Vanessa Valenti is an award-winning blogger, speaker and online strategist. She is the co-founder of the feminist blog, Feministing.com, a pioneer in connecting feminism with online media and the largest online feminist community in the world with nearly one million unique readers every month. The website draws attention to issues that are under-covered in mainstream media, analyzes pop culture through a feminist lens, comments on the portrayal of women in other media, pushes elected officials and media gatekeepers to be more accountable, highlights and amplify social justice activism, and disproves the stereotype of “humorless feminists” on a daily basis.

Vanessa has won several awards for Feministing, including the Sidney Hillman Prize in Blog Journalism, the 2009 Blogger’s Choice Award for Best Political Blog and the Choice USA Award. Her commentary has appeared and been quoted in POLITICO, USA Today, The Atlantic, the Houston Chronicle, Alternet and others.

Vanessa is also a co-founder and partner of Valenti Martin Media, a next generation consultancy she founded with Courtney E. Martin that harnesses the power of online communication to elevate social change. Valenti Martin Media collaborates and celebrates with feminist and social justice organizations across the country to amplify big ideas, undiscovered stories, and social change innovation. One of Valenti Martin Media’s most recent projects is an impact paper they are writing in collaboration with 25 of the top online feminist activists and writers in the country and the Barnard Center for Research on Women about the future of the online feminist movement.

Named by Gloria Steinem as one of the young women that inspire her to believe the feminist movement continues, Vanessa has been working with grassroots initiatives, major national organizations, political campaigns and academic institutions for a decade with the goal of evangelizing online activism and illustrating how the internet has shifted the landscape for movement-building.

Vanessa provides lectures and workshops at institutions across the country and internationally to talk about social media and online activism, Feministing and the state of the feminist movement.

Feminism,