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Jury

Ira Stahlberger
SVP, Talent Marketing
IMG

CHICAGO, USA // Ira Stahlberger is a proven, senior-level sales & marketing professional with nearly 20 years of consistently increasing responsibility and expertise in sports, media, and entertainment marketing.

Mr Stahlberger is currently Senior Vice President of Talent Marketing at IMG. In this role, Mr. Stahlberger leads the marketing, licensing, and charitable efforts for some of the biggest sports & entertainment personalities from one of the Greatest Hockey Players of All-Time, Wayne Gretzky to 4x Super Bowl Champion and lead FOX Sports Analyst Terry Bradshaw to Detroit Lions star QB, Matthew Stafford and several others. His responsibilities also include marketing the top broadcasters and coaches represented by IMG’s Clients Division.

Prior to joining IMG, Ira served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships at Intersport in Chicago, a leading sports media & event company. At Intersport, he led and aggressively grew the media division’s sales efforts, focused on creating, developing and delivering proprietary programming ideas to Fortune 500 clients, including: Capital One, Sprint, Liberty Mutual, Burger King, Pepsi, Under Armour, Taco Bell, Target, EA Sports, Fed Ex and many others.

 A native of New Jersey, Mr. Stahlberger began his career in advertising at New York based, Mezzina/Brown, a subsidiary of WPP's Young & Rubicam, on the RJ Reynolds business. He was recruited by the Leo Burnett Company where he led a number of package-goods accounts within the Philip Morris portfolio. He co-founded Leo Burnett's Field Marketing group while working on Miller, Miller Lite, Oldsmobile and Marlboro.

In 1998, Mr. Stahlberger moved to the brand side as a Marketing Manager for The Coca-Cola Company. In this role, he developed a number of integrated marketing programs for Coca-Cola customers throughout the Midwest. He left the company in 2001 to pursue his passion of sports & marketing.

Mr. Stahlberger has a BA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and was selected by Crain’s Chicago Business as one of their “40 Under 40” in 2011.  He was also a founding board member for the “Champion’s For Children” Annual Charity event benefitting the new Robert and Ann Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

He and his wife, Jennifer, reside in Highland Park, IL and have three daughters…all Michigan fans!