leading Silicon Valley investors including Laurene Powell Jobs, Ron Conway, David Drummond, Larry Sonsini and Dan Rosensweig and a significant investment from publishing giant Axel Springer.