SOLD OUT - BlogHer '09

After living on the East Coast for the majority of her life, A. L. Venable moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2006 and hasn't looked back since.  She is an insomniac, music evangelist, traveler, and Random Citizen.

She blogs at Dimple and a Smirk (dot) com, where she writes about her life, and at Our PDX Network, where she writes about things happening in the city she calls home.

Angela Tseng started life on the fast track, graduating from MIT at the age of 20, only to find herself a mommyblogger some 20 years later.  By day, she maintains her professional life as a software engineer and manager in the biotech field.  By night, Angela is wife, mom of two young children and blogger at mommy bytes.  Angela deftly juggles these roles by obsessively maintaining the family calendar and not sleeping.

Angela also is a contributing editor at BlogHer in Mommy & Family Cribsheet and kirtsy editor in Internet & Technology.  You can also find her on Twitter @moonfever0.  She lives with her family in the greater Boston area.

Editor of NetFamilyNews.org and founder and executive director of its parent organization, Net Family News, Inc., Anne is a writer and journalist who has worked in the news media since 1980. With SafeKids.com's Larry Magid, she co-directs ConnectSafely.org, a project of NFN and the leading interactive forum and information site on Web 2.0 safety. Anne and Larry co-authored MySpace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking (Peachpit Press, 2006).

Anne founded the nonprofit Net Family News in 1999 on the premise that information empowers parents at a time when tech literacy has become an important part of parenting and key to youth safety on the fixed and mobile social Web. Anne worked on print, radio, TV, and Web versions of the Christian Science Monitor, served as an editor in consumer magazines and Webmaster and information design consultant for nonprofit organiziations, and has contributed to Staysafe.org, GetNetWise.org, Children's Technology Review, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's NetSmartz.org.

Anne currently serves on the advisory boards of the London- and Washington-based Family Online Safety Institute and GetNetWise.org, a project of the Washington-based Internet Education Foundation. In 2008, she served on the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, formed by 49 state attorneys general and Fox Interactive/MySpace and based at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

A Massachusetts native, Anne holds B.A. and M.A. degrees and now lives and skis with her husband and two sons in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.

Caryn Dubelko Stein is the Director of Community for iVillage. In this role, she oversees community initiatives and operations across the iVillage network, including iVillage.com, GardenWeb, NeverSayDiet, Your Total Health and Momtourage. A long-time advocate of the power of online community, Caryn was previously a part of the iVillage moderation team and has served as an advisor for emerging online communities in the arts, such as Words Without Borders and American Public Media.

Casey is going to be writing her bio in third person, because that seems to be the way bios go and frankly she greatly dislikes writing bios so anything to take up space and make it look like I'm a really big deal.

Truth is she's honored to be pinch hitting this year as Mr. Lady's replacement since Canada refuses to let Shannon out of its borders. It hit Casey like an epiphany when she realized that she too is a Patient Blogger, she writes about her personal medical business a lot.

Infertility and depression mainly.

When she started her blog it was to keep her family updated on her kid. Now days it's a way for her to be brutally honest and unintentionally authentic about the struggles she goes through being a panda in a rabbit world of reproduction. 

There's some silliness sprinkled in with all of the babymaking talk too.

Even a few pictures of her uterus.

Casey feels this is sufficient. She leads a very blessed life. And she really likes donuts.

Cathy Brooks has spent most of her life saturated in media – ranging from print to broadcast and in recent years myriad on-line platforms. Today, in addition to blogging for BitchBuzz and The Huffington Post, Cathy operates Other Than That, a strategic firm helping companies navigate the murky waters of social media. She also recently returned to her roots as a radio broadcaster, hosting a weekly talk show called Social Media Hour - a live, call-in show that addresses the way in which social media is impacting, infiltrating and otherwise engaging business and society.

Most recently Cathy ran business development for Seesmic, a technology company that began as a platform enabling threaded conversations online using video as the conduit that has since evolved into a Twitter client.

Prior to Seesmic, Cathy worked with Guidewire Group – a global analyst firm focused wholly on emerging markets and technologies. Cathy produced and hosted two podcasts "I of Innovation" and “Six Minutes With…” and also produced two of the firm’s conferences – Innovate!Europe and Leadership Forum.

Cathy also headed the talent and booking departments at TechTV, curated content at LeWeb for several years and has held several executive positions with PR agencies.

Corvida is the author of SheGeeks.net, a Social Media and Mobile Web consultant, and technology evangelist. With over 3 years of professional writing experience, she has provided invaluable insights and analysis on web trends, news, web services, mobile applications, social media, and more.

Accolades & Awards:
+ Noted as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology in FastCompany Magazine (Jan. 09)
+ Awarded Best Technology Blog award for the Black Bloggers Awards
+ Awarded several spots on the notable AllTop Dashboard designed by Guy Kawasaki
+ Former ReadWriteWeb Writer & Community Manager
+ Former Industry Standard Community Manager

Please visit her most active social media profiles for a more personal view of herself and work:
+ http://twitter.com/corvida
+ http://friendfeed.com/corvida

More Projects:
+ http://everythingtwitter.com
+ http://thesocialgeeks.com
+ http://grandeffect.com

Daniela Capistrano (@dcap on Twitter) hails from California but in 2004 gave up road rage and boredom for the Big Apple. Since then she has been a creative nomad, most recently residing in an increasingly gentrified neighborhood in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

She is 5ft4 and not Italian. Nope. She is a Chicana Mexi-CAN (not a Mexi-can’t). You can explore the minutiae of that reality here.

As a staff Associate Producer at MTV News, Daniela makes content for all screens. She kicked off 2009 by working in D.C. as a shooter/digital producer during MTV’s coverage of the presidential inauguration, where she achieved her personal goal of being in the same room with President Barack Obama.

