Sara Mengesha is a community strategist and cultural architect with 15+ years of experience at the intersection of culture, entertainment, technology, and entrepreneurship.

Across four continents, she has helped produce and shape more than 10,000 live experiences, from intimate concerts and festivals to global creator communities. Her work spans organizations including Sofar Sounds, Lighthouse, and Creator Now/vidIQ, as well as projects involving artists and creators such as Billie Eilish and Morgan Jay.

As Head of Community & Culture at Stan, Sara leads efforts to turn audiences into active communities, creating spaces where creators and entrepreneurs can connect, collaborate, and build sustainable businesses.

Her philosophy is simple: Community isn’t an outcome. It’s a decision. It takes intention to bring people together and purpose to make those connections matter.

Mikhail Naliukhin is the Global Director of inlab, inDrive’s in-house creative agency. He leads a global multidisciplinary team working across creative strategy, campaigns, design, production, localization, digital and emerging technologies.

Under his leadership, inlab has evolved from an internal production function into a global creative partner supporting one of the world’s fastest-growing technology companies across diverse markets and cultures. His focus is on building creative systems that combine strong human judgment, local relevance and new technology and using AI not to replace talent, but to help people work faster, expand their capabilities and create greater impact

Abbey Fish is the founder and CEO of Tastemaker, a leading community and conference for food creators, brands, and industry leaders navigating the rapidly evolving creator economy. With more than 17 years of experience in digital media and the creator space, Abbey works at the intersection of creators, commerce, technology, and culture. She is also a sociology researcher studying power, legitimacy, and platform capitalism in the creator economy and advises companies and industry organizations on the future of creator-led media and commerce.

Fiona Turko is a marketer with a builder’s mindset: equal parts creative strategist and data-driven operator. Over the years, she has led influencer and creator programs for both scrappy startups and scaling global AI brands (Zapier, Gamma), turning creator partnerships into powerful storytelling and measurable growth.

Her favourite part is where creators, community, and brand meet. She builds campaigns that connect audiences across YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, and social—especially in the B2B space where authenticity, credibility and expertise matter most.

And she is interested in how AI is reshaping the creator space, and how brands collaborate with creators not as advertisers, but as true partners and long-term advocates.

David Yankelewitz is the Founder & CCO of Public Display of Affection (PDA), a creative agency that builds brand loyalty through campaigns & activations that speak the 5 love languages. He’s won over 100 advertising awards, including Cannes Lions, OneShow, Clio, and D&AD, and was one of The Drum’s Top 200 Most Awarded ECDs.

His work includes the limited edition Dr. Squatch soap made with Sydney Sweeney's bathwater, Oscar Mayer's bacon-scent alarm clock for iPhone, Verizon's Super Bowl stadium in Fortnite, and Samsung's #DanceAwesome TikTok challenge starring BLACKPINK, which generated 16 billion global views. He lives in NYC, where he paints, bikes, parties, makes jewelry, and designs fashion pieces when he's not zooming with a client or creative collaborator.

Dan Robbins is the Head of Brand Sponsorships at Substack. Previously, Dan held executive roles at PayPal, Roku, and Nielsen. He has also served on the boards of The Ad Council, the Modern Marketing Association (MMA), and The Point Foundation, taught a course on advertising economics as an Adjunct Professor at Cornell University, served as Executive in Residence for Progress Partners, and participated as a juror for the Clio awards and the Effie awards.

His achievements include being named PRWeek Marketer of the Year, a Business Insider Power Player, and a Fellow at the Economic Club of New York. He is a graduate of Cornell University and is based in New York.

Substack gave brands a first look at the next phase of its sponsorships program today at Advertising Week, including three new sponsorship formats designed to create value for brands, creators, and their audiences, as well as the introduction of independent brand measurement through Kantar.

Since announcing the program with an initial group of brand partners in June, Substack has also been bringing more brands into the program and building a growing pipeline of campaigns across different categories.
The three new formats are:

1. The Unlock: A brand sponsors a creator’s paid post, making it free for everyone to read. The creator gets paid, while the brand gives readers access to content that would otherwise sit behind the paywall.

2. The Upgrade: A brand gives a creator’s free subscribers a month of paid access at no cost to the reader, with the creator paid for each person who upgrades.

3. The Masthead: A brand works with writers and creators to curate or commission work around a theme, bringing it together in a dedicated destination on Substack, almost like a digital zine.

Tameka Bazile is a Brooklyn-born social strategist and corporate creator who is shaping the conversation around work, identity, and brand power in the digital age. With a career spanning over eight years, Tameka has built a reputation as a sharp, creative industry leader who blends strategic thinking with real-world relatability. She is currently the Associate Director of B2B Social & Content Marketing at Business Insider and previously served as Social Strategy Manager at TIME, where she oversaw social programming for legacy media, bringing the century-old brand into a social-first future

Tameka’s social campaigns have powered multi-million-dollar brand strategies for clients including Amazon Prime, Ally, Nissan, and Roadway, earning accolades such as a 2024 Clio Silver and media features in Business Insider, MSNBC, and CNBC. Beyond the boardroom, Tameka has cultivated a loyal audience of over 60,000 across LinkedIn and TikTok, where she shares career insights, lifestyle content, and behind-the-scenes looks into the creator economy.

Her content blends authenticity and expertise, sparking meaningful dialogue around entrepreneurship, self-care, relationships, and redefining success on your own terms. Tameka has collaborated with brands such as Lyft, Sprout Social, Notion, and Skillshare, delivering creator content that connects deeply with professional women and modern marketers.

A sought-after speaker, she’s taken the stage at national conferences including AdWeek Social Media Week and Black is Tech, offering fresh, honest perspectives on the evolving role of social media in business, culture, and identity. Through everything she creates, Tameka remains committed to helping others navigate career transitions, own their story, and build a life they love—online and off.

Amanda Ghobadi/The Branding Babe

Sandy Carter is a globally recognized technology executive, author, and thought leader at the intersection of AI and Identity. Currently CEO of an EQUS, an agentic AI company focused on privacy-based AI, identity, and trust infrastructure, she has run and scaled multi-billion-dollar businesses at AWS and IBM, and previously served as Chief Business Officer at Unstoppable, a unicorn startup. Sandy is an Adweek Power AI 100, Microsoft MSN AI Entrepreneur of the Year, USA Today Top 5 AI Strategist, and a Fortuna AI and Innovation Leader of the Year. In addition, she was named a Top 10 Chief Business Officer by TradeRev. She serves as Chair of the Applied AI Group at The Digital Economist and is a Forbes contributor.

A sought-after keynote speaker, Sandy has presented at Davos, CES, SXSW, reInvent, and the United Nations, and hosts The Marketing Companion, a top 1% podcast with two podcast awards. She also sits on several AI boards, including Altair AI (ALT NASDAQ) and others. Sandy is the bestselling author of "AI First, Human Always" and the founder of Unstoppable Women of AI, advancing women's leadership in emerging technology worldwide. Her work is guided by a core belief: AI should be built to amplify human potential, with people always at the center of the strategy.