Leadership Team
Maurice Bakley - President
Maurice is responsible for setting FierceMarkets' overall growth strategy and leading the team to deliver financial performance through superior service to both clients and readers. Previously, he served as FierceMarkets' Chief Operating Officer, where he led innovation in lead generation, audience acquisition, and technology development, while overseeing the company's Healthcare, Enterprise IT, Government and Finance publishing groups. Maurice joined FierceMarkets in 2007 to build out the web and webinar businesses and to assist with the company's sale to Questex Media Group in 2008.
Before joining FierceMarkets, Maurice served as VP, Internet Publishing, for PostNewsweek Tech Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Washington Post Company dedicated to the government technology market. Earlier in his career, he spent 6 years in Europe working in B2B media and coordinating the successful launch of Poland's first Standard & Poor's-rated mutual fund, Skarbiec Kasa.
Maurice earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in International Relations and German from Tufts University. He is also a self-taught linguist, fluent in Polish, German and French.
Jack Fordi - Vice President, Sales and Business Development
Alec Dann - Vice President, Media Operations
Alec’s manages the operational media departments at Fierce including ad operations, audience development, custom publishing, design, events and technology. He also leads development initiatives that cross the company.
Alec brings more than 20 years of operational, technology and product development experience in both traditional and interactive media to his role at FierceMarkets.
Most recently, Dann was President of Networked Media where he did strategic planning and project management for businesses and non-profits that want to leverage digital publishing to grow revenue and audience. Prior to that he was General Manager, B2B Online for Hanley Wood where he managed the digital business for 30 magazine brands focused on the residential construction industry.
Alec earned a BA in History from Cornell University and an MFA in Photography from Visual Studies Workshop. He lives in DC with his wife and two children.
Jason Nelson - Publisher, Telecom and Energy
Jason joined the company in December 2001 as the first salesperson. He is currently Group Publisher for the Telecom and Energy industry publications - overseeing editorial, operations, and sales for the group. Previously he pioneered the company’s sales engine from the ground up and helped develop many new revenue sources.
Prior to joining FierceMarkets, Jason worked in sales at CDW, campus marketing for VarsityBooks.com, and radio marketing with Michigan Media Inc.
A graduate of Grand Valley State University with a BS in Marketing, Jason is active in his local alumni association and plays on a Congressional softball league team.
Arsalan Arif, Publisher, Life Sciences
Arsalan is a news-media engineer primarily focused on creating must-read editorial products. Since joining the company in 2006 he’s taken a lead role launching 9 of our 10 life sciences publications, growing readership to more than 140,000 unique subscribers and 1.2m monthly pageviews, positioning FierceBiotech and FiercePharma as the most widely read daily biopharmaceutical news publications in the world. He's responsible for managing a talented and diverse 20-person editorial, sales and operations staff and believes strongly that financial success in the media business comes from delighting readers with great content.
Born and raised in Wichita, KS, Arsalan worked from a young age at various family businesses. He’s thankful to his parents for providing a fiercely entrepreneurial upbringing, as well as an education at George Washington University and the University of Kansas. Arsalan lives in Washington, D.C., a few short blocks from Fierce HQ. As an FAA-certified pilot for more than 12 years, he also flies regularly.
Arsalan tweets as @arsalanFierce. Connect on LinkedIn, find him on Facebook, or send him e-mail here.
Wendy Johnson, Publisher, Healthcare
Wendy is responsible for the sales and editorial success of FierceMarkets' Healthcare group. She draws on her healthcare journalism background to develop new editorial and custom products aimed at attracting key audience segments across healthcare, particularly within the payer, hospital executive and health IT realms. Since joining Fierce in 2009, Wendy has launched several newsletters and established new survey products for marketing partners.
Prior to joining Fierce, Wendy spent 19 years as a reporter and editor. Working exclusively in healthcare publishing for the last 13 years, she has written and edited dozens of books on topics ranging from compliance and regulatory issues to revenue cycle management and quality improvement, and has won awards for best investigative reporting and best instructional reporting from the Specialized Information Publishers Association as well as an award for best business-to-business newsletter from the Society of Business Publication Editors. She graduated cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Ron Lichtinger - Publisher, Enterprise IT, Government and Finance
Ron Lichtinger joined FierceMarkets in 2007 to develop business and improve FierceMarkets' service offerings for large national ad agencies. In this role, he worked closely with the sales and ad operations teams in the development of FierceMarkets' lead generation services while growing the overall customer base. He was promoted to Publisher, Enterprise IT group in January 2009 and soon thereafter launched FierceGovernmentIT, which is now the flagship publication of FierceMarkets' Government group. A media veteran with both "buy-side" and "sell-side" advertising experience, Ron has worked as a Media Planner at Stackig Advertising & Public Relations (now TMP Worldwide), and in business development roles at Jane's Information Group, McGraw-Hill, Investor's Business Daily and Post Newsweek TechMedia.
Ron has earned an MBA from George Washington University and a BA in Advertising from Penn State University. In his spare time, he works on restoring and maintaining a 120+ year old Victorian house in which he lives with his family, two Labrador Retrievers and a few uninvited bats as occasional houseguests.
Heather Martin - Vice President, PR, Events & Product Development
Heather Martin brings over 12 years of strategic communications experience to FierceMarkets. Since joining the company in 2005, she has led the expansion of our events business, managed our PR efforts, and now spearheads the development of new products across all vertical markets.
Previously, Heather worked on a number of high-profile healthcare and pharmaceutical accounts at the DC office of Porter Novelli, a global PR and communications firm. Prior to that, she worked with both private and public sector clients planning events and building strategic communications campaigns.
Heather received a BA in Environmental Studies and Sociology from St. Lawrence University. She is an avid runner, foodie, and aspiring photographer.
