Kaila Colbin is Chief Marketing Officer and founder shareholder of MiniMonos.com, a virtual world for good green kids, focused on sustainability, generosity, community and fun. She's also the founder and director of New Zealand social media consultancy Missing Link and project management training company Falcon.

She's an entrepreneur, a communicator, a PMP-certified project manager, and a social media maven. As a regular contributor to the US publication Online Spin, she has developed a reputation for provoking disruptive thinking about the future of the Internet. Her articles can also be found in outlets as diverse as Search Insider, Electronics News, NBR and Top Gear NZ.

Kaila has successfully implemented national and international public relations campaigns, including case studies, newsletters and press releases on a wide variety of topics, including the Tear Down The Wall campaign, which saw a group of Christchurch schoolkids advocate to Parliament for a ban on tobacco displays in retail outlets. With Kaila's guidance, the children created a website, ran a YouTube campaign, held a media event in Cathedral Square, and appeared on Campbell Live and in The Press. Ultimately the group was invited to present to the Health Select Committee, which subsequently formally recommended a ban on tobacco displays. This was not an isolated incident, either; Kaila has obtained coverage and established relationships with journalists in both national and international media outlets, including The Press, One News, Breakfast, ASB Business, Sunday Star-Times, The Dominion Post, The Advertiser (Adelaide), the Courier-Mail (Brisbane) and Forbes.com.

The Canterbury Development Corporation, Christchurch Employers Chamber of Commerce, Wellington Chamber, Deloittes CIO Roundtable and the West Coast Development Trust all look to Kaila to teach businesses large and small digital strategy and social media. She also delivers consultation services to public and private companies in the U.S.

In 2009, Kaila trained with Al Gore to deliver the Inconvenient Truth presentations, now one of 17 New Zealanders trained to do so. She has presented to professional groups (such as IPENZ and PMINZ), schoolchildren (such as at Boys High and The Reading Bug), and at TEDxAuckland.

She served as national Director of Communications for the Project Management Institute of New Zealand, helping improve their email communications, update their website, and implement a LinkedIn Group that now has nearly 400 members.

In 2005, Kaila was a member of the three-person team responsible for the event management and public relations for the Allied Telesyn New Zealand Hi Tech Awards. The weekend of events received media coverage amounting to 4.5 million impressions; the Gala Dinner was on television for the first time in its 12-year history.

In one of her earlier ventures, Kaila co-founded ThoughtSource, a computer and Internet training company, where she created and implemented the ParentsConnected Nationwide Seminar Tour, designed to teach kids and parents how to use computers and the Internet in a fun, safe and educational way. The tour traveled the United States putting on stage shows at schools across the country, and garnered nearly 5 million impressions in the spring of 2001.

At ThoughtSource, Kaila also co-developed The Real Peoples Learning System book and video series and the ParentsConnected line of videos including concept design, video editing and graphic design. She was featured on television, radio, and print media throughout the U.S., including CNN, ABC News, NBC News, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

A native New Yorker, Kaila is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian, holds a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration from Cornell University, and has been a serial entrepreneur since the age of 22. Her purpose in life is to be an uplifting presence.

Management, Marketing, Technology, Media Professionals, Columnists, Social Media, Business,