HOWARD LEFKOWITZ

URL: 1DEGREEWORLD.COM

During his 25-plus years as an executive for companies such as Vegas.com, Row 44, EarthLink, Home Shopping Network, and major television networks and movie studios, Howard has been innovating. By merging marketing, product, and content with new and legacy technologies, he finds new and profitable business models and creates true team culture within organizations and across partner organizations. His talent for building innovative business models and economies of scale transforms fledgling start-ups into profitable industry leaders that bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

Howard drives the development of the information technology infrastructure needed to support new business models and services, leading to several innovative and patentable services. Lefkowitz not only has the ability to conceive and re-invent ideas, but he executes them on time and on budget while delivering an ever-increasing value for all customer constituencies.

Howard is widely known in the world of tech, and he is best known among domain investors as the highly-successful CEO of Vegas.com, which started as a small content site and became a destination domain during Howard' tenure. As CEO of Vegas.com, he started with a 19-person team and a content-based Web site with 100,000 monthly, unique visitors and re-engineered it into the most-visited city web site in the world, one that receives more than 2.5 million visitors each month and is supported by 400 employees. Lefkowitz established a strong brand and shifted from an advertising-based model to one focused on multiple revenue streams with a primary emphasis on ecommerce and secondarily on advertising — a highly successful and profitable move. Lefkowitz also spearheaded development of mission-critical, back-of-house systems used by most Las Vegas hotels, including payment gateways for credit card processing, box office and show ticket operations, concierge desks and retail operations.

Those efforts have won the company numerous awards, including the Odyssey Award for Best Domestic Marketing Campaign from The Travel Industry Association (TIA), more than 14 gold, silver and bronze awards from the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) and Editor and Publisher’s Eppy Award for Best Internet Shopping Service. Vegas.com was also a finalist for the Codie Award for Best Online Software Service by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).

A highly regarded leader and innovator, Howard has been featured in hundreds of magazine, newspaper and television segments, including NBC Nightly News, ABC News, CNN, The Today Show, Fox Business News, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Inc. Magazine, USA Today and many others. He has appeared as a public speaker at dozens of industry trade shows and universities, including the Haas Business School at University of California Berkley, San Diego State, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.