Bio

Kerel Cooper is an award-winning executive with 20+ years of digital media experience building Advertising Operations, Account Management, and Marketing teams. He has been widely recognized for his leadership and innovation. A 2013 ADVANCE Visibility Most Valuable Player Award winner for product innovation. Kerel was included in Crain's New York Business Notable Black Leaders and Executives 2021 list. He is the recipient of the 2021 AdWeek Readers’ Choice best of tech diversity advocate of the year award, the 2021 Diversity Advocate of the Year award by Campaign Tech Awards, and 2021 Award of Excellence by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts. Kerel is currently the President of Advertising at Group Black, a next-gen media collective and accelerator focused on the advancement of Black-owned media properties. In his current role, Kerel leads Group Black's revenue operations, revenue strategy & planning, and insights teams. He works closely with the executive team to deliver seamless experiences for both clients and customers. Before joining Group Black, Kerel was the Chief Marketing Officer at LiveIntent. During his 7+ years at LiveIntent, Kerel led teams that managed campaigns for key publishers and advertisers, and teams that helped the company better understand the customer’s journey. In 2018, he stepped up to lead marketing. Using the knowledge he'd developed leading other functions of the company, he helped develop a marketing team that provides a strong and unified voice in the market, while mastering how to best be a service organization within the company that saw revenues grow by more than 25% from 2019 to 2020. Kerel is the co-founder and co-host of Minority Report Podcast which highlights people of color, women & LGBTQ+ leaders within business, media, and technology. He is also an Advisor to Dandi, a people analytics company, VR PERSPECTIVES which leverages virtual reality to train organizations on conscious inclusion and Media Tradecraft which helps publishers optimize their website monetization efforts. Kerel has also held positions at Advance Digital as the Senior Director Ad Platform Strategies and JupiterMedia as Director of Advertising Operations. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Management Science/Marketing from Kean University, an MBA from Regis University, and Diversity & Inclusion Certification from Cornell University.