Leslie is an results-oriented leader who champions innovative marketing solutions, product development and building successful partnerships. She has 10+ years of experience in marketing and management consulting.

Leslie was previously a Director at American Express. She helped build the interactive strategy team, which developed and launched marketing solutions that generated over $50m in additional revenue. Prior to that, she managed a P&L and led innovative, marketing campaigns as part of American Express’ Consumer card group. Her first role at American Express was negotiating and valuing partnerships for Open Savings, a bundle of services targeting small businesses.

Leslie has additionally worked with Arthur Andersen Business Consulting and The Advisory Board, a Washington, DC-based consultancy.

She serves on the Board of Trustees of Corlears School, an elementary school in the West Village and has been involved with SoBro, a community economic development group in the South Bronx.

Leslie holds an MBA from Vanderbilt and BA with honors from Boston University. She enjoys playing tennis, traveling and reading.

David Gaspar is a senior financial and operations executive with over 8 years of media and financial services experience. He is a business visionary with strong analytical skills, superior communication ability and the capacity to craft effective partnerships with organizations ranging in size and scope.

Most recently, Dave was the CFO for Hitviews.com, a site that matches brands with web-video producers to create original branded content for the web. In this role, Dave developed a deep understanding of social media techniques and online video monetization strategies. He was also responsible for all financial, legal and operational activities of the business, serving Fortune 500 clientele (Fox, Microsoft, Kraft). Prior to joining Hitviews, Dave worked in Mergers and Acquisitions at GE Capital for their Consumer Finance Division. He successfully executed numerous acquisitions with cumulative assets of over $12 billion globally. Prior to his years at GE Capital, Dave was at Jefferies & Company, Inc. in their Investment Banking Division where he advised clients in debt and equity financings, restructurings, modeling, M&A and other financial transactions. 

Dave currently serves on the Executive Board (NY Chapter) of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, where he received his degree, and founded the Emory Entrepreneurs Group of NY.

Valia joins Discover Digital Group with over seven years of strategy and marketing development experience, primarily in the Consumer Products Industry. Her expertise is traditional and digital marketing, brand analysis and development, and interdisciplinary departmental management. Most recently, Valia is founder and Executive Director of Methodemporia, a boutique management consulting firm focused on building creative solutions for the strategy, marketing, and technology needs of emerging and small companies. Previously, she was the Vice President of Sales & Marketing at High IntenCity, a high-end, teen jewelry manufacturer. In that role, she developed extensive experience with small business strategy growth and development and the licensing of consumer goods and services. Valia holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MBA in Marketing and Management from Columbia University.

As our resident social media strategist, Christophe’s passion lies in successfully engaging clients across a host of digital platforms.  He has extensive experience with small business social media strategy and digital brand development and is an avid believer in the importance of integrating companies and brands with effective social media outlets and strategies. Christophe has worked closely with numerous brand campaigns, companies, and events, such as partnering with Rockstar games to promote major cycling events in New York City that garnered extensive local and national media coverage. He joins DDG from several years in the financial services industry, where he supported traders at a large NY-based hedge fund.  Christophe graduated with a BSM in Finance from Tulane University.

Daniel Weise has over 10 years of web and graphic design experience and has been part of every aspect of the web design and development process. He has been running thundercut, a graphic and web design firm for the past 5 years working on web and print projects for clients such as Westin Hotels, Levis, Nike, Marla Cielo, Pardon that vine and Dime Publishing Co.

Before starting thundercut, Dan worked as an art director for MTV online where he was responsible for a variety of projects ranging from the MTV movie awards site to creating the concept and curating the MTV HATS project which involved coordinating 15 artists to re-imaginge the MTV logo and associated background art for the entire website. Dan also worked as the lead designer for Heavy.com where he was responsible for developing micro-sites and ensuring a level of brand consistency across all site content.

Dan is involved in every aspect of the projects he woks on. From crafting the concept for the initial the site direction to content planning, wireframes, design comps, coordinating with programmers and fine tuning and debugging the site before launch.

Dan is also an adjunct professor at Parsons New School and runs and art gallery and studio with his wife called OPEN SPACE in Beacon NY.