LINH LE NGOC

General Manager and CFO

Ms. Linh serves as the General Manager and Chief Financial Officer at Thoughtful Vietnam. As one of the founding executives of the Vietnam operation, she is accountable for all aspects including corporate structure, finance, legal human resource, administration and IT. She has a strong background in many functional areas. 

Previously, Ms. Linh held a position as Chief Financial Officer at VietJet Aviation Joint Stock Company, the first privately owned airlines in Vietnam. She was also one of the airlines’ founders who supported the company in achieving great performance within the first three years: 45% local aviation market share, 98% brand awareness, and ranking No. 2 in most profitable airlines in Vietnam. Moreover, she was the first employee and founder of Toyota Financial Services Company in Vietnam and established this 100% foreign-owned financial institution owned by the well-known automobile corporation –  Toyota.

In addition, she was Vice Chairwoman/the first Deputy Managing Director and Finance Director of McCann-Erickson Vietnam, which is a subsidiary of McCann Worldgroup for more than 10 years. In her early career, she served as the Senior Accounts Executive of Petronas Carigali Vietnam (a branch of Petronas – the Malaysian petroleum company.)

Ms. Linh holds a BA in Accounting and Finance from the Finance and Accounting University in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam and The Swinburne University of Technology (Australia).

SOMYOT CHAIRAT

SVP Regional Development – ASEAN

Somyot Chairat is a seasoned Thai professional with over 20 years of experience in communication, research, and retail in several countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. He has worked across many disciplines, including creative, media, event, activation, retail, planning and research, and digital with both international and local brands. 

Before joining Thoughtful in 2014, Somyot served as the Managing Director of several leading Thai advertising agencies, including MediaVest Thailand and Publicis Thailand, as well as McCann Worldgroup, where he was given the Harrison Award for Great Leadership. He was responsible for the overall management of McCann-Erickson as well as for Momentum, the retail and activation group.

Dan Thorman

Chief Executive Officer

Dan Thorman serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Thoughtful Media Group (TMG). Dan focuses on strategic business development, corporate structure, and finance. Dan has broad experience managing corporate business and legal affairs across a diverse cross-section of functional areas. Specifically, he has focused efforts in the creation of online and television advertising solutions as well as early-stage company finance, operations and evolution, and technical project specification and management. In recent years, he has assisted in raising millions of dollars in corporate financing. Dan co-founded TMG to capitalize on the global changes occurring in the Online Media and Advertising sectors.
Prior to TMG, Dan served as a Managing Partner at MR Holdings, a Los Angeles based branded entertainment company focused on the television market. Since its founding in 2003, he successfully deployed over $25 Million is brand dollars into television media from major global advertisers. Dan also served as the Chief Financial Officer of INNX, Inc., a venture capital financed convergent media company which provided television news, internet content, and targeted advertising opportunities to hundreds of network television affiliates and advertisers across North America.
Before his work in online and television advertising solutions, Dan was a founding partner of San Francisco-based Ignition, Inc., a leading design and engineering company of interactive products and data integration solutions for large corporations. Ignition clients included Hewlett Packard, the United Nations, and McKinsey & Company. At Ignition, Dan managed operations of the company, including technical, financial and administrative functions. Dan also managed large software and technical development projects for clients with a specialty in technical problem solving and specification of hardware systems.
Dan has a BS in accounting from George Mason University and has passed the Certified Public Accounting (CPA) examination.

Jak Severson

Founder

As a founder of Thoughtful media, Jak focuses on strategic expansion, creative development, and core advertiser sales. Jak is an accomplished and award-winning television producer specializing in reality, news, and integrated advertising for large advertisers. Jak co-founded TMG to capitalize on the global changes occurring in the Online Media and Advertising sectors.

Prior to TMG, Jak served as a Managing Partner at MR Holdings, a Los Angeles based branded entertainment company focused on the television market. Since its founding in 2003, he successfully sold and deployed over $25 Million in advertising budgets into television media from major global advertisers.
Jak also served as the Chief Executive Officer of INNX, Inc., a venture capital financed convergent media company which provided television news, internet content, and targeted advertising opportunities to hundreds of network television affiliates and advertisers in the United States and Canada. There, Jak was responsible for corporate vision, execution and oversight of 50+ persons in three domestic offices. While in his roles as CEO, Jak has been responsible for securing millions of dollars in seed, growth and mezzanine stages of financing, while attracting prominent executives from the media community to join as investors, advisors and directors.
Early in his career, Jak founded Parador Television Productions, an international television production company, which served the NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, PBS, BBC and Discovery Channel Networks for nearly a decade. Clients include such notable and popular national programs as The Today Show, Weekend Today, NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, CNN Travel Guide, World News Report, America’s Most Wanted, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly and Headline News.
While at Parador, in 1997, Jak served as Executive Producer of the British-based investigative series, “Earth Undercover” TV series, which exposed illegal and exotic animal trade in 13 parts. Parador’s corporate clients included The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Samsung Corporation, the governments of French Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, The Cook Islands and Fiji which hired Parador to provide broadcast solutions and to generate revenue and awareness for their respective brands, identities and issues。

Dr. Mark Ingrouille

Executive Vice President, International Operations

Described by Campaign magazine as “one of the great personalities of our industry”, Dr. Ingrouille has headed major agencies in Asia Pacific, including McCann and Publicis. Hailing originally from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, he has worked and lived in the United States, Germany, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. He studied at Exeter University and holds an MBA and PhD in Sociology.

Ryan Yudell

Executive Vice President, Global Operations and Strategy

Prior to joining Thoughtful Media Group in 2014 Ryan spent over a decade working within the digital marketing, advertising and sales space and led operations teams for MySpace, Fox Audience Network, Break Media and Publicis/4D (Disney).

TIMOTHY KWOK

President of Thoughtful China, EVP Thoughtful Media Group

Timothy Kwok is one of China’s leading digital marketing professionals with global experience at companies such as Sapient, Communication Central Group (now known as Digitas China), Lemon Asia and Shepherd Digital, which he founded in 2007. Timothy joined Thoughtful China from Great Works, an award-winning full-service digital marketing agency with offices in Stockholm, Barcelona, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai.

Timothy has worked in diverse markets such as the U.S., India and Hong Kong, but has been based in Shanghai for the past eight years. He relocated to China with Lemon as director of operations, growing that business from 10 people in 2004 to about 70 people within 18 months, while also adding offices in Beijing and Shenzhen.

He has handled digital marketing for advertisers such as Audi, Agriculture Bank of China, BenQ, China Eastern Airlines, Electronic Arts, Forbes magazine, Goldman Sachs, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Jin Jiang International Hotels, KFC, Nippon Paint, Philips Lighting, Lucent Technologies, Mercer Consulting, Sony Electronics, TOTO, Jelly Belly Candy Company and Jardine Schindler.

Timothy’s project portfolio ranges from digital marketing campaigns to complex enterprise architecture solutions, such as word-of-mouth marketing, mobile and CRM campaigns, CMS development, large-scale data migration and system integration projects, as well as other mission-critical applications development.
Timothy is an active member of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and he serves as a commissioner of the Anti-Spam Committee of Internet Society of China (ASISC). He received a bachelor’s degree in economics as well as computing and information science from Queen’s University in Canada.