Daniela also freelances as a director, writer and camera lady. She is skilled in all aspects of traditional and new media production and prides herself on the ability to successfully predict their various points of convergence. She enjoys blogging, podcasting and all forms of digital production.

An early adopter, Daniela has a knack for incorporating social media tools into her home and work environment and used them to successfully pursue a career in media. Daniela follows social media’s ever changing landscape and occasionally blogs about it.

Yes, she is a big geek.

When she is not working for Lord Viacom, she is a media studies major at The New School and a mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Danielle Henderson is a 32-year old college junior and freelance writer. She's been a blogger for close to 6 years at Knotty Yarn, and still has no idea how or if that is applicable to common conversation or general life. Her first book was published in 2004, and she was recently featured in Cringe: Teenage Diaries, Journals, Notes, Letters, Poems and Abandoned Rock Operas. In the 20 minutes of free time she finds daily, she loves to knit or cross stitch while watching British comedy shows. Originally from New York, she's lived in Boston, San Francisco, New York City and Anchorage, Alaska. Danielle will complete her Gender Studies degree requirements in Amsterdam this autumn, allowing her to focus on her English literature degree when she returns. Our girl is a go-gettah! 

She nervously laughs when people fall down and is really, really tall.

Dubbed "the Rachael Ray of bento" by The Washington Post, Deborah Lamascus Hamilton runs Lunch in a Box, an award-winning blog about making speedy bento-style packed lunches for her son. Fluent in Japanese, Deborah worked in Japan for nine years at consumer electronics companies such as Panasonic and Sanyo before moving to San Francisco. One of the largest packed lunch blogs in English, Lunch in a Box is often featured in popular media.

Too lazy to make intricate food art, Deborah (aka “Biggie”) uses tips and tricks found in Japanese bento cookbooks to speed up lunch prep, and applies them to her family's Western kitchen and global diet. Her focus on fast, simple, balanced meals shows how packing lunches can help save money, encourage healthy eating, and be ecologically conscious while still being fun and playful.

Lunch in a Box features a unique Bento Store Locator that gathers and maps reader-generated information on stores carrying bento gear worldwide, and a new online lunch forum for organized discussion among the lunch-packing community.

Elise Bauer publishes the popular and award-winning food blog Simply Recipes. Six years ago, after a twenty year career in technology marketing consulting, Elise created Simply Recipes to keep a record of what she was learning from cooking with her parents. What started as a hobby during the last economic recession has grown to reach over 3 million site visitors a month, and now Elise manages it as her full-time profession. These days Elise spends most of each day cooking, taking photographs of food, and answering reader questions.  She knows it's not her life's purpose to be an online Betty Crocker, but that doesn't matter, she's having fun with it.

Elise also founded and runs Food Blog Search, a custom search engine that you can use to search thousands of food blogs for recipes.

You can find Elise on Twitter @simplyrecipes.

Emily (E. M.) Zanotti, the American Princess, is, as she is so oddly described, a 25-year-old overeducated, overopinionated, libertarian conservative, relapsed Catholic, technogeek, “crunchy con” and, apparently, nomadic service industry hipster. She has served as the editor and lead writer of American Princess since its inception in 2004, and alternately as a freelance political journalist, columnist and talk radio personality (go figure). Her work has been featured and/or maligned on National Review Online, the Washington Post, Salon.com, Slate.com, BBC World Online, AOL News, Netscape News, The Huffington Post, Say Anything Blog, Lew Rockwell, Right Wing News (where she also serves as a perpetual guest blogger), Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, Wizbang Politics, Ms. JD, TechRepublican, TechPresident, GotDetroit.com, RightMichigan, and Wonkette (among numerous, less hip others). She can, occasionally, be found on television as the “token conservative” on various CNN programs and on Michigan public television.

Emily is a Detroit (yes, that Detroit) native, but currently a Chicago resident, and has all of the necessarily pretension and apathy that that “address” requires (as well as the requisite love for film, art, ethnic food and indie music), only she has to hide it because she consistently votes Republican. In her spare time, she shops for shoes, reads non-fiction (particularly on philosophy, economics, religion and political science), plans cheesy vacations involving large fiberglass objects and obscure museums, and researches Disney history. No joke.

Erin Kotecki Vest spent ten years as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, Orlando and Detroit winning six Golden Mic Awards with LA news institution KFWB. She now serves as Political Director and Election '08 Producer for BlogHer.com as well as contributing regularly to the Huffington Post, MOMocrats.com, and her own site Queen of Spain Blog.

You can find her on Twitter @queenofspain and make sure to ask her about her interview with Barack Obama.

Eszter Hargittai is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University where she heads the Web Use Project and Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University where she was a Wilson Scholar.

She started Eszter’s Blog in 2002 and has also been contributing to the Crooked Timber group blog since 2003. Her academic work, among other things, looks at how differences in people’s Web-use skills relates to different types of Internet uses and online engagement.

Over the years, her academic papers have received several prizes. She is editor of the forthcoming book "Research Confidential", which presents a rare behind-the-scenes look at doing empirical social science research. Her work is regularly featured in the media including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today and magazines such as Women’s Health and Cosmopolitan. In addition to blogging, her hobbies include photography (some of which has been published), ballroom dancing, long walks, travel and sampling good chocolate.

She tweets at http://www.twitter.com/eszter.

Fausta Wertz was born and raised in Puerto Rico.  She’s a graduate of the University of Georgia and has an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University.  She blogs at Fausta’s blog on American and Latin American politics, news, current events and culture.

