Co-authors and husband and wife, Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith live in Lafayette, California with their two little dudes and a princess.
An experienced tech marketer, Andy Smith is a Principal of Vonavona Ventures where he advises and bootstraps technical and social ventures with guidance in marketing, customer strategy and operations. Over the past 20 years, he has served as an executive in the high tech industry leading teams at Dolby Labs, BIGWORDS, LiquidWit, Intel, Analysis Group, Polaroid, Integral Inc. and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
As a guest lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Andy speaks on social technology, engineering virality, and brand building, with a focus on applying technology to address real problems. He is a contributor to GOOD Magazine, where he writes on businesses that embrace and integrate a social mission. He has also spoken at World 50, Marketing Week, Intel, TechCore and Interbrand, and is on the boards of 140 Proof, ProFounder, LIF Brands, EveryWun, and One Family One Meal.
A permanent transplant to the Bay Area from New Jersey, Andy has studied in The Parthenon, lived in a converted South African prison, and counts a regiment of Windsor Castle’s Scots Guards among his friends. Andy’s a gardener, gadgeteer and a serious tech geek and also the creator of “The No Cookie Diet” which he’s still on two years later. Once bumped from a flight that tragically crashed, he has since learned to accept travel mishaps, and most everything else, with equanimity.
Andy earned his MBA at UCLA’s Anderson School and holds an Economics degree from Pomona College.
Follow Andy on Twitter: @kabbenbock
A social psychologist and marketer, Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research spans time, money and happiness. She focuses on questions such as: What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think make them happy? How do small acts create significant change, and how can those effects be fueled by social media? She is widely published in the leading scholarly journals in psychology and marketing, and her work has been featured in a variety of media including The Economist, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CBS MoneyWatch, NPR, Science, Inc, and Cosmopolitan.
A sought-after teacher in the field of marketing, Professor Aaker teaches in many of Stanford’s Executive Education programs as well as MBA electives including Building Innovative Brands, How to Tell a Story, and The Power of Social Technology. Recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Citibank Best Teacher Award, George Robbins Best Teacher Award and both the Spence and Fletcher Jones Faculty Scholar Awards, she has also taught at UC Berkeley, UCLA and Columbia.
A homegrown Californian, Jennifer has studied at the Sorbonne, and counts winning a dance-off in the early 1980’s among her most impressive accomplishments.
For more information, visit Jennifer’s Faculty Page at Stanford.
Follow Jennifer on Twitter: @aaker
