The Weather Company Builds Out New WeatherFX Division with Two Executive Appointments

Jeremy Hlavacek and Steve Kelley Named to VP Posts

NEW YORK – The Weather Company (TWC) has added two executives to its growing WeatherFX division: Jeremy Hlavacek has been named to the newly created role of vice president of operations and strategic partnerships, WeatherFX; and Steve Kelley has been appointed to the newly created role of vice president, architecture and research and development, WeatherFX. Hlavacek and Kelley are both based in New York and will report to Vikram Somaya, general manager, WeatherFX, The Weather Company.

“WeatherFX is all about taking what is arguably the most complex data set in the world and reducing it to something a solutions-oriented marketer can understand and integrate into their marketing stack,” said Somaya. “Jeremy, a programmatic star, and Steve, the ultimate datanaut, are key ingredients to the special sauce we’re creating to achieve this level of translation.”

As vice president of operations and strategic partnerships, Hlavacek will be responsible for overseeing all technology partner relationships that support the WeatherFX business. He will also be working with WeatherFX’s most strategic prospects and clients to ensure optimum utilization of the WeatherFX platform.

An active industry thought leader in programmatic media buying, Hlavacek is a digital media, marketing and technology expert with more than 13 years of experience at web startups, leading global ad agencies and large media companies. He joins The Weather Company from Varick Media Management, where he was vice president of strategy and business operations and was responsible for strategic partnerships in the ad tech/real-time bidding ecosystem, as well as the business and financial operations of the company. While at Varick, Hlavacek signed partnership deals with dozens of ad tech companies, achieving triple digit growth in the company’s net revenue and a doubling of the staff.

Prior to joining Varick, Hlavacek’s previous experience includes building out digital marketing and gaming experiences at LEGO Toys, directing advertising strategy and business development at Dotmenu (an online food ordering startup acquired by GrubHub), and building out digital experiences for entertainment programming at CBS Television. On the agency side, Jeremy has held senior strategic roles at Ogilvy and Cadient Group, where he advised clients in healthcare, financial services and technology.

Hlavacek holds a master’s degree in business administration from Cornell University, a master’s degree in media and communication from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary.

As vice president, architecture and research and development, Kelley will be responsible for corralling TWC’s mammoth weather data and making it available to the company’s marketer clients, as part of the technology platform that will power WeatherFX across all TWC’s channels. He will also work with TWC’s technology and product teams as well as with the company’s client-facing services to build the appropriate level of automation and insight to deliver against marketer goals.

Kelley has had a rich and varied career in the ad technology world. Most recently, he was co-founder and CEO of YieldFire Labs, which provides premium publishers with automated ad serving and full integration with programmatic bidding platforms, as well as data integration, management integration and optimization, audience management across multiple platforms, deep first-party audience management, and real-time bidding/ad serving integration.

Prior to that, Kelley held tech, engineering and research and development leadership roles at multiple organizations including Kitara Media, DidIt, Operative Media, Perry Ellis International, Deutsche Bank and Revenue Science. He began his career at Microsoft, where he was group program manager in the Windows division.

Kelley received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Idaho and a master’s degree in international studies - South Asia from the University of Washington.

###

About The Weather Company

The Weather Company provides the world’s best weather. Through The Weather Channel, weather.com, Weather Underground, Intellicast.com and third-party publishing partners, the company provides millions of people every day with the world’s best weather forecasts, content and data, connecting with them through television, online, mobile and tablet screens. Through WSI and Weather Central, the company delivers superior professional weather services for the media, aviation, marine and energy sectors. The Weather Company is owned by a consortium made up of NBC Universal and the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. For more information, visit www.weather.com/press.