Ross Martin is an executive vice president at Viacom Media Networks and runs Scratch, a creative SWAT team driving innovation by channeling the power of Viacom’s portfolio in new ways – including consumer insights, product development, design, strategy, branding and the development, production and distribution of original content in all media.

Previously, Martin served as Senior Vice President of MTV 360 Production and Development, working across MTV, MTV2 and mtvU. He joined MTV in 2004 as the first Head of Programming for Emmy and Peabody Award winning college network, mtvU. In this role, he oversaw the development and production of all original programming, on-air, online and on mobile.

Prior to his work at MTV, Martin founded Plant Film, a Los Angeles-based production company partnered with Fox, VH1 and Dimension Films; was a development executive for Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks; and taught poetry at Washington University, the Rhode Island School of Design and The New School. His writing appears in The Kenyon Review, The Harvard Review, McSweeney’s, Denver Quarterly, BOMB Magazineand multiple anthologies, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His first book, The Cop Who Rides Alone, was published in 2002.

Martin is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Viacom Marketing Council, and the advisory board of St. Jude Children’s Hospital.  In 2012, he was named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People In Business” and a “Media Maven” by Advertising Age.

The talk is sponsored by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation. Martin joins a long list of Oppenheimer lecturers who have given talks on campus over the last several years, including former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist Thomas Friedman, economist and presidential advisor John Kenneth Galbraith, Lincoln historian Eric Foner, and many others.

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