Team
Partners
Vanessa Valenti is the co-founder and managing editor of the award-winning blog, Feministing.com, an online strategist and speaker. Since its inception in 2004, Feministing has become the largest online feminist community in the world with over 500,000 unique readers every month, and has won several awards including the Sidney Hillman Prize in Blog Journalism, the Blogger’s Choice Award for Best Political Blog and the Choice USA Award. Vanessa is also an online consultant, sharing her passion for online movement-building by guiding clients to build successful social media and blog engagement strategies. For the last decade, she has been involved with grassroots initiatives, major national organizations, political campaigns and academic institutions with the goal of evangelizing online activism and illustrating how the internet has shifted the landscape for social change.
Courtney E. Martin is an author, blogger, and speaker. Her most recent book, Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors, was published last fall. She is also the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists, and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women. She is the Founding Director of the Solutions Journalism Network and an Editor Emeritus at Feministing.com. Her work appears frequently in The Christian Science Monitor, GOOD, and The Nation, among other national publications. Courtney has appeared on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and The O’Reilly Factor, and is the recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics, a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre, and is a TED speaker. She is the leader of the Op-Ed Project’s Public Voices Fellowship Program at Princeton University.
Collaborators
Check out some of the amazing collaborators we have in our network:
Jamia Wilson is a feminist media activist, organizer, and storyteller. By day, she serves as the TED Prize Storyteller at TED Conferences. She is the former Women’s Media Center VP of Programs and has worked at Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, People for the American Way, and New York University. Her words and works have been featured in Alternet, CBS News, C-SPAN, Forbes.com, Fox.com, GOOD Magazine, GRIT TV, In These Times, Ms. Magazine, The Today Show, Rookie Magazine, The Washington Post and more. She is a contributor to Women of Spirit and Faith’s 2011 anthologies Women, Spirituality, and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power, Rookie: Yearbook One, Our Bodies, Ourselves 2011 Edition, Madonna and Me: Women Writers on the Queen of Pop, and I Still Believe Anita Hill. Jamia is a member of the Feminist.com board and the Omega Institute board of directors. Twitter: @jamiaw
Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer and digital strategist from NY. She is a Senior Strategist at Purpose and the Executive Editor at Feministing. In 2011, she released her first book Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life. She has written for multiple outlets including GOOD Magazine, The Nation, The American Prospect, Alternet and the Guardian UK. She has been profiled in The Globe and Mail, The Rumpus, Salon, India Currents Magazine, Nirali Magazine, Brown Girl Magazine, Rabble.ca and on Alternet. She regularly lectures at colleges, universities and conferences about gender, politics, technology, sexuality and feminism. In 2012, she was an Aspen Ideas Scholar and in 2011, along with the rest of the Feministing crew, was a recipient of the Sidney Hillman award for excellence in blog journalism. She is also on the board of directors of the Center for Media Justice, an organization that focuses on justice communications and media ownership.
Jill Filipovic is a New York-based writer, consultant and attorney. She is the editor of the political blog Feministe, and a freelance journalist. Jill earned her B.A. in Politics and Journalism with a minor in Gender & Sexuality Studies from New York University. She received a J.D. from NYU School of Law, and spent three years working as a Big Law litigator. She now works with organizations, companies and individuals to bolster their media exposure and help them to establish or grow their online presence.
Deborah Siegel, PhD, is a Chicago-based author and thought leadership coach. A Visiting Scholar in Gender Studies at Northwestern University, she is author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, co-editor of the anthology Only Child, founder of the group blog Girl w/Pen, and co-founder of both The Scholar & Feminist Online and She Writes. Her work has appeared in venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN.com, and The Guardian; she has been featured on The Today Show and at TEDx. Deborah works one-on-one with scholars, career changers, retirees, philanthropists, activists, CEOs, nonprofit executives, and other seeking a bridge to a public voice. Past clients include Women’s Funding Network, White House Project, National Council for Research on Women, National Women’s Studies Association, Catalyst, and Women’s Media Center. Deborah teaches through StoryStudio Chicago and The OpEd Project, where she leads the Public Voices Fellowship Program at DePaul University.
Dominique Johnson is a writer, actor, educator and blogger. A Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude graduate of Carleton College, B.A. History, Dominique’s recently completed the manuscript for a young adult, historical fiction novel. Other current projects include a screenplay and a new novel. Dominique also worked as an Educational Artist at Shakespeare & Company, a theater company with one of the most extensive arts-in-education programs in the Northeast. While she acts both onstage and onscreen, film is her main focus these days. Dominique’s spent time living in Missouri, Minnesota, and Morocco, as well as Costa Rica and France; plus traveled to China, Canada and The Netherlands for Model United Nations. She presently resides in Brooklyn.
An architect by training, John Cary is a designer, speaker, and writer. His first book, The Power of Pro Bono, was published in 2010. He is the editor of PublicInterestDesign.org and his writing appears frequently in an array of publications as diverse as CNN.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Fast Company, and GOOD. John’s writing is informed by his work as a research fellow focused on public interest design within the University of Minnesota College of Design.
Since 2004, Janna A. Zinzi has provided communications services to a wide variety of non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs, media personalities, and artists through her company, Swirl PR. Swirl PR creates communications and social media strategy going beyond traditional public relations services to ensure that their clients have an understanding of how to communicate effectively with their target audiences both online and offline. They specialize in working with social justice organizations, especially around reproductive justice and women’s rights. Swirl also provides assessments and problem-solving for organizations looking to build and expand their communications capacity. Learn more at SwirlPR.com and stay in the mix on Twitter: @SwirlPR.
Marc Faletti is an online video strategist and producer who has generated millions of views on creative content ranging from the NFL Draft to reproductive rights. Marc develops video from concept to completion, maximizing the impact of your message — and budget — on the web audience. His expertise has been applied to cutting-edge work for AARP, Nike, Dell, and others. Sample his work at his website.
Deanna Zandt is a media technologist, the author of Share This! How You Will Change the World With Social Networking (Berrett-Koehler, 2010) and a Research Fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University. She works with progressive advocacy and media organizations to create and implement effective web strategies toward organizational goals of social justice, civic engagement and empowerment. She specializes in overall organizational strategy development and providing workshops on digital media skills.
Nancy Goldstein is an experienced development and communications professional who has garnered both grants and ink in areas including public health, human and constitutional rights, reproductive rights, LGBT issues, drug policy, and HIV/AIDS. She has brought her strategic planning, messaging, writing, and pitching skills to organizations including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Ford Foundation, Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Her opinion pieces in prominent places such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Christian Science Monitor garner high value for clients.