Who We Are

Jeremy Koch — President

Prior to founding What's Next Media, Jeremy Koch spent 23 years at Time Incorporated in senior positions primarily related to consumer marketing and brand development. From 1998 to 2003 he was president of Time Consumer Marketing, where he was responsible for subscription and retail marketing, consumer research, media buying, creative development and database marketing.

Prior to heading up the corporate marketing function, Koch was vice president of People magazine, where he oversaw the development of a succession of People offshoots, including InStyle, Teen People and People en Espanol, as well as brand extensions into television, books and the Internet. Earlier in his career he held senior marketing positions at Time and Fortune magazines.

Koch is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and Bennington College. He was on the board of Bookspan, a book-club joint venture between Time Inc. and Bertelsmann AG, served as a member of the Executive Board of the Direct Marketing Association, and for many years chaired the Consumer Marketing Committee of the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA).

Mark Gleason — Publisher

Mark Gleason co-founded Book magazine in 1998 and served as its publisher and president through the end of 2003. In 2000, Book forged a strategic partnership with leading bookseller Barnes & Noble, becoming a pioneer in the development of partnership circulation programs. At the height of the B&N partnership, Book's paid circulation exceeded 1 million.

Gleason's sales leadership is complemented by years of experience running editorial and marketing groups. He spent six years at business publications Advertising Age and the Cincinnati Business Courier. Gleason embarked on a management career at the age of 20, running a $2 million company in college; he then moved to Procter & Gamble, where he helped P&G become a trailblazer in U.S. Hispanic marketing before shifting into a career in publishing.

Gleason has a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University. He has served on the boards of New York Is Book Country and the Independent Magazine Advisory Group of the MPA.

Jim Gaines — Editorial Adviser

Jim Gaines has served as the top editor of three of the world's most well-known magazines: People, Life and Time. He led redesigns of all three and saw them all post gains in circulation and advertising during his tenure, as he and his staff won numerous awards for journalism, photography and design. At Time Gaines started Time for Kids, expanding the brand's audience by taking it into public-school classrooms. He also started a daily online news service for Compuserve that represented one of the first migrations of an established media brand from print to online.

A prime example of a man pursuing new opportunities and experiences in midlife, Gaines left Time Inc. at 50 and launched Travel & Leisure Golf for American Express Publishing. He then learned to fly airplanes and flew himself around the world. This year he published his third book, "Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment." Gaines is leading the development of What’s Next magazine, in anticipation of a print launch later in 2006.

Anni Layne Rodgers — Web Editor

A magazine journalist-turned-MBA, Anni Rodgers has launched and managed a number of comprehensive web sites for national publications including Fast Company and Rolling Stone. Now an independent consultant to magazine publishers, Anni was previously Web Director of Doubledown Media, where she led the development of the Trader Monthly and Justice magazine web sites. She has an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Alfred Gingold — Contributing Editor

Alfred Gingold is an experienced author and editor whose work has been published in Esquire, GQ, The New York Times and Worth, among many other publications. He has written or co-authored 10 books, including Dog World and the Humans Who Live There, The Cool Parents Guide to All of New York (with Helen Rogan) and the New York Times bestseller Items From Our Catalog. Gingold was also an Internet pioneer, serving as an editor and producer at Prodigy in the mid-1990s. Later he worked for the online divisions of CBS News and AARP.