Scott Kauffman

Scott L. Kauffman is the Chairman and CEO of MDC Partners, the progressive marketing and communications network that champions innovative entrepreneurial talent. A seasoned Chief Executive with deep expertise in the advertising, ad tech and data analytics space, Mr. Kauffman was appointed to the MDC Partners Board of Directors in 2006, and most recently served as the Board’s Presiding Director until taking the role of Chairman and CEO in 2015.

Mr. Kauffman began his career in advertising, subsequently going on to serve in senior and executive management capacities in digital entertainment, consumer marketing, media and technology companies, and he is a widely recognized industry leader in the fields of Internet media, consumer marketing and digital entertainment. In 1992, Advertising Age named him one of the top 100 marketers in the country, and in 1996, named him one of twenty digital media masters.

Most recently, Mr. Kauffman was the Co-Founder, President & CEO of New Engineering University, an education services company. Before New Engineering University, he was the President & CEO of Geeknet (NASDAQ:GKNT), the parent company of SourceForge, Slashdot and ThinkGeek. He joined Geeknet shortly after Yahoo! acquired BlueLithium, where he served as President & COO.

Prior to BlueLithium, Mr. Kauffman was President & CEO of several early-stage Internet ventures, including Zinio, MusicNow, Coremetrics and eCoverage. In 1997, Kleiner Perkins recruited him to Silicon Valley to become President & CEO of AdKnowledge, which he filed to take public before negotiating its sale to CMGI in 1999.

Previously, Mr. Kauffman was Vice President & General Manager of online services for CompuServe, and a presenting member on the road show for one of the Internet industry’s first successful IPOs, led by Goldman Sachs. Mr. Kauffman also spent seven years at Time Warner as a member of the founding team of Entertainment Weekly magazine and then as VP Business Development for Time Warner Interactive, and five years at Newsweek as a publisher and GM of Newsweek’s Education Division.

Mr. Kauffman holds an A.B. in English from Vassar College and an MBA in marketing from New York University.