Wesley A. Jackson - President, COO
Wesley A. Jackson, 38, is the president and chief operating officer for VuPal LLC. Before joining VuPal, Jackson spent two years with developmental businesses both as a partner in Maroon Ventures, LLC, a boutique digital media consulting firm, and as founder and chief executive officer of Radiant Markets, LLC, a developmental research effort focused on using technology to create efficiencies and performance improvement in online advertising.
Jackson previously served as a corporate senior vice president for Belo Corp. and president/general manager of Belo Interactive Media. He was a corporate officer for Belo Corporation, and in his role as president/GM he held P&L responsibilities, including strategy, operations, technology, national sales and product development for more than 30 Web sites. He also oversaw interactive alliances, digital media investments and partnerships. Jackson joined Belo in 2000 as vice president of sales for Belo Interactive, a subsidiary of Belo Corp.
During his term at Belo (2000-07), Jackson was instrumental in bringing the firm into Classified Ventures, which has developed industry-leading online classified products (including Cars.com, Apartments.com and Homescape.com). He also championed new products, such as a 3 million-subscriber permission e-mail program, and took Belo's interactive revenue from under $3 million in 1999 to more than $80 million in 2007. In the first quarter of 2007, Belo's network of news and information Web sites averaged more than 7 million unique visitors and more than 145 million page views each month. In addition, Jackson represented Belo and played a lead role in the development of a consortium of 30 newspaper companies (Newspaper Consortium) representing 800 newspapers to form a strategic partnership with Yahoo!
Jackson holds a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of Kentucky. Before joining Belo, he worked in a variety of media and interactive positions, including sales roles at the Lexington Herald; account executive with Village Companies' radio station WXZZ-FM; founder and partner of Lexweb.com, a Lexington, KY, based online directory, movie and apartment guide; Internet marketing consultant with Knight Ridder newspapers; General Manager Interactive Media at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver; and corporate director of vertical markets (product, technology & sales development) for Scripps.
Jackson has served as a board member of Classified Ventures, Online Publishers Association and Colorado Real Estate Online. He was on the development committee of both the Denver and Dallas Better Business Bureau. He has been involved in a number of civic organizations, including Big Brothers of America and youth baseball and football. In 1999 he was Editor & Publisher finalist for “Best Use of Interactivity,” and in 1998 he won a Digital Edge Award for Kyautoconnect.com. Under Jackson’s leadership, websites at Belo won numerous industry awards for journalism, technology and media innovation. Jackson now lives in Louisville, Ky., his hometown.