Executive of the Year Winner: Molly McFarland

Molly McFarland offers a unique perspective as a woman in the tech start-up world. A native of Maine and a graduate of Tulane University in English and creative writing, she started her career at an architecture firm before marketing software. But in 2012, she added co-founder to her list of credentials when she and a previous coworker and friend, Mike Pedersen, opened the doors for mobile ad solution company AdAdapted.

Consumer behavior was changing rapidly at the time and McFarland says shoppers were increasingly adopting mobile into their path to purchase. “It was clear, even early on, that mobile devices would change how consumers navigated the shopping experience and their activities in the real world would be influenced by what was happening in those digital environments,” she says.

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