Nearly 20 years ago, Wendy Piersall was living out of her truck in rural Arizona. At one point, she had 30 dollars to her name, and nowhere to go but the Salvation Army. A few years later, she moved to Chicago, living in her parent’s basement as a single mom. It was then that she had the idea to start her first business, and with no entrepreneurial experience, she set up shop as Luna Art, creating children’s furniture and painting custom murals in residential homes. Although that first business didn’t last too long, it did put her back on the path of self-reliance and she was soon on her feet again.

In 2006, she left her position as Director of Business Development with an ecommerce startup to launch a new social network. As she was doing business plan research, she had an idea to start up a ‘little hobby blog’, a place where she could share her experience as both an entrepreneur and work at home parent. Quite literally she thought, “Maybe 1 or 2 other moms out there would be interested in what it takes to start a website and work from home”. Less than three months later, this little hobby blog “eMoms at Home” became popular enough for her to quit her other pursuits and work full time on developing her blog into a business. Now in 2009, the site has changed it’s name to Sparkplugging, and it is currently one of the largest destinations online for people who want to start a business from home.

Over the last three years, Wendy has become a well known authority on blogging, web 2.0 marketing, entrepreneurship, and social media. She is particularly passionate about working with the parenting and women’s online communities she has been a part of. Today, she works with brands such as Epson, Kmart & SeaWorld to develop and implement strategic word of mouth marketing campaigns that respect the existing cultures established in these influential social networks.

Wendy resides in the western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, and has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, LifeHacker, Monster.com’s WomenCo, the Chicago Daily Herald, Boston’s WBZ and Success Magazine. She’s also been the keynote speaker at the B4B Conference as well as been a featured speaker at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, BlogHer, SOBCon, Mom 2.0 Summit, and SXSWi conferences, among others.

Because Wendy has overcome significant adversity to succeed in business, she has personal stories to share that audiences find easy to relate to:

Business, Inspirational, Social Media, Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, Online Relationships, Media Professionals, Authors, Internet, Motivational,