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Who

Verklin is the outgoing CEO of Carat Americas, one of world's largest media-buying agencies. His next gig: He'll take over a cable industry initiative to create a system for developing targeted TV ads.

Backstory

In the late '70s Verklin started his ad career at Young & Rubicam in New York City at the age of 21, fresh out of the University of Virginia. In 1987, he packed up and moved across the country for a job at Hal Riney & Partners in San Francisco, where he made a name for himself buying media for nascent car brand Saturn while running the media futures group. A decade later he was back in New York to to open Carat's North American office and today; in addition to his job as chief of Carat Americas, he's also served as the regional chief executive of Aegis Media, Carat's British parent, overseeing its activities in North America and Latin America.

Of note

Under his stewardship, Carat has gone from a relatively unknown quantity to the sixth-largest U.S. planning agency. More than 1,300 people now work for the company, it controls over $6 billion in ad spending a year, and it boasts a client list that includes big names like FedEx, Hyundai, Motorola, Pfizer, Revlon, and RadioShack. In 2004, Verklin scored a big coup when he persuaded Johnson & Johnson to turn over almost half of its $2.5 billion in media buying to Carat; more recently, in 2007, Verklin oversaw the merging of Carat USA's traditional media agency with Carat Fusion, its digital division.

In early 2008, Verklin announced that he'd be leaving Carat to take over as chief of a new cable-industry project named "Project Canoe." With over $150 million in funding from cable companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, and Cox, the venture is planning to roll out a suite of new cable advertising technologies to better compete with the likes of Google.

True story

In 2006, Bernice Kanner—the journalist who used to write the "On Madison Avenue" column for New York magazine—suffered a fatal aneurysm in Verklin's office. The two had been collaborating on a book titled Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the $300 Billion Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume.

Personal

Verklin and his wife, Veronica, have three children—Ryan, Timothy and Catherine—and live in New Canaan, Connecticut.