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About Gary Schwartz

Gary Schwartz was born and spent much of his youth in mining towns in central Africa. He graduated from Columbia University in New York and the Stanford University Center in Yokohama where he was the recipient of the Asia and Japan Foundation Fellowship.

Gary was a columnist in Japan and anchor on Asahi Television. After working with UNICEF and the World Bank on educational web development and running a number of technology start ups, Gary founded Impact Mobile in 2002. Impact Mobile has played a leadership role in the mobile industry since 2002 when it ran the first North American cross-carrier short code campaign. Unlike many companies that focus on developing a one-off campaign for brands or promote mobile as a separate user experience, Impact Mobile strives to integrate mobile into our clients’ over all media strategy.

Impact Mobile continues to provide services to many global brands, carriers and agencies to support their mobile marketing needs. Impact Mobile provides services to key industry verticals including sports, retail, finance, entertainment, publishing and broadcast (TV and radio).

Over the past nine years, Gary has played a leadership role in the mobile industry, running the first cross-carrier short code campaign in North America.

Gary founded the mobile committee for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) in 2006 and has worked to publish literature such as the Mobile Buyer's Guide helping extend the digital buy into mobile (for which he received an IAB award for industry excellence in 2009).

Additionally, in 2007, Gary started work to help establish a joint task force between the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and the IAB with the aid of the Media Rating Council (MRC) to develop global, auditable mobile measurement standards.

In 2010, Gary was elected as the Chair of MEF North America with a remit to develop a mobile commerce practice to service brands, retailers and content owners (for which he received a MEF award for industry excellence). In 2011, in partnership with MEF and a number of industry groups including the X9 security standards body, Gary is working to develop m-commerce security and privacy guidelines.

Gary is the recipient of the Macromedia People Choice Award as well as the Dodge Foundation award for innovation.

Gary is the author of the recently released, The Impulse Economy: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy, published by Simon & Schuster, Aria Imprint.