Fausta podcasts daily at 11AM Eastern at Fausta’s 15 Minutes on Latin America, and is a featured blogger at the Star Ledger NJ Voices. She is also a Pajamas Media and Forbes business and finance network blogger.

Additionally, Fausta writes on Latin America at Real Clear World, and on American politics at RightPundits.com.

Fausta has been a panelist at BlogHer 08, PajamasTV, the Fox News Strategy Room, and CNN Live’s Bloggers Bunch.

Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, M.D., F.A.A.P., pediatrician, health journalist, parenting and social media expert, is CEO of Pediatrics Now, an online health and communications company dedicated to providing reliable information to today’s busy families. The cornerstones of Pediatrics Now are the popular parenting website Pediatrics Now (www.pediatricsnow.com) and nationally syndicated blog Dr. Gwenn Is In (http://www.drgwennisin.com) which is picked up regularly by groups such as Reuters, Chicago Sun Times, Livestrong.org and USA Today. Dr. Gwenn is one of the most sought after pediatricians today by national and local media and major online websites and blogs as a child health, parenting and social media expert. She appears regularly in print, internet, radio and TV, and speaks often at professional conferences about social media topics important to today’s practicing health care providers and savvy consumers.

Dr. Gwenn is a Fellow and national Spokeswoman of the American Academy of Pediatrics. As an active member of the AAP’s Council of Communications and Media, Dr. Gwenn developed and now oversees the group’s website and blog. She lives in the Metro-West Boston area with her husband and two very active tween and teen daughters.

Jaden's popular food blog, SteamyKitchen.com launched in 2007 and has created an amazing full-time career for her as a television chef, food writer, food photographer. She is published every Sunday in The Tampa Tribune newspaper, talks about food and cooking live on Tampa Bay's CBS10 (www.10connects.com) and cooks twice a month on the Daytime Show that's syndicated in over 100 markets (www.daytimeonline.tv)

SteamyKitchen.com is one of 50 world's best food blogs as awarded by Times UK.

Jaden's first cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook, hits the shelves Fall '09. Find Jaden on Twitter at @steamykitchen.

Every year when the BlogHer conference rolls around, I get to update my bio.  It's not that my life changes so much as that I'm in a different place and focusing on different parts of me.  This year I'm back to who I was before BlogHer even began, to wit:

Jane Gassner (who may also be Googled as Jane Gassner Patrick) is, was, and will always be a writer.  She had plied her craft in just about every situation that calls for putting words on paper or screen.  She has earned her living as a magazine feature writer, a documentary producer, a creative writing teacher, a scholarly writer, a business writer, a print editor, a radio reporter, and a non-fiction book writer.  She has not earned a penny for but is also experienced at film & TV scriptwriting (she lived in LA and that's what you do when you're a writer in LA).

After a side trip into academia (ABD in English Lit) and a very brief blip as a family therapist (MA in Psych), Jane is now writing for a living (?!) as a blogger.  ByJane, her personal blog, has been going for four years.  MidLifeBloggers, the group blog she started, is now almost one year old, and is the place where she is connected to all parts of herself: writer, editor, teacher.

Jennifer Taggart is founder of TheSmartMama and author of Smart Mama's Green Guide: Simple Steps to Reduce Your Child's Toxic Chemical Exposure. She is passionate about children's environmental health, and informs and educates busy parents about simple and practical steps to reduce toxic chemical exposures.

Worried about bisphenol A (BPA), lead, phthalates and more? TheSmartMama can provide the information to determine whether you should be concerned or not, and how to reduce exposures.

Jennifer is a mom of 2 and a partner in a Los Angeles law firm where she practices environmental and consumer product law. Her specialties include California's Proposition 65 and the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). She also has an eco-consulting business educating parents about simple steps to reduce toxic chemical exposure in the home. This consulting includes a Niton XRF analyzer which she uses to detect lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury and more in consumer products. She also provides lead content compliance for children's products under the CPSIA, primarily to mom based businesses.

Jennifer's website, TheSmartMama, gives helpful hints to go green and non toxic. As a mom, Jennifer recognizes that busy parents do not have the time to sort out the claims of green, natural, healthy or organic.

Jenny Lauck sent the kids outside to play and started her parenting blog Three Kid Circus back in 2004. At the first BlogHer conference in 2005, she participated as a panelist at the first Mommyblogging session. That one conference was all it took - she fell in love with the BlogHer community. Jenny is a veteran of four previous BlogHer conferences and looking forward to her fifth. 

Since 2007, Jenny has been a producer with the BlogHer Ads network, where she gets paid to read blogs and get to know bloggers.  She thinks that she has the most awesome job ever.

Jessica Ferris is the writer behind Chirky.com, a mostly light-hearted lifeblog about whatever she fancies at the moment. She works on the events team at BlogHer as the conference programming manager, planning and organizing conference content. Additionally, for the past four years she's been involved with and led women's sexual abuse recovery groups. Walking alongside survivors as they move between valleys and peaks on their own journeys toward healing has been one of Jes' greatest privileges.

Her passion for helping others transform their lives is exactly why she's so excited to moderate the Hope and Change in Action panel. Jes fully expects it to be the catalyst she needs to finally launch that website idea she's been toying with for the past few years.

After starting her blog in 2004 prior to the birth of her first son, Kate's writing chugged along uneventfully until her second pregnancy, identical twins, ended with their catastrophic birth three months early. One son survived and one did not.

Since then, she has written her first novel to be published in fall 2009, founded Glow in the Woods, a community and collaborative blog for babylost parents, and joined the crew of Shutter Sisters, a collective celebrating women photographers.

