New Hampshire's Hatchling Studios Welcomes New President

[Received this press release today from our friends at Hatchling Studios...]

Mark Samber Joins Hatchling Studios To Bring Focus and Strategic Growth To Premier Animation and New Media Studio North of Boston

PORTSMOUTH, NH – Hatchling Studios, a leading interactive agency, animation studio and award winning content creator, announces that Mark Samber, formerly Managing Director of Wunderkind Studios, has joined the company as President and will report directly to Marc Dole, Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Officer.

Samber brings 14 years of experience as a leader in sales management and strategic marketing and will oversee all aspects of the company from client acquisition and retention to internal operations and client strategy, allowing Hatchling founder Marc Dole to focus exclusively on driving the company’s great creative services.

“We’re very excited to bring Mark on board. He has a deep level of industry knowledge and unique experience in building a world-class creative services organization, from the ground up. During Mark’s tenure at Wunderkind Studios, he achieved a delicate balance between doing work for great clients, hiring and managing talented artists and developers, and building enterprise value. We felt he was a perfect fit to help guide Hatchling’s continued growth and evolution as a leading animation & interactive studio,” noted Dole.

Samber has spent his career in both client and agency side roles. Most recently Samber was Sales Director for Sonic Foundry, Inc (NASDAQ: SOFO), a provider of Rich Media software, where he was responsible for the Northeast account team’s direct sales and channel marketing activities. Prior to joining Sonic Foundry, Samber was Director of Channel Marketing at Meetinghouse Data Communications in Portsmouth.

“I’ve watched Hatchling for a long time and I’ve always admired their work and their ability to sustain a great creative environment over the years. “Dole has created a gem, and I know that together we can bring a level of client service, creative vision, and strategic execution to that is expected at the world’s leading corporations. I look forward to the opportunity to do that,” Samber said.

Additionally, Samber has extensive entrepreneurial experiences under his belt. In 2003, co-founded and served as Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for NextChoice, an angel-funded restaurant CRM and self-service software vendor. He was responsible for developing the business plan, creating the product strategy, and building relationships with key channel partners. Prior to that Mark was a co-founder and Managing Director of Wunderkind Studios, a boutique Interactive agency. While there Samber played a principal role in delivering the firm’s high-touch consulting and application development services. He successfully exited the business, selling the company to Boston-based design agency Alchemy Creative in 2003.

Samber began his corporate career in 1994, as a consultant at the Winthrop Group, a boutique consulting firm based in Cambridge, MA after earning a PhD in History and Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. During this time, Samber had unprecedented access to and wrote about senior management at some of the world’s most storied institutions, including the legendary buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Northwest Airlines, Raytheon, The Harvard Business School, Comcast, and others.

Samber earned his BS and MS in Applied History from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been an invited industry speaker and panelist at numerous juried events and has published on a variety of business topics including regional innovation and economic development. Samber was awarded U.S. Patent# 6940393 for his work on NextChoice’s CRM technology.

About Hatchling Studios:

Hatchling is an award-winning interactive, animation, and content creation company located in the scenic heart of Portsmouth, NH. With clients like MTV, NBC and ESPN to brands like Reebok, Charmin, Timberland and PC Connection. Their 10 time award winning CGI short “The Toll” has been at close to 60 film festivals.

Hatchling has developed over 40 properties for film and television. Their animated web series “Endurance Challenge” stars the voices of Billy West (Ren & Stimpy) and April Stewart (South Park). Episode 1 of the series has been had 500,000 viewers in the first 2 months online and written up by wired as “The Geekiest Geeks in Geekdom”. Episode 2 has been to 8 film festivals and won 2 best of awards at the Phoenix ComicCon.

www.hatchling.com