Ann Kirschner
Founder and President
Comma International

Comma's President, Ann Kirschner, has been a pioneer in cable, satellite, and interactive media, taking five start-ups from concept to execution. Most recently, she created FATHOM, the first online knowledge network, in association with Columbia University, the London School of Economics, the New York Public Library, the Natural History Museum, Cambridge University Press, the British Museum, and other distinguished educational and cultural institutions. Fathom created a vital and distinctive learning community of over 100,000 lifelong learners in 52 countries around the world.

At the National Football League, she was part of the launch team for NFL SUNDAY TICKET and then created the first advanced media group for a major sports league, overseeing the NFL's new programming ventures in interactive television and the Internet. She was the founder and first general manager of NFL.COM, superbowl.com and Team NFL on America Online, and created alliances for NFL digital programming with DirecTV, Fox, Microsoft, IBM, and NBC. She created pioneering information and subscription services for cable television such as REQUEST TELETEXT, with partners that included Group W Cable/Westinghouse, Zenith Television and the British Department of Trade and Industry. She co-founded PRIMETIME 24, the first satellite broadcast networks, which pioneered in the delivery of premium television services to rural consumers.

She was named one of New York Magazine's "Millennium New Yorkers," Crain's Business "Top Technology Leaders," and was also honored as a distinguished graduate of Princeton University.

She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Topps Company (TOPP) since 1999, and also serves on the board of MOUSE, the Jewish Women's Archive, and the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. She is the Vice Chair of Princeton University's Committee for Academic Programs for Alumni and also serves on the University's English Department Advisory Council. She has been a frequent spokesperson at conferences and in the media on issues and trends relating to media, education, sports, and technology. Her publications have appeared in the New York Times, Multichannel News, and A Digital Gift to the Nation: Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital and Internet Age, edited by Lawrence Grossman and Newton Minow.

Ann Kirschner began her career as a lecturer in Victorian literature at Princeton University and has written and edited for CBS and the New York Times, as well as for educational and trade publishers. She was the assistant director for English programs at the Modern Language Association, and assistant to the director of the Berg Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the New York Public Library. She has received grants from the Texas Committee for the Humanities for a study on Ph.D.s in business and from the Lucius M. Littauer Foundation for a book on the Holocaust. A Whiting Fellow in the Humanities, she received her Ph.D. in English literature from Princeton University, an M.A. from the University of Virginia and a B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

A native New Yorker, Ann Kirschner lives in Manhattan with her husband, Dr. Harold Weinberg, and three children.