Jeff Lundwall
managing partner
Before launching Lundwall Group in 2016, Jeff was a founding and managing partner of Mercury Group, his first executive search business, for nine years, beginning in 2007. Prior to that, Jeff led various media sales and business operations teams for more than a decade. He was an Associate Publisher at Condé Nast Digital, where he helped grow staff and revenue 5x over four years. As an early digital adopter, Jeff helped launch The Industry Standard, “the news-magazine of the Internet economy” specializing in areas where business and the Internet overlapped, it was later referred to as “the bible” of the Internet economy. He has also co-founded three content sites where he managed sales and business development, and was involved with early web video and widget development projects.
Judy Laughren
partner
Judy joined Lundwall Group in 2016 after spending 8 years in executive search as a partner at Mercury Group. Prior to that, she spent more than three decades at both digital and traditional advertising agencies, leading client teams including DeBeers, American Express, Samsung and Kraft. She held the position of SVP at Digitas for nine years, and was also NY Marketing Capability lead where she was responsible for resource management, staffing, and personal development of a 150+ department. She served as Director of Client Services for Blue Marble ACG, after time spent at Ayer and DDB. Judy is also a certified executive coach.
Shara Gastwirth-Lawner
partner
Shara was a media sales operations expert before becoming an executive recruiter. Prior to partnering on the launch of Lundwall Group in 2016, Shara spent five years as Partner and Research Director at Mercury Group, another highly successful executive search firm in media, marketing, and advertising. Prior to her career as an executive recruiter, Shara was Account Services Director at BuzzMedia where she led the NY office of Account Managers. Prior to that, Shara was Director of Client Services and Marketing at A Small World where she hired and managed a team of ad operations, marketing, product, and campaign managers. Shara began her career at Condé Nast Digital where she worked up the ranks from Sales Associate to Business Director, where she worked with the sales team to analyze traffic trends and manage inventory.
Stephanie Vautravers
partner
Stephanie Vautravers joined Lundwall Group in 2019, after running her own advertising agency consultancy for four years. Prior to consulting, Stephanie had launched her digital media career in 1996 working at several Internet start-ups, including Blender, broadcast.com, Yahoo! and About. Leveraging her success at start-ups, she landed at Time Warner. For nearly 10 years, she worked at Time Inc. (now Meredith Corp.) and Turner Broadcasting System (now Warner Media). She led the East Coast Digital team in Time Inc.’s Branded Solutions group where she and her team worked with high profile corporate clients like Unilever, Starbucks, Pfizer and Samsung. While working at Turner, Stephanie was instrumental in launching CNN’s Mobile business and ultimately became the Director of Turner Mobile Ad Sales, responsible for building a dedicated Mobile Sales Team and advancing strategic sales efforts across Turner’s portfolio of mobile web and mobile applications.