Kate lives on the edge of a meat-grinder sea on the far eastern coastline of Nova Scotia. She can show you where they used to hang pirates, and where you can step barefoot on dead jellyfish for cheap thrills. Kate's blog documents a part of the human experience most would think is inhospitable to light, but she made some for herself thanks to the practice of digging. And despite no longer being afraid of the dark, she likes to pass on that light with words.

Kaveri is a dynamic, savvy lawyer, educator and entrepreneur with a best-in-class background in business, marketing and public relations. She brings an insightful and highly strategic 360° perspective to legal and business issues that enables clients to identify and optimize opportunities, heighten profitability and minimize risk. She joined Cohen & Grigsby, P.C., an international law firm headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2008 and is a practicing corporate attorney providing focused, proactive legal advice and business counsel to companies and individuals in all stages of development and in a variety of industries. An ‘out-of-the-box’ thinker and creative problem solver, she works extensively with C-suite executives, boards of directors and corporate general counsel in the design and execution of legally sound, strategic business approaches and initiatives that are aligned with corporate objectives.

She also serves as Cohen & Grigsby’s chief marketing officer and is responsible for designing and stewarding the development and implementation of its worldwide marketing, public relations, training and business development initiatives.

You can find her:

• Operating Type-A Mom
• Operating Foodie Mama
• Operating momShare, a Digg for Moms
• Revolutionizing journalism with Investigative Mommy Blogger
• Editing, blogging and writing France Travel for About.com, a New York Times Co.
• Editing tech and meta at Blog Nosh Magazine
• Feature writing and blogging on Family Travel for Suite101
• Writing columns about budget Europe for Transitions Abroad
• Microblogging on Twitter

Kelly Russell-Donner is the author of the blog, Ordinary Art. She began blogging three years ago as an outlet to explore her struggles with fertility, body image, and self-worth. She is a self-professed feminist, tree-hugger, and enjoys getting drunk off of the written word. She is the mother of two rambunctious toddlers.

When not chasing them frantically around the house, or scrawling bits of random poetry on the back of diaper receipts as her children tangle themselves between her legs, she works as a full-time literacy consultant and a reading specialist. She hopes one day to be fortunate enough to support herself fully from her writing.

Kerri Morrone Sparling is the author and creator of Six Until Me, one of the first and most widely-read diabetes patient blogs.  Kerri is also an editor and community leader at her day job at dLife. She has contributed to many diabetes-related websites and publications, and is a passionate advocate for diabetes awareness.

Kerri is a diabetes blogger, freelance health writer, and working to finish her memoir about growing up with diabetes.  But there's more to her than diabetes.

She keeps an extensive collection of photos on her Flickr account, where you'll find her Diabetes365 experience. She can also be found tossing links around on Twitter.

Recently married and looking forward to starting a family, Kerri and her husband Chris live in Connecticut with their army of cats, who are known to sleep on her head.  Unfortunately.  

Kim has been a registered nurse for 31 years, currently working as an ER nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area. An avid political blog reader for years, she began "Emergiblog: My Life and Times as an ER Nurse" four years ago. She is also the administrator for the bi-weekly nursing blog carnival "Change of Shift".

She has been an enthusiastic conference speaker, discussing the power of blogs and other social media, can get caught up in Twitter for hours and is embarrassed to say she is still trying to figure out Facebook.  She became a huge fan of BlogHer after attending her first conference in San Francisco in '08. "The power of blogging added to the power of women creates a force to be reckoned with!"

A mother of three adults, she can definitely relate to the Mommy Bloggers! Been there, done that and would have blogged her way through it if she'd had a computer! Married for 30 years, she is enjoying the freedom of her "empty nest," saying "Freedom is just another word for no kids left at home!"

Kim is currently on target to graduate from the University of Wisconsin in December '09 with her BSN degree, and hopes to enter a PhD program in Nursing focusing on research and health policy.  So, if you see her leave the cocktail party a bit early, she is up in her room studying!

Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton is one of the first prominent “microbloggers,” with more than 26,000 readers on Twitter. An early beta tester of Seesmic and Qik, she connects people to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of microsharing.

Her innovative use of social media has also gotten the attention of the top minds in technology, as profiled by Naked Conversations author Shel Israel for his Global Survey. Laura has also been quoted in The New York Times Magazine, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The LA Times, Newsweek.com, Inc.com, CIO Magazine, CNET, ZDNet and many other magazines, publications, web shows and blogs. She speaks at technology conferences, private industry and guest lectures at Bentley College.

Laura is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University’s eclectic College Scholar program. In “past lives” she studied science writing with Carl Sagan, rock climbed, sailed on a schooner, raised a niece, ran a hobby farm, traveled and lived abroad.

Today she lives in Boston with two toddler daughters and a giant Leonberger. She practices Ashtanga yoga and plays ice hockey in her “spare” time, and is a stroke survivor dedicated to raising awareness.

Laura Roeder’s passion is catapulting her clients into online fame. She possesses a winning combination of fresh ideas, tried and true steps and an unlimited supply of contagious enthusiasm. When not rocking the online world from her home base in Venice Beach, Laura loves taking in the inspiring West Coast sunsets (be sure to catch her pics on Twitter), browsing at the farmer’s market and talking shop with innovative entrepreneurs. Always connecting, always sharing, Laura Roeder shines as a translator of the digital world.

Lenore Skenazy is a syndicated columnist, humorist and founder of Free-Range Kids (freerangekids.com). In March last year she let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone and then wrote a little column about it. Two days later she was on the Today Show defending herself as NOT America's Worst Mom. (Google it!)

The rest of the media piled on and she finally realized what was happening. In these days of hyper-vigilant parenting, she had dared to take a step back and say: Maybe our kids are safer than we think -- and more competent, too. Her anti-helicopter parenting stance sparked a movement and book: "Free-Range Kids: Giving our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry" which will be out in April, from Wiley.

