Adam founded and runs the leadership & innovation company, Media Leader llc, and teaches graduate journalism students at Columbia (GSJ) in the new digital media business realities.
Throughout his career he has leveraged a combination of practical senior Executive leadership responsibilities, Strategy consulting analytical rigor and Academic discipline, to provide insights and pragmatic actions for effectively leading growth through constant innovation to drive strategic redirection of business organizations. For the past 20 years Adam has particularly applied this expertise within the rapidly transforming media industry sector – driving innovation to embrace the strategic, leadership, operational and monetization challenges and opportunities for both the ‘established’ content-rich and the ‘technology led’ media companies as they each simultaneously address the continually changing demands of audience expectations, while developing profitable business models for the fragmented digital media environment.
Adam’s starting point of insight is always to understand customers’ interests and needs. This allows him to innovate products and services that are highly valued, while at the same time develop marketing programs and advertising communications that effectively find the target audiences within their evolving, and increasingly digital, media life styles.
The outline biographical history below details the disparate elements of Adam’s professional experiences which he has woven together into a perspective uniquely well suited to addressing today’s business leadership challenges, globally.
Harvard Business School
Lecturer for five years in strategy and general management – where he also obtained both his MBA (1979) and Doctorate (DBA–1987) in Change Management.. His undergraduate work was at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg.) Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism – a new course he co-created entitled The Business of Journalism.
Innovation, Strategy and Change Management Consultant
As Lead Partner for Booz Allen Hamilton’s media practice, the Boston Consulting Group and his own ten-person company, Klein & Co., specializing in Strategy & Change Management within multi-stakeholder environments.
18 Years of Media and Entertainment Sector P&L Executive Leadership
VideoEgg – President (New York, San Francisco, London) – EMI Music – EVP Strategy & Bus Development (including Digital) (New York, London) – MTV Networks – Advisor to Chairman (growth strategy-focus on digital) (NY, UK) – Ask Jeeves – President/COO (San Francisco) – Hasbro Inc – EVP, President Global Marketing (Pawtucket RI, UK) – SABC – Executive Advisor to CEO (South African Broadcasting Corporation) (South Africa)
Adam grew up In South Africa from where he was a political exile due to his work in the anti-Apartheid movement. He lives in New York with his wife and their daughter.