Breakfast with David Churbuck

David C. Churbuck is a digital media and marketing executive with over 25 years of experience and innovation in print and online businesses He is a founding partner of Eastman Advisors, where he specializes in digital marketing, ecommerce, and digital media as part of the firm’s corporate advisory practice.

He was previously Vice-President of Global Digital Marketing at Lenovo, the world’s second largest PC manufacturer and home of the ThinkPad and IdeaPad lines of notebook computers.

At Lenovo he:

• Led a global team driving digital strategy
• Drove innovation development around cloud computing and future devices
• Led social media operations and provided the global social platform and monitoring tools
• Developed Lenovo’s award winning 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics athlete blogging program
• Lead digital direct demand generation for the company ecommerce sites from 2006 to 2009
• Managed web metrics and analytics from 2006 to 2009

Churbuck was the founder of Forbes.com and set Forbes’ new media strategy from 1994 to 2000. Forbes.com remains one of the world’s leading business/financial news sites.
In 2000 he joined McKinsey & Company to launch an online publication for the firm’s e-commerce and media clients.

While at the Firm, he was part of a team which created one of the earliest secure proprietary platforms for the creation, management and distribution of digital audio and video over the Internet, leading a transformation of the firm’s business knowledge management system.

In 2002 and 2003 he was the managing director of a Swiss-based online consortium of independent wealth advisors: 21i.net, setting that consortium’s strategy for its online interactions with high net worth clients.

In 2005, he joined IDG’s CXO Media as VP/GM of CXO Online, assuming editorial, design, P&L, and strategic responsibility for cxo.com, cio.com, csoonline.com, cmomagazine.com and darwinmag.com. During his tenure at CXO, online revenues and traffic increased dramatically and CIO.com won the American Business Media 2006 Jesse Neal award for best website.
Churbuck’s journalism career began as an intern at the Cape Cod Times in 1980, then as political editor and Massachusetts statehouse bureau chief for the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune where he covered the 1984 Presidential election.

In 1985 he joined PC Week, covering LANs, software, and launching its business coverage before becoming its News Editor in 1986.

He joined Forbes in 1988 as senior technology editor. His reporting won several national awards, including: the Computer Press Association’s Business Story of the Year, the National Association of Science Writer’s story of the year, and two first-place awards in consecutive years in the Computer Museum’s Excellence in Technology Communications competition.
In 1995 he founded Reel-Time: The Internet Journal of Saltwater Flyfishing. He was an early innovator in database publishing, online advertising (he invented the “skyscraper” or “tower” ad unit), and sponsorship models, user interface design, and content management systems.

In 2004 he advised two startups: Foldera, a California-based web services company, advising the company on an ongoing basis on its press and web strategy as a member of its advisory board; and a Massachusetts bio-tech, Environmental Operating Systens, on business strategy, fund raising, and marketing. He assisted in the research and writing of Multisourcing, A book on outsourcing strategy for a leading global technology research and consulting firm published by Harvard Business School Press in the fall of 2005.