When not flogging (and blogging) the Free-Range philosophy, she writes a humor column looking somewhat askance at a culture that has brought us bottled water for dogs, pole dancing for grannies and an SAT vocabulary shower curtain for kids.

And she has another book coming out this summer: "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name: The ultimate tip-of-the-tongue test of everything you know you know -- but can't remember right now." Think of it as Mad Libs meets memory blank, a trivia book filled with questions posed the groping way some of us talk. If you can answer, "What's the musical with the dancing street gangs?" "Who's that cable news guy whose hair is older than he is?" and, "What's that mountain with the heads?" you know what she's talking about.

Which is sort of too bad.

Liz Gumbinner is as an award-winning advertising creative director, having developed work for brands like Mitsubishi, Old Navy, and Universal theme parks. But in the blog world she's known (along with partner Kristen Chase) as the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Cool Mom Picks, the influential shopping blog for parents. It's been featured in magazines including Time and Real Simple, and called "the online arbiter of what's cool for the swingset crowd" by Parents Magazine.

She is also the voice behind Mom-101, a popular parenting blog which has been featured in the New York Times, and lauded as "funny some of the time" by an enthusiastic anonymous commenter.And earlier this year, was named by Nielsen as one of 50 Power Moms in social media, and by Forbes.com as one of the top 10 online Mommy 'Hood Gurus.

Liz is a frequent speaker and consultant to marketers and pr professionals on the emerging (and sometimes shaky) relationships between brands and blogs.

Loolwa Khazzoom is the founder of the Dancing with Pain® methodology for natural pain relief. She offers workshops on managing and transcending chronic pain, and she writes on the topic for her company blog, as well as for periodicals including AARP, The Washington Post, and Yoga Journal. Aside from her work with Dancing with Pain®, Loolwa is a freelance writer and editor, is a Jewish multicultural educator, and is a musician.

More about Loolwa's story: Following a hit & run, head-on car collision in 1997, she joined the ranks of millions of Americans living with chronic pain. Turning to the health care system, she found herself spinning through a hell common to those seeking chronic pain relief: She was misdiagnosed, refused tests, dismissed as a hypochondriac, physically injured, emotionally traumatized, and financially drained by the very practitioners who were supposed to help her heal. After years of suffering, she developed her own methodology and began dancing her way back to wellness.

Lucretia M. Pruitt (aka GeekMommy) is the founder of Social Media Matters - a social media consulting agency that helps companies and individuals to harness the power of social media, networking and Web 2.0 technologies to better define their Internet Footprint and to interact with their customers.

Prior to establishing Social Media Matters, Lucretia worked primarily in the computer and technology field - having worked as a programmer, in tech support, and in database architecture and design.  In 2000, she began teaching Computer Information Science at the University level as an Assistant Professor. She left teaching full-time to spend the past 6 years as a stay at home mom to her daughter, while occasionally accepting contracts to teach as an adjunct professor or to do Source Code Review for the Certification of Electronic Voting Systems.  She's maintained an active presence in & on Social Networking platforms since the early 1980's when she spent her spare time on BBSes - to present day, where she can be found on just about any Social Networking platform you can think of. Lucretia now offers a wide range of Social Media Consulting services – including complete social media solutions, development of long-range strategies, training, public speaking, and project-based implementations.  She's currently collaborating with Walmart as one of the Eleven Moms (http://www.elevenmoms.com) helping them to move authentically and genuinely  into the Social Media space.  If you want to find her most days she's on Twitter - where she presently has a following of over 10,000 people.

Maria Niles is CEO of ConsumerPop Marketing which helps companies with branding, brand management, market research and social media creation and use. Prior to founding ConsumerPop in 2005, Maria led successful marketing efforts at companies such as Kraft Foods and Campbell's Soup. Recently Maria has helped a range of organizations and companies better understand their customers and clients through custom research. Also, Maria has helped companies to create and implement social media efforts including the Let It Out Blog™ for Kleenex® brand tissues.

Maria earned a BA in Political Science from UCLA, an MA from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the University of Michigan. In addition to writing about consumer marketing, music, television, pop culture, politics and dogs, among other topics, on her personal blogs, Maria is a Contributing Editor for BlogHer where she has written about Business, Career & Personal Finance, Real Estate, Entertainment & Books and currently writes about Life and Politics. Additionally, Maria frequently speaks at conferences about social media and marketing, and most recently spoke at the MIT Media Lab Digital Life and Consumer Electronics Lab Fall 2007 Meeting. Maria is happy to speak to you about any of these topics or anything else of interest to you, anytime at twitter.

Megan Jordan is the mom writer (mommyblogger, eh?) behind Velveteen Mind and the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Blog Nosh Magazine.

Velveteen Mind is Megan's personal parenting and writing blog, focusing on the intricate fabric of daily life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  The tagline "Relish the velveteen.  Revel in the threadbare.  Life of a mom articulate." describes the well-loved and thoroughly-worn content well.

Blog Nosh Magazine is an online literary magazine that developed as a natural progression from Megan's passion for welcoming new bloggers to the fold and making everyone feel worth being heard.  Personal blogging is a platform to be reckoned with and Blog Nosh Magazine does a delectable job of filling its table with the most intriguing and diverse voices across the blogosphere.

Averse to labels in general, Megan recognizes the value of "mommyblogging," though she knows that this one label in particular can be stifling.  She doesn't even let her own kids call her "mommy," after all.  She qualifies as a "mommyblogger" simply because she is a mom that blogs.  With that in mind, mom bloggers are a diverse group, at once a warm community, as a whole, and a spectrum of subgenres that never seem to quite include every mother that blogs.  She'll be speaking at BlogHer '09 on finding your own tribe within the complex village that is mom blogging and/or feeling comfortable as a member of the whole.

