Cree Lawson

CEO, Travel Ad Network
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Cree Lawson is founder and CEO of the Travel Ad Network (TAN) (www.traveladnetwork.com) the leading advertising network in the online travel vertical reaching 17 million unique users across 300+ websites, including BBC’s Lonely Planet, and Rand McNally. Mr. Lawson began his online publishing career in 1995 when he posted the entirety of The Belmont Vision, his college newspaper, online. The only thing missing from the college paper—one of the first to be published online—was online advertising. Mr. Lawson has spent the past 11 years making up for his omission. After completing Belmont’s Honors and having a scholarship established in his name, Mr. Lawson wrote for the Nashville Banner, where he eventually published a weekly internet column and won national recognition for investigative journalism. Mr. Lawson moved to New York on a master’s scholarship to NYU in 1997. While completing his studies, he worked at Random House, Foder’s Travel Guides, the Associated Press, Time Warner and two failed e-publishing start-ups. Mr. Lawson joined the travel guide publisher Rough Guides Inc. in September 2001. Travel Ad Network was born out of his experience selling joint campaigns across Roughguides.com and then sister site Igougo.com