Episode 8 - Neal Thurman from the Brand Safety Institute

Today's guest is Neal Thurman.

He's one of the founders of The Brand Safety Institute.

Neal Thurman brings many threads of his career together for the founding of the Brand Safety Institute. His career started in Industrial Psychology, managing major standardized tests and certification programs for higher education and professional organizations. After receiving his MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, he worked for Fortune 500 clients, including Sony Electronics, UPS, Coca-Cola, Axciom, Hard Rock Cafe, and Fannie Mae on how to harness new digital technologies to enhance existing business models and create new ones.

He had an entrepreneurial bug that led him to be on the founding team of two successful bootstrapped professional services start-ups – Customer Value Partners and Black Turtle Services – where he served in a variety of executive management roles, including oversight of Product Development, Profitability, Accounting and Finance, Human Resources, Contracts, Facilities, and IT while continuing to work with clients like AOL, Cricket Wireless, the McGraw-Hill Companies, and the US Federal Government on solving critical business problems.

While helping build Customer Value Partners into an Inc 500-winning firm, he co-founded a blog about English Premier League soccer that moved from the Blogger platform to YahooUK to SBNation to the Rotoworld.com division of NBC Sports Digital. In addition to his duties as Co-founder of the Brand Safety Institute and for Rotoworld, Neal serves as the Director of the Coalition for Better Ads, championing customer experience in digital advertising.

In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Neal discusses:

• How he got involved with creating the Brand Saftey Institute
• His view on the most important ways the Brand Safety Institue can have an impact
• Why he believes that a common language between marketers and publishers is paramount