A passionate and entertaining speaker, known for her humor and transparent approach, hers is one panel you won't want to miss.  Bring your friends, your willingness to laugh at ourselves, an open mind, and a readiness to kick back.

Melissa Lion is a professional writer. Large multi-national corporations pay her to write novels, book reviews and blog content. She is very grateful to the global economy. She also stands in front of large groups of people and talks about narrative and social media. Buy her books, read her blog and sign up for her classes.

Michelle is the owner of Write Technology, a social media consulting and instructional design firm in the Cincinnati area. As a social media consultant, she helps companies find ways to integrate Web 2.0 into their training and their marketing. Taking advantage of her training skills, she offers several seminars on using social media in business, whether it's social media 101, content in blogging, or even microblogging for your business. You can find her overactive Twitter profile @writetechnology.

Michelle serves as Technology/PR chair for the Krystal Pepper Memorial Scholarship, a charity in memory of her younger sister. She maintains four weblogs and is over-connected in social media. Michelle is also a contributing writer for Brian Solis's Bub.blicio.us social economy blog.

Michelle's favorite thing? Writing, talking, and downright enjoying food and wine. Visit her award-winning wine blog at wine-girl.net.

A blogger for over two years, Nancy loves talking travel. Her What a Trip blog focuses on travel from Northern California and beyond. While she started out as a budget traveler in her college days, she now specializes in luxury travel.

Nancy D. Brown (there's a lot of Nancy Brown's out there) is a freelance travel writer and What a Trip columnist for the Contra Costa Times Lamorinda Sun newspaper.  She is the Lodging Editor at Uptake.com where she reviews Bed and Breakfasts; Hotels; Inns; Motels and Resorts.  Her What a Trip blog is featured on Alltop Travel. In her spare time she enjoys horsebacking riding and is a twitter addict.

When she's not traveling, Nancy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two teenagers and a Labrador Retriever named Stella.

You can connect with Nancy on: Twitter, Linked In, BlogHer and Travel Blog Exchange

Naomi Hirabayashi is a social media marketer and strategist at Attention and organizer of the NYC ChangeMakers network. She has managed social media campaigns for cause-related organizations such as TOMS Shoes, DoSomething and Estee Lauder for Breast Cancer Awareness. She is a contributer at The Huffington Post and editor of NaomiCanBlog.

Naomi currently lives in New York City.

Natalie P. McNeal is an award-winning journalist who created the personal finance blog, The Frugalista Files (http://miamiherald.typepad.com/frugalista). Oxford University Press named “Frugalista” finalist for Word of the Yearbecause of Natalie’s savvy style of teaching people how to live the frugal and fabulous life. The Frugalista Files was named one of the 100best financial planning blogs by OnlineMBAGuide.net.

Natalie has been quoted by NPR, CNN, New York Times, WTVJNBC-6, WFOR CBS-4, Washingtonpost.com, L.A. Times, Essence.com, Financial Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Miami Herald. Her memoir, The Frugalista Files,will be published by Harlequin in January 2011. She is a graduate of Howard University.

Pam Mandel started travelblogging in 1997 while living as an expat in Austria. She's written stories for NPR (WGBH), Brave New Traveler, Scanorama, International Living, Ski-Europe, Snowshoe Magazine and a number of other publications, web and print.  She's worked on two guidebooks for Thomas Cook as both writer and photographer, one on Hawaii and one on British Columbia and Vancouver.

As the contributing editor for travel at BlogHer, she looks at hundreds of blogs while on the hunt for the best in travel writing and photography by independent bloggers. Pam is one of the cofounders of Passports with Purpose, a travelblogger initiative to raise money for causes that travelers can believe in. She's on the advisory board for Uptake (a travel search engine). She runs the travelbloggers forum and is active in the travel community on Twitter - last year, she was invited by Conde Nast Traveler to 'tweet' the World Saver's Congress in New York City. Pam recently joined World Hum's new blogging network where she writes about Hawaii. Though her first love is travel, Pam also works as a freelance technical writer, producing documentation, training materials, marketing collateral, and more for clients that have included Sony, Motorola, Edelman, Microsoft, and many others.

Pam plays the ukulele with more enthusiasm than skill, rarely leaves the house without a camera, and has developed a minor obsession with the hummingbird in her backyard. She's easy to find on the web at www.nerdseyeview.com.

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the innovative Social Media/Internet book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Red Hot Internet Publicity which has been called the "leading guide to everything Internet."

AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically works with social networking sites, micro-blogs, blogs, book videos, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book's topic, positioning the author in his or her market. AME has had nine recent books top the bestseller lists, including New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal.

To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at http://www.amarketingexpert.com. To subscribe to her free ezine, send a blank email.

Copyright 2009 Penny C. Sansevieri

Pilirani has worked as a journalist since 1996. She has also worked as a media consultant and coordinated investigative journalism training to newsrooms and lobbied for the promotion of press freedom in Malawi.

Some of her stories have won local and international awards including the Human Rights Journalism Award which she received recently from The Elders. She has been voted Malawi’s best female journalist twice. Pilirani is a holder a Masters of Arts Degree in International Journalism.

Ponzi started in online advertising, sponsorship and management back in 2004 when the transition to hybrid marketing practices was just buzz phrase in the Ad business. She's worked to produce underground tech conferences, which are large user group get-togethers later coined un-conferences. 

She meshed business and a passion for cutting edge technology and brought several communities together on fair playing fields. Thus this new way of conferencing was introduced, keeping the content separate from the sponsorship opportunities created a symbiotic love affair between sponsors, attendees and producers. It was lovingly referenced as the "woodstock" of tech. 

