Since 2014, Laura Lang is the Founder and Managing Director of Narragansett Ventures, a strategic advisory firm focused on digital business transformation and growth investing. Over the years, she has had an accomplished career as an operating chief executive officer of global digital and media businesses, as well as experience in strategic digital and marketing consulting.
Raised in Warwick, Rhode Island, she graduated from Tufts University and received her M.B.A. in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1980.
She began her career in product and brand management, working for companies like the Quaker Oats Co., Bristol-Myers, and Pfizer Pharmaceutical Co. Throughout the years, she moved into marketing management and served as senior vice president at Yankelovich Clancy Shulman and as president at Marketing Corp. of America, a leading marketing strategy firm where she did strategic consulting for clients across a wide variety of industries, including, but not limited to, retail, electronics and information, entertainment, and travel.
In 1999, she joined Digitas where she climbed the ladders and served as chief executive officer of Digitas North America before becoming global CEO from 2008 to 2011. Under her leadership, the integrated advertising company grew into a leading global digital marketing agency.
“To me, success in the job is setting a vision, guiding an organization through change - which is exactly what I did at Digitas, and I'm very proud of that - and bringing people together and with you. That, to me, is what it takes to be successful,” she then explained.
In 2012, she left the company and took over the role of chief executive officer of Time Inc., one of the largest branded media companies in the world, with the desire “to influence the industry from a different sector”. Her time with the company was nevertheless short lived since the following year she stepped down from her position.
Since 2014, besides her position as managing director of Narragansett Ventures, she also serves in a number of other roles, on advisory boards and boards of directors, sharing her expertise in digital integrated marketing and media.
Her remarkable career has unsurprisingly led her to be ranked on Forbes and Fortune’s lists of powerful women in business.