Nicholas Ionita

Current

Product Manager at FreeWheel
Owner and General Partner at IM1 Capital Group, LLC

Past

Product Manager, New Products at Tribune Interactive
Product Analyst, Cross Platform Development & Strategy at Tribune Interactive
IT Specialist, IBM Centers for Solution Innovation at IBM

Marketing Analyst at IBM

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Education

DePaul University
Southern Methodist University

Recommended

1 person has recommended Nicholas

Connections

230 connections

Industry

Online Media

Websites

Nicholas Ionita’s Summary

Nicholas Ionita’s Specialties:

Online video, advertising and content syndication strategies, social media and community development, data strategy, organic search and taxonomy/ontology frameworks, content management systems and open source tools, usability and interaction design, product development methodologies (agile, rapid prototyping, etc), outsourcing/off-shoring and distributed teams

Nicholas Ionita’s Experience

Product Manager

FreeWheel

(Online Media industry)

October 2008 — Present (10 months)

FreeWheel is on a mission to change everything about online video advertising. We were founded in the belief that online video has the potential to transform both business and society if we can overcome the risks and complexities of syndication, ad management and ad serving.
Owner and General Partner

IM1 Capital Group, LLC

(Real Estate industry)

February 2005 — Present (4 years 6 months)

Rental Property Investment and Management.

Personally licensed to practice Real Estate Sales in Illinois.
Product Manager, New Products

Tribune Interactive

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; TRB; Online Media industry)

January 2008 — September 2008 (9 months)

Lead product strategy and development efforts on existing websites and new products.

National Sports Product: Led the product definition, design, and vendor selection for a socially focused national sports website utilizing Drupal and other open source tools. Product covered major U.S. professional sports news, heavily integrated user generated content, and a blog network.

Social Media Strategy: Helped define a social media strategy for TI’s newspaper properties that included improving site features and registration, converting content producers into community managers, and developing off-site social applications and content syndication. Developed and piloted several Facebook applications, one of which “reverse published” user generated content submitted on Facebook into a commuter newspaper with a daily circulation of ~250K.
Product Analyst, Cross Platform Development & Strategy

Tribune Interactive

(Privately Held; Online Media industry)

May 2006 — January 2008 (1 year 9 months)

Identified new opportunities and created supporting business cases, product definition and strategy, business requirements, and technology/vendor analysis. Established and managed a departmental internship program. Received TI’s MVP award 2 years running for outstanding performance.

Major projects included:
- Global Data Strategy Initiative: Collaborated on a $6MM+ Data Strategy project for TI’s 10 Newspaper websites including www.chicagotribune.com and www.newsday.com. Work included creation of a global taxonomy, implementation of a data mining/linguistics engine, enhancements to existing search tools, and SEO improvements. Led a team of 6 end to end (including research) through the development of key consumer facing features which in their first 4 months generated 3MM+ unique visitors and 8MM+ page views (176% of plan).

- National Entertainment Site and Open Source CMS Platform: Contributed in the product development of a national network of locally focused entertainment sites (www.metromix.com) and its underlying CMS, redesigned to scale to over 40 markets. Led development of several key features end to end through the agile development process including geographic mapping, organic site search, and faceted navigation.
IT Specialist, IBM Centers for Solution Innovation

IBM

(Public Company; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry)

June 2004 — May 2006 (2 years)

Worked in a project oriented environment and performed multiple roles throughout the life of each project. Analyzed clients’ work environments identifying business requirements, sized work estimates, used agreed upon technology and architecture to develop working solutions, and maintained applications while probing for further areas of opportunity. Proficient in Java (J2EE & Struts frameworks), SQL, XML, etc.

Major Client Projects included:
- Data Analytics tool development for AC Nielsen
- Hand held Device Guided Tour development for MoMA (NYC)
Marketing Analyst

IBM

(Public Company; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry)

June 2002 — June 2004 (2 years 1 month)

Responsible for analyzing marketing activity and sales opportunity generation for IBM’s Small and Medium Business (SMB) Interactive sector. SMB Interactive accounted for over $80M in yearly sales lead revenue in 2004

Nicholas Ionita’s Education

DePaul University

MSc , Information Systems , 2003 — 2005

Studies concentrated on Global Information Systems Strategy (traveled to Brazil to study outsourcing), Project Management, and Systems Architecture.

Graduated with a 3.95 GPA

Activities and Societies:

Computer Science Society, Graduate Student Association, Upsilon Pi Epsilon (International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines)
Southern Methodist University

BBA , Information Technology & Operations Management, Computer Science , 1998 — 2002

Activities and Societies:

Pi Kappa Alpha

Additional Information

Nicholas Ionita’s Websites:

Nicholas Ionita’s Groups:

The Greater IBM Connection: IBM's alumni program for past and present IBM employees
SMU Cox School of Business
Southern Methodist University Alumni
DePaul University Alumni Association
Tribune Alumni Network (TAN)
DePaul University CTI Alumni
IBM Alumni