Ponzi's love of gadgets, geeks and business has been a catalyst for new opportunities she could have only dreamed of! She loves the social side of tech and says she's all about people first and tools second. (That's because she's really not that technical, more of a wanna be geek than a natural!) Some of the companies Ponzi has worked with on sponsorships and community outreach are Dell, HP, GM, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Panasonic, CNN, YouTube, UStream, GoDaddy, GoToMeeting and many more.

Ree Drummond started Confessions of a Pioneer Woman in her pajamas in 2006. Now, ThePioneerWoman.com has become a catch all for Ree's step-by-step recipes, photography tutorials, homeschooling discussion, and stories of her transition from spoiled city girl to domestic ranch wife.

In 2009, The Pioneer Woman took home Bloggie awards for Best Photography, Best Design, and Weblog of the Year. Ree lives on a working cattle ranch in Oklahoma with her husband "Marlboro Man" and their four children.

Regina Lewis, AOL Consumer Advisor, best-selling author, national TV contributor, tech-trend expert and former host of DIY Network's Tech Out My House, knows the tips, tricks, secrets and shortcuts for making technology work. She has her fingers on the pulse, offering up-to-the-minute advice on using modern means to simplify and enhance everyday life. The mother of three, she's been cited on Capitol Hill for her work in championing online kids safety.

She sprang onto the national TV scene in 1999, first appearing on the CBS Early Show. Her no-nonsense style, approachable demeanor and modern sensibility catapulted her into a full-time role as an expert commentator for a wide range of national network and cable programs, including TODAY Show, The View and Rachael Ray, along with multiple Fox News shows & regular segments on CNN Headline News. She's also one of the busiest local TV & Radio commentators in the country via satellite on stations nationwide.

Regina serves as AOL's Consumer Advisor, helping build awareness surrounding key consumer topics, including how to save time and money online, keep kids safe and stay current. Energy and an entrepreneurial nature prompted her to author the best-selling book Wired in a Week. An additional lifestyle title is in the works.

Ms. Lewis lives with her children in Northern Virginia and splits her professional time between New York City and Washington, D.C.

Less than one year ago, Renee launched her personal blog Cutie Booty Cakes as a way to promote her new diaper cake business. Before she had even shipped a cake, she was bitten by the blogging bug and had found a new passion. In just a matter of months, Renee has become extremely active in the Mom blogosphere. A self-confessed social media junkie (she has utilized social media for over a decade), Renee leverages the power of sites like Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness of important social and health-related causes.

Renee is a contributing editor for BlogHer and a Race and Ethnicity Channel Editor for BlogNosh online magazine. Her writing has been featured on countless websites including: Mom Bloggers Club, Posh Mama and The Classy Closet. Renee was also one of a select group of bloggers invited to the African-American Walt Disney World Mom Bloggers Weekend and is currently working with EA Sports to promote the upcoming Sports Active game.

Rita Arens authors Surrender, Dorothy and Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews as well as contributing regularly to BlogHer as a mommy & family CE and Cool Mom Picks as a children's book reviewer. 

Her parenting anthology and BlogHer's first book, Sleep is for the Weak: The Best of the Mommybloggers Including Amalah, Finslippy, Fussy, Woulda Coulda Shoulda, Mom-101, and More! was published by Chicago Review Press in September 2008.

Rita spoke on the Blogs to Books Redux panel at BlogHer 2008. She lives with her husband and daughter in Kansas City, where she works as an editor in corporate America.

Rosalind Cummings-Yeates is a full-time, freelance writer and blogger specializing in travel, fashion and culture. Her publishing credits include Hemispheres, Salon, MSN, Brides, Chicago Sun Times, Rough Guide To Women Travel, Yoga Journal, Go Magazine and Mojo, among other publications.  Rosalind loves to experience the varying aspects of culture and travel and to take her readers along. Her blog Farsighted Fly Girl, explores travel, fashion and culture, with musings on how all three connect. Readers will find book reviews, music reviews,  global fashion news and  detailed reflections on travel experiences.  Follow her on Twitter as FarsightedGirl, where she microblogs about travel and cultural happenings in her hometown of Chicago. Rosalind also teaches journalism as an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago.

Shannon is a web designer, blogger, and social media junkie who homeschools two children in beautiful northwest New Jersey. Active in the online publishing world since 1995, she has designed and developed numerous web sites, co-authored a book, and contributed several feature articles online, in newspapers and in magazines.

As a homeschooling mom, Shannon takes an eclectic approach and follows her belief in child-led learning. She and her son work together on Gaming and Learning, a blog that reviews all kinds of games and demonstrates how important gaming can be as a learning tool.

Her personal blog is PHAT Mommy: Parenting, Homeschooling And Technology, and she is the Editor at Blissfully Domestic's Digital Bliss channel.

Siel is an environmental writer and activist who blogs about eco-happenings in the L.A.-area at green LA girl. A contributing editor at BlogHer.com, Siel also writes regularly for Lime.com and FilterForGood. Previously, Siel headed up LATimes.com’s environmental blog, Emerald City, and was the editor for the L.A. section of WorldChanging.

Siel has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Monica, Calif. She can be reached at greenlagirl@gmail.com.

I am a highly motivated, organized, diverse and educated woman. I am a entrepreneur that believes with the economy today a person must be diverse in their opportunities and experiences. I’m emerged in many projects but devoted to my family and their well-being.

I am a professional blogger, Internet and affiliate marketer, early childhood education advocate and I specialize and focus on the green niche but do not limit myself. For GreenandCleanMom.org I review green products, research Eco-friendly issues, market green products, sell them, utilize affiliate marketing strategies, sell ad space and freelance for other blogs and websites. I run Mommy Go Green Blog Tours to connect companies to mom bloggers with the same cause and passions. Through Green and Clean Mom, LLC I consult for companies to help merge their existing marketing plan with social marketing and networking. Utilizing a Web 2.0 strategy to launch their business to a new level.

Everything I have learned about marketing, blogging, networking and business I have learned on my own through trial, error, research and time. Currently, in my spare time I am writing a book to help other mommy bloggers learn more about the process of blogging, social networking and becoming a business blogger.

I am passionate about supporting legislation that helps keep our kids safer and educated. I love connecting with parents that want to go green and inspire and motivate others to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. This is why Organic Baby Products 101, with Monica from Healthy Green Moms has been lauched to continue organic and healthy living.

I am a proud feminist, gender and info Activist and an ICT empowered blogger and trainer. At times it doesn't matter what label or title we have but it matters so much to let that passion that is keeping us alive and making us more determined to make changes in our world shine through and be hard to extinguished. I am at that stage of moving on to make unstoppable changes in the world.

I live and work in Nigeria as a project coordinator of Women's Technology Empowerment Centre. I do a lot of online and off-line activism. I seldom use my real name in relation to my blog but I am sharing it here... I introduce to you Toyin Ajao, a blogger and an activist from Nigeria.

Stefanie Wilder-Taylor is the author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom (Simon & Schuster 2006) and Naptime Is the New Happy Hour: And Other Ways Toddlers Turn Your Life Upside Down (Simon & Schuster 2008) which were based on her prominent blog “Baby on Bored” that has been entertaining thousands of mothers since 2005.

On television she acts as the go-to parenting expert for NBC’s “The Today Show” where she has appeared numerous times giving practical humorous advice. She’s also been featured on The Dr. Phil Show, Your World with Neil Cavuto and the award winning PBS show, Real Savvy Moms. As a comedian she has performed on Make Me Laugh, Evening at the Improv, Comedy Central. With a third book due out July 2009 It’s Not Me, It’s You: Subjective Recollections of a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman, Stefanie hasn’t slowed down, even while juggling her four-year-old daughter and one-year-old twins!

Stephanie O’Dea is the author of Make it Fast, Cook it Slow: The Big Book of Everday Slow Cooking (Hyperion, Oct. 2009) and Totally Together: Simplify Your Busy Household, Day by Day (Running Press, 2010).

In December 2007, Stephanie made a New Year’s Resolution: she’d use her slow cooker every day in 2008 and document her results on a personal blog: crockpot365.blogspot.com. The result: more than 3.5 million visitors (with 25,000 devoted subscribers), appearances on The Rachael Ray Show and Good Morning America and a collection of over-300 lip-smacking recipes for everything from Breakfast Risotto to Vietnamese Roast Chicken to Falafel (imagine!) to Chocolate Mousse.

A self-described cheapskate, O’Dea began slow cooking as a way to save time and money.

Tina Brown is the Founder and Editor in Chief of The Daily Beast.  She is the author   of the 2007 New York Times best seller “The Diana Chronicles.”  She has written for numerous publications including The Times of London, The Spectator, and the Washington Post.

Ms. Brown graduated with an M.A. from Oxford at St Anne's College and authored two plays: Under the Bamboo Tree, performed at the Edinburgh Festival and Happy Yellow at the London fringe Bush Theater. Her journalism career began in 1973 writing for the London Sunday Times, The New Statesman and The Sunday Telegraph. Her writings from this era are collected in 2 books, Life As A Party and Loose Talk.

Tina’s revitalization of publications began at the Tatler - she became editor-in-chief in 1979; circulation rose dramatically and soon purchased by Condé Nast in 1982. She became editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair at the end of 1983. With Tina at the helm from 1984-1992, they won 4 National Magazine Awards; she was named Advertising Age’s first Magazine Editor of the Year.

In 1992, Tina took on revitalizing The New Yorker. In her 6 ½ year tenure, circulation increased 28%; in 1992, Tina was the first magazine editor to be honored with the National Press Foundation's Editor of the Year Award. In 1998, she co-founded Talk Media with Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax, launched Talk magazine and Talk Miramax Books.

From April 2003 - May 2005 Tina hosted CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown. Tina is married to Sir Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times of London, President of Random House. They have two children, George and Isabel, and reside in New York.

Vanessa Fox, called a “cyberspace visionary” by Seattle Business Monthly, is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search. She shares her perspective on how this impacts marketing and user experience at ninebyblue.com and provides authoritative search-friendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners, Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and host of the weekly podcast Office Hours.

Vanessa speaks regularly at conferences and corporate events and has written for a number of publications. She previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search and was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. She was recently named one of Seattle’s 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs.

Veronica I. Arreola is a professional feminist, mom and writer. She is the assistant director of the Center for Research on Women and Gender and the director of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she earned both her bachelors and masters degrees. Veronica has served on the board of the National Organization for Women (local and national), Women Employed (Advocacy Council), Women in Media & News and the Chicago Abortion Fund (current co-chair). She is the current co-chair for the National NOW Mothers and Caregivers Economic Rights committee.

A veteran blogger, she helped launch the Planned Parenthood Action Illinois blog in 2007. Veronica's honors include UIC Woman of the Year, Chicago Foundation for Women Founder's Award Class member, and Prorgessive Women's Voices participant. Today she is a featured blogger at Work it, Mom!, WIMNs Voices, and Kenneth Cole's AWEARNESS blog. Her writing has been featured in Bitch magazine, Ms., Alternet and RH Reality Check. She lives on the north side of Chicago with her family and always roots, roots, roots for her